Waid Wednesdays #19: Covers, A Basic Primer

“Artist, please draw more attention to the severed head.”

Probably my favorite part of the editorial job--not co-plotting with writers, not copyediting scripts, not having the interns Google me all day--is working out covers. Part of that is because I’m a particularly visually minded editor, but mostly it’s because I still believe the cover is a key sales tool and sets the readers’ expectations for what’s actually inside the book in a way that nothing else can.

There was a time when the cover’s job was more important than it is today--back when all comics were basically an inexpensive impulse purchase from newsstands and from spinner racks, before fans began pre-ordering their comic books months in advance. Yes, most shops have new comics shelved so you can see the entire cover at once, which is a step up from newsstand displays that, at best, showed only the top third, but that doesn’t make cover art three times as important as it was--in the 21st century, most buyers have already committed to buying the newest issue of AVENGERS (or whatever) before they even walk into the store, regardless of what’s on the cover.

(And if you’ve ever wondered why so many modern covers are pin-up shots of characters rather than story-oriented illustrations, the answer’s generally twofold: pin-ups can be stockpiled in advance, and they can be repurposed for t-shirts and other merchandise at far less a cost than original material.)

That said--and feel free to call me Mr. Old-School--I still believe the cover’s primary job is to catch and hold the reader’s eye on the off-chance someone might actually be on the fence about picking it up. The cover’s not there to be a showcase for the artist, not to be lush or ornate just to show off, but to catch and hold attention amidst a sea of Wolverine comics.

The cover’s secondary job is to, with its frozen-moment single illustration, convey an idea. Extra points if the image makes me laugh out loud (like Nate Watson’s, shown above, even before I asked him to make the severed head bigger to help underscore the balance of comedy and horror of SCREAM QUEEN, about a serial killer who stalks a high school while dressed as its mascot).

When I commission a cover, I first ask for a couple of sketches--not because I feel the need to suggest a million “improvements,” but because I don’t want an artist to waste his time on anything that’s too close to a piece we’ve already done or that’s already in the works. Clever ideas outrank pin-ups, at least for me. A composition that tells me that the artist has a sense of design and isn’t just doodling kewl art onto the paper is critical. And (again, pointing to Nate Watson’s sketch here) the cover has to capture the feel of the series for new readers. Once the sketch has been approved, the artist turns it into a finished piece, remembering at all times (because I am a tyrant about them) my essential rules:

1. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE ILLUSTRATIONS THAT OBSCURE THE LOGO (a.k.a. the title of the magazine). You can get away with that more easily if, like Superman’s or Playboy’s, your logo is already instantly recognizable to a mass audience. “Cthulhu Tales” is not that logo. (A great logo is in and of itself a thing of beauty. And like most works of art, I can’t produce one myself but I know a good one when I see it. One of the all-time best logo designers is the multiple-award-winning letterer Todd Klein (Sandman, Swamp Thing), who regularly runs in-depth studies on what makes logo designs work or not work. I implore you to go visit his site to read the analysis of someone exponentially more qualified than I am to explain the do’s and don’ts.

2. LOGOS SHOULD BE IN ONE SINGLE COLOR THAT’S COMPLEMENTARY TO THE COLOR OF THE MAIN ILLUSTRATION. Sub-rule: Any drop-shadow behind the logo, conversely, should be in a contrasting color. That would seem to be common sense, but you’d be aghast at how often it’s ignored.

