So, I write both standard narrative prose and scripts in a more comic-like format. I am wondering about the market for comics, and the process of how they are created? When writing the script, should you be as specific as possible- detailing panel layout, perspective, etc, or leave that to someone else? Personally, I prefer to write the dialogue and describe the action in a sentence or two, like this: JOHN: What's that noise? John gets up from his sofa and flicks on the light to the hall. He doesn't see anything unusual and sits back down. JOHN: Must've been my imagination. Is the comic industry any harder to get published into than for novels? I feel like I do better with productivity and inspiration when I write in a script format.
I'm not a comic book writer, but writing comic books sounds like it would be a lot of fun. From what little research I've done it sounds like it is very difficult to get into the market. Dc comics and Marvel don't even accept submissions. I don't think they're hiring either. Hiring an artist on your own is expensive, and hosting a web comic is another expense. Good luck. Hope things work out for you.
I think the answer to this is sort of. A writer getting a novel published is comparable to an artist getting a comic published. Illustrators don't get novels published (unless they're Quentin Blake), and writers don't get comics published (unless they're Neil Gaiman). But the elephant in the room is the inherent unlikelihood of getting published - if it happens it will be by some unique route that nobody could have anticipated - a black swan event. The only thing that's certain is it can't happen to scripts that haven't been written. Perhaps a chance meeting with a new artist who is on the verge of a breakthrough, and who likes the OP's work enough to let them write words to go with their next picture-story. It could happen. John gets up from his sofa and flicks on the light to the hall. He doesn't see anything unusual and sits back down. One conventional approach is to divide the script up by what panels you want the artist to draw for you. So this would be (I guess) four panels:- 1. John getting up from his sofa JOHN: What's that noise? 2. Close-up of John's finger flicking on the light to the hall. 3. On the hall (there is nothing unusual) 4. John sitting back down. JOHN: Must've been my imagination. Four panels might be a bit few for a comic book page - but maybe this is an emotive scene and the location hasn't been established quite enough yet so it wants more page than usual. The script format should clearly distinguish scene description, speech bubbles, and captions - in a way that is foolproof and makes sense to both the writer and the artist. For example here in panel 1. we don't want a speech bubble from John's mouth saying "getting up from his sofa". The nicest approach I've seen is to put any words the artist (or typesetter) needs to draw in the panel into a monospace font and indented. The sequential artist might do something clever with the script:- maybe they feel four square panels is boring and turn it into a single continuous panel with a wobbly border stretching across both pages, but the writer has organised it logically and if the artist does it literally the reader will be able to follow the story. We haven't limited the artist too much - probably the hall and possibly also the sofa and the lightswitch would need to have been described earlier on. If we have pissed off the artist and not given a good brief, John might find himself on a lime green sofa with orange polka dots - in the middle of the Hall of the Mountain King.
I remember seeing or reading that in the early days at Marvel Stan Lee would write up the basic idea, I think in a vague format, not panel-by-panel. Then he'd turn it over to one of the pencillers who would sketch up a rough set of page layouts, then turn them over to Stan, who would pencil in word balloons and narration boxes. Then the penciller would set to work on the finished pages. Also, just as a matter of interest, usually (in the old days) words were hand-lettered, but now I believe many are done in a computer font. Some are probably still hand lettered though. I'm sure different companies use different approaches, and each grouping of writer and artist might use their own variation.
I know absolutely nothing about the comics industry, so I can't comment on how hard it is to break into, but as to formatting, I recall Neil Gaiman including the script for one of his Sandman stories in the trade paperback, which might interest you. Hold on a moment... Ah, here we go. The story was "Calliope," and both the story and its script are included in Sandman vol. 3, "Dream Country." That volume collects a few self-contained short stories that can be enjoyed even if you haven't read the first two volumes in the series, and it's quite good. It's from the 90s, so may not be totally relevant to today's writing process, but I would imagine the basics of script-writing and collaboration haven't changed much, despite the changes in technology.
My paternal grandmother worked for Al Capp during WWII. Her job was lettering the dialog balloons and doing general clean-up, plus coloring the Sunday Comics for his cartoon "L'il Abner," which was a very popular comic from 1934 to 1977.
As I understand it, if we're talking Marvel (now owned by Disney) and increasingly DC, it's all about your politics. Strictly radical left-wing agenda.