3. LEAVE ROOM NOT ONLY FOR THE LOGO BUT FOR THE "TRADE DRESS," a.k.a. the company insignia, the issue number and month, and (God help us all) that dreaded barcode that began destroying American magazine covers before you were born and that I dream every day to someday see banished--but which, for now, remains a necessary, stinking, zebra-striped evil and I’m off-topic, aren’t I? Sorry. It’s just that, to this day, I still remember the very first comic I ever bought that had a barcode on it--Daredevil 130--and I’m still traumatized to this day. I thought it was gaudy and distracting back then, and my opinion hasn’t changed in the intervening 33 (!) years. I’d love to see barcodes banished, but in an understandable but still vomitous victory of commerce over art, most comics distributors insist that they be on the front cover or else they won’t handle your book. The advantage it gives them in computer inventory-management overrules the fact that it’s a nauseating blight. If you’re a big enough publisher, you can sneak a back-cover UPC every great once in a while, but since no advertiser is keen on having it interfere with back cover ads they’ve paid for, it’s generally not an option. Onward....

4. FLOP IT. Even if you think a cover sketch is a home run, and especially if you don’t, always turn it over and hold it up to the light so you can see what it looks like in mirror-image. A surprising number of times, it makes the mediocre good and the good better.

5. GIVE ME SOMETHING I CAN SEE FROM ACROSS THE ROOM. Bold colors. And/or white space. And/or stark illustrations. Simple is always, always better.

In the comments, if you please: your favorite comic or magazine covers.

Waid Wednesdays #1/2: See You Next Week

Here's this week's column of advice for writers and creative folk: spend the sixty lousy bucks on Quicken and be done with it. Don't just throw all your receipts and 1099s into a big drawer and expect to be able to neatly and effortlessly organize them on the morning of April 15, because you will instead spend that entire day sifting through a gigantic mound of paper and keening for the help of an unattentive God. And you will miss any deadlines you had that day. Like this one. Are you listening, Mark Waid of April 16, 2008? I thought not. You jerk.

Waid Wednesdays #18: Don't Waste My Time

A sister post to last week's about how to energize your plots by letting the characters make unexpected choices. Fair warning--this post is (a) short and (b) generally more applicable to writers of serial fiction than of stand-alone stories, novels, screenplays, etc.--but maybe there's still something here for you.

One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of "suspense" that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, "Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?", or if your big cliffhanger moment is, "Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?", then I understand Food Lion is hiring. The only reader who might actually be fooled into wondering about the outcome of those questions is one who's never read a single piece of fiction before, and even then, fat chance. If you're going to have a character make a plot-driving choice between two and only two alternatives, at least have it be Sophie's Choice. Try making it a lose-lose, see what that gets you. Remember, the definition of "dilemma" is not "a tough spot," it's "having to choose between equally unsatisfactory options." Or, if you're dead-set on taking the reader down what seems to be an obvious-to-anyone road--"Will he choose the sandwich--or his mother's life?"--try one of these two tweaks, both of which have worked well for me in the past:

1) Follow the "dilemma that I'm not gonna buy" past the point of decision to show us the effect of having to make the choice. Best example: an idea I never got around to using in Fantastic Four but saved for a Flash story. At the story's climax, both of Flash's children were in danger, and even for the fastest man alive, there was time to save only one. Now, I was well aware that every single reader out there knew that, no matter how dire I painted the circumstance, I wasn't about to kill off one of the kids if for no other reason than the story was happening outside Flash's own book. So it was total false suspense. Plus, the solution was a cheat because he figured out a way to save both after all. But I thought it was worth hitting the note of choice because the real payoff, in the story's epilogue, was Flash's resultant emotional collapse. He revealed to us (as Sue Richards would have in FF) that for a second, in his mind, he actually had made that choice. He had picked which child to save, and while he'll never tell anyone (including his wife and including us) what that choice had been, just the nightmare of making it will haunt him forever.

2) Lean into the shallow expectations of false suspense and then immediately hit the readers with a moment of genuine suspense that spins directly out of it. Example, again from FF: I ended one story arc with the apparent death of Ben Grimm, the Thing, which is pretty much the textbook definition of false suspense--no reader would believe I was really killing off one of the Fantastic Four. So I did that with two pages left to go. Then, two pages later, I hit the readers with the real cliffhanger--that Reed Richards, superscientist, was so mentally distraught by Ben's death that he vowed to break into Heaven to get Ben's soul back. Continued next issue. WhaHuh? Presto. False suspense becomes real suspense. No one was supposed to even believe Ben was really dead; not my goal. They were supposed to wonder if Reed Richards had gone insane, which sounded a lot more intriguing.

Bottom line: don't waste my time by asking questions with obvious answers or posing "suspenseful" choices with only one real option. That's just marking time. People (and characters) (and situations) are only interesting when they surprise you.

Waid Wednesdays #17: Wait, What?

Wherever you were yesterday at about 10:00 a.m. PST, if you heard the distant sound of a scream, that was me. I'd gone to bed the previous night having finished the most recent script for IRREDEEMABLE and feeling very good about it--

--and then I sat down the next morning to polish it and realized that it was crap, because I'd forgotten to deliver on one of my fundamental rules of storytelling. Structurally, the script was fine, and the dialogue was good. Everyone served the plot quite well, thank you, everyone acted consistent with his or her established personalities, and there were little moments of shock peppered throughout the story and at least one moment in there that feels like I turned over a rock to show you some squiggly things, so, yeah, check, check, check, but it still felt hollow...

...because, upon re-reading the script with a fresh eye, I found that no one in the story had surprised me.

It was easy to overlook in its absence. I mean, the plot moved, and people were doing interesting things. But overall, the story felt very binary, if you will; in every scene, the characters could have gone in one of two directions, but really only two--and the most arresting moments in stories, the ones that make them unforgettable, are the moments where someone makes an outrageous third choice that you never in a million years could have seen coming.

My all-time favorite example is from the excellent movie Se7en: up until the final few scenes, the plot's pretty much a straight-up police procedural. Yes, there are enough twists and turns throughout to maintain the suspense, but as with all procedurals, the only real question in the back of the audience's mind is "How will they catch the criminal?" because everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing--the detectives are detecting, the murder is murdering, etc. And that's fine. Thousands of compelling, suspenseful stories have been woven around the simple question "How will they catch him?"

And then, near the end of Se7en, the murderer the detectives have been chasing all this time makes an amazing choice that seems to come out of absolutely nowhere. He simply walks into the station, confesses, and surrenders...and tells the cops he can take them to two final bodies if they'll just get in the car and let him navigate. And they just start driving.

Up to that moment, we in the audience kind of knew where the story was ultimately headed. We didn't know how it would happen, but we knew the cops would eventually catch and punish the criminal, the end, because that's what happens in a procedural. And, suddenly, boom, one character kicks the game board over, and now, for the first time since the opening credits, no one in the audience has the slightest clue where this story is going.

That's what you want as a writer. At least once in your story, maybe more, just when you think the readers might be getting a little too comfortable, you want a character to zig where they were expected to zag--to make a surprising, unexpected choice, the more out-of-the-blue the better. (See also The Frighteners, the most criminally underrated screenplay of all time, for a thousand other examples.) As long as it's a choice that's ultimately in character, then the more shocking, the more it works. I can think of no better way to maintain suspense and keep the story energized, and it's one of my favorite tricks. Try it at least once per script. Make a point of having either your protagonist or your antagonist make a hard, hard left at some juncture where convention and tradition would dictate they turn right, and see where that takes you; you can always undo it. But in my experience, you probably won't want to.

Next: the sister post--the trap of False Suspense and how to avoid it.

Waid Wednesdays #16: The Dictionary Is Wrong

Writing this one on the plane from La Guardia to LAX, so it may or not be posted by Wednesday depending upon how late the flight gets in.

In 1990, having recently departed my editorial position at DC Comics, I went to work for Archie Comics in Mamaroneck, NY as an assistant editor/proofreader/colorist/cover gag editor/researcher/monkey. And I would be lying to you if I said that I didn’t believe it, at the time, to be a step down. How had I gone from editing BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT to checking to make sure Betty’s hair was the right color yellow on every page of PALS & GALS? Was it only yesterday that I was helping proofread THE KILLING JOKE?

Dumb attitude. First off, the people were all terrific. Okay, the two gentlemen who who owned the joint and who were as close as brothers right down to owning identical cars and yachts, were [NOTE: OPINIONS EXPRESSED ON THIS BLOG DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF BOOM STUDIOS, JUST SAYIN’] erratic tyrants with hair-trigger tempers who would have sued an old lady out of her dentures if they’d only had the time to spare...but the managing editor, Victor Gorelick, was a patient guy who knows where more bodies are buried than most anyone else in comics, and he was always encouraging me to all the crafts involved in making comics. Most importantly, he set me up to learn a critically important lesson in storytelling.

In case you haven’t looked at an Archie comic book since about 1952, trust me, there hasn’t been much innovation. As it was for your parents’ parents, most every story remains between five and seven pages, with no more than six panels a page and generally only three on the first page (to allow room for titles and, when the Archie execs choose to run them, credits). Big, simple lettering and big, simple balloons accompanying big, simple art. This is not the format in which to attempt WATCHMEN.

I asked Victor for a shot at writing a story and, once we found a pitch he liked, he set me loose. I’d come to him with the idea that Riverdale High was searching desperately for a new assistant coach, and by far the most qualified candidate was a female basketball star who’d been confined to a wheelchair by an accident. The conflict in the story is from loudmouth Reggie, to whom it must be proved that a “girl in a wheelchair” can teach him anything about basketball. The new coach, of course, eventually gets Reggie past his “handicap,” as she puts it--his ego, which compromises the team. Hardly Dostoyevsky, but consider my target audience.

Anyway, I had six pages. About 28, 30 panels. And it took me longer to write the first half of that script than it has anything else to this day, because by the time you set up the problem (“We need a new coach!”), show how desperate the staff gets once the first few candidates prove unsatisfactory, ramp up the tension, and introduce the woman in the wheelchair, you’re already on page three. Of six.

And while the resultant solution (and lesson) is no doubt obvious to the experienced among you, it was only when I sweated my way into it that I realized one of the most fundamental rules of comics storytelling: start the story as late as possible. I didn’t need an extensive setup. I didn’t need scenes of tryouts or debates. What I needed was this:

PANEL ONE: Exterior, Principal Weatherbee’s office. Weatherbee and Coach Kleats, peeking out his door towards a group of ill-suited coaching candidates awaiting an interview, are visibly worried.

KLEATS: So, Waldo...how many of them do you think could do even one chin-up?

WEATHERBEE: Out of THESE applicants? One BETWEEN them...maybe...

PANEL TWO: Bee’s assistant sticks her head into the office.

KLEATS: I wish Coach Clayton were back from his seminar! He’d know where to find a gym coach!

ASSISTANT: Next interview, Mr. Weatherbee!

PANEL THREE: ROBIN GANTNER, an athletic woman in a wheelchair, enters the room, big smile on her face.

ASSISTANT: Her name is...

GANTNER: ROBIN GANTNER, Mr. Weatherbee! If you’re looking for a girls’ gym teacher...then I’m your woman!

I repeat: hardly Eisner Award-winning material, but efficient. I wrote a handful of additional Archie stories that year, each one easier to wrestle into submission than the last. I kept each premise increasingly simpler, started each scene as late as I could at ended it as quickly as possible. Dialogue was trimmed to the bone without losing the funny. And that training served me better than any other I’ve ever gotten. It’s easy to write long; it’s a bitch to write short. It was a terrific workshop. It would have lasted longer except one of the owners, livid, stormed into the bullpen one afternoon demanding to know who’d changed a word in a classified ad they were placing. I took the heat calmly, certain that he’d simmer down once I explained that I’d made the fix to correct a misspelling. He looked skeptical, so I cheerfully showed him the right spelling in the dictionary, ready to put his mind at ease. Instead, he screwed up his face in unbridled rage, slammed the book shut, and screamed, “THE DICTIONARY IS WRONG!” I ended the scene as quickly as I could by immediately turning in my keys and peeling out of the parking lot, never to return. It was a memorable ending. Not a beat was wasted.

Edited to eliminate the in-air brainslip of IDing the owners as brothers. They weren't, really, but we always thought of them as such.

Edited AGAIN to fix a typo that put Mamaroneck in NJ and not NY. Apologies to both states.

Waid Wednesdays #15: What Matters

There used to be a Triangle Rule in comics. I first heard it from one of my mentors, the brilliant writer/cartoonist William Messner-Loebs. I've repeated it many times since, and God only knows who first articulated it, but it supposed this:

There were three qualifications for making good in comics--talent, personality, and the ability to hit a deadline. That was your triangle. The theory was that very few comics professionals were gifted with all three of these super-powers, but as long as s/he possessed any two of these traits, steady work was all but a lock. If you were insanely talented and likeable, you could probably skate by for a while on the punctuality hurdle; there was a point where Neil Gaiman was so overwhelmed that he was faxing Sandman scripts in one page at a time, which he could get away with 'cause he was Neil Gaiman. Likewise, comics was crammed to the rafters with C-level-talent drinking buddies who were unbelievably reliable about getting their scripts or art in on time, and clockwork geniuses who had the social skills of a filing cabinet, and they all got by--maybe not on the A-list assignments, but they put food on their table.

Before you whoop up and down that you've just snagged a career because you're two for three--you're always punctual and your friends tell you you're a hoot--I warn you that the 21st Century has not been kind to the Triangle Rule. First off, FTPs and e-mail have become such a part of the work-delivery process that human interaction and visits to the office to get face-time with your editor are rarer than ever, so your winning personality counts less. Secondly, yes, we're still in the periodical business--even with one-off graphic novels, someone somewhere is depending on you to make an eventual deadline, even if it's just your landlord--so missing a deadline is never, ever cool, but so long as you stay in contact with your editor and keep the lines of communication open rather than ignore phone calls or e-mails, you can probably work something out. (Just remember, it is a thousand times more forgiveable to blow a deadline if you alert the editor ahead of time that you're having trouble than it is to drop off the radar and leave the editor hanging.)

But most importantly, there are very few places in comics these days to build your career and quietly hone your skills, so it's not enough to be talented. You have to be talented right now, out of the gate. Part of that's because a bunch of jerks like Grant Morrison, Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker went and drastically raised the bar on the definition of the word "talented." Part of that's because readers expect way more from a comic that costs twice what it cost six years ago. Part of that is because, chances are, your work will be collected in a trade paperback that will stay in print a long, long time. And part of that is because there now are far, far more comics reviews sites online than there are people who actually love comics and are not willing to snark your reputation to a bloody pulp just because snark is easier to write than actual criticism.

Wait, it gets worse. You have to be talented right now, and you have to sustain that talent. Not only is competition for the gig is at an all-time high, but the economy isn't exactly encouraging readers to be patient with comics they might grow to love. Sorry to add to the pressure, but one or two bad jobs can take a fast toll on your career.

Mark Waid the BOOM! Editor-In-Chief just wrote 400 words on how meeting deadlines was your most important reputation-builder, and he wants to scream bloody murder at Mark Waid the Freelancer for throwing them out in lieu of what I'm about to say--because no one else says it, ever--but while you don't want to be a prima donna with your attitude and you don't want to get fired for never delivering on time, the God's honest truth is that, in the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters.

Long, long ago, when I was a Boy Editor at DC, I once asked my boss, Dick Giordano, about what it was like to work with Neal Adams, who he'd long been partners with and who had a legendary reputation (earned or not) for never, ever, ever, ever meeting a deadline. "Didn't editors lose their minds when Neal would do his disappearing act?", I asked. Dick just chuckled and said, "Yes. Yes, they did. And they'd be furious with him, and they'd swear never to hire him again. But six months later, they wouldn't remember how late his work was. All they'd remember was how good it was."

This was, frankly, kind of a dangerously stupid thing to tell an impressionable young editor working in the periodical business...but (a) Dick's gift for candor was one of the qualities that made him the best and most valuable mentor I ever had, and (b) he was right. And he's just gotten more right in the intervening two decades. I cannot name names without embarrassing them, but I can just off the top of my head think of at least a dozen freelancers who hit every deadline ever asked of them, even if that deadline was changed on them without fair warning... who were pleasant to work with and always professional even if their editor was a jerk...and who always did exactly what their editors asked them to do, even if it was obvious to a blind man that the quality of the finished work was lessened, because they were trained to believe that their first priority was to serve their editor and do so in a timely manner.

All of those people have been unemployed for years.

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it. But know that, five years from now, as fans or prospective employers are looking over your published pages, no one will care that this story sucks because the publisher moved the deadline up or because the editor made you work an android cow into the story. All they will care about is what they see in front of them, and they will hold you responsible for it, no one else.

Don't be defiant. Don't be difficult. But the Triangle Rule no longer holds, so most of all, don't think that if you simply jump through enough hoops and fetch enough drinks, that'll still buy you a career. Be good at this above all else. Stand up for your work, and never, ever let anything get in the way of you doing your very best. You may end up crossing swords with an editor and leave him or her thinking you're difficult or unhireable. That editor may even be me. But if you never listen to another thing I ever say, listen to this: the Career Graveyard is fence-to-fence full and three deep with freelancers who believed that making a positive impression with their editors was more important than making a permanent impression with their work.

******
End of lecture. A couple of other bits of business:

(1) If you like what's said here, I refer you to my daily blog over at markwaid.com, where these essays (reposted a day or two later) are accompanied with podcasts, videoblogging, and other various bits of commentary. Come for the funny pictures, stay for the sense of moral outrage.

(2) I'm all over the comics shops in the next few weeks if you're inclined to pick up one of my books to see if I'm really even remotely qualified to pen how-to's like these. Potter's Field: Stone Cold (a detective story with artist Paul Azaceta) hits today; The Incredibles #1 (with art by Marcio Takara) hits next Wednesday; and Irredeemable #1 (with artist Pete Krause), the story of how the world's greatest superhero became the world's greatest supervillain, debuts two weeks from today. There'll be more coming. You can get 'em at your favorite comics shop or order them directly from BOOM! Studios.

Waid Wednesdays #14: The Splash Page

Straight up, I will tell you that with the craptacularly unproductive week I have just had, I don't feel qualified today to give anyone advice on how to count to ten, much less how to do comics. Still, I will soldier on, however briefly.

The old school of thought was that having an eye-catching, dynamic cover was the single most important factor in comics production, because (duh) that's the first thing an impulse buyer sees. I still think there's lots of truth to that, but since our audience is now made up predominantly of hardcore, informed buyers who have already largely decided sight-unseen what they're gonna buy on Wednesdays, it's no longer a truism. Still a good rule of thumb (and a future blogpost), but not as critical as it was back in the day when your great-great grandfather and I used to buy comics for a nickel down at the trolley stop.

The second most important graphic element of a comic, I was taught, was Page One. This theory was likewise predicated on the impulse-buyer idea, that purchasers who were lured by the cover but were still on the fence could be sold with a strong initial page--a "splash page" (to use industry jargon) that was a single, bold image, almost a second cover. This is a guideline that I think outlived its usefulness as a hard-and-fast rule a long time back. In fact, I'm not totally sure it was ever really true. For one thing, I never met anyone who, if they needed additional selling past the cover, wouldn't just flip through the whole book. And for another thing, one of the very best-selling comics series of all time was Captain Marvel Adventures, and here's what for the entire decade of the 1940s you'd see every month on page one:


Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Or, to put it in contemporary terms, the most acclaimed comic of all time, Watchmen, starts every issue on a nine-panel grid. So my advice is, don't let anyone tell you that your first page has to be a splash page.

HOWEVER.

Your first page, like the first paragraph of a prose story or the first image on a movie screen, must be arresting. It doesn't absolutely have to be a full-page shot--but if it's not, it does absolutely have to make you want to turn the page to find out what happens next (or learn how you got to this interesting place). Really, truly, I can't say this strongly enough: if there's not something remarkable happening on that first page, something we've never seen before, then rethink it. Be honest with yourself: nothing on Earth is gonna want to make you wanna read past page one if page one is a sequence of a guy going to work in the morning. I don't care that the sequence might be integral to your story, I don't care that it's drawn nicely, I don't care that it sets up his situation. If we don't get to the end of the page and find out that the place he works makes suits out of human skin, there is nothing there to make you not wonder why you just spent four bucks on this. I'm overstating for emphasis--I'm not really saying your only option is to be shocking, and Chris Ware, for one, whose genius eclipses my meager talent like the moon eclipses my driveway, gets by just fine by drawing us in slowly and without sensationalism--but I'm serious when I say you cannot underestimate the patience of a potential reader, not with only about 22 pages to spend on your story.

Comics are not film. Don't think you have to begin with an establishing shot of the city, then slowly pan in on the deli where your main character works. Just start your damn story, and the faster you can get to the unfamiliar, the better.

Personally, I like the page one splash, particularly if it could serve as a second cover. I'm not adamant about it--there are plenty of comics I've written that start with slow, dramatic builds and sort of explode around page two or three--but there's something really satisfying to me about being able to grab you on page one. By way of example, here--thanks to artist Ron Garney, who nailed what I described perfectly, as he always does--is, of the eighty majillion page ones I've written, my hands-down favorite one ever, from Captain America #4, 1998:


That, if I do say so myself, is a damn good Page One.

Waid Wednesdays #13: You'd Better Be In There Somewhere

When I was working at a company called Crossgen back in 2001, I was stuck writing a book called Sigil. I didn’t start it; it was inherited. It was about a two-fisted, ex-military, blue-collar guy named Sam who traveled the galaxy and fought aliens. I forget why. I do remember it wasn’t a very compelling or convincing reason. I specifically remember that the alien empire he was up against had conquered interstellar travel but still had not invented the wheel, which is probably the single stupidest science-fiction conceit I’ve ever heard.

There was nothing about this setup that was particularly easy for me to wrap my head around. Sam was the kind of guy I couldn’t in real life relate to on any level, and he was fighting an eons-old humanoid empire that had somehow never seen a rock roll downhill. So finding my “in” was extra-challenging--but that’s the job. If you’re going to write a character convincingly, you have to find something in him, however small, that resonates with you.

After much studying and much drinking, I hit upon the one commonality Sam and I had: we were both vagabonds with no family ties. I got that, and something clicked. That suggested that there was some backstory with his parents. That there might be a reason he felt estranged from friends and family. That there might be some nugget of masked insecurity inside him that made him feel uncomfortable with close relationships. THAT, I got. (The book, though brilliantly drawn by Scot Eaton, was still a mediocre adventure, but I got it.)

Marvel Comics’ characters have been exceedingly popular since the 1960s because they’re especially relatable. The X-Men are about facing prejudice. The Hulk is about the power of anger and how to deal with it. The Fantastic Four is about family. Thor is about...

...about...

...this one stumped me for years. The Mighty Thor chronicles the ongoing, modern-day adventures of the Norse god of thunder, who divides his time between punching supervillains in Manhattan and fighting Frost Giants with a giant hammer to protect his home of Asgard and his cranky dad, Odin. I never got Thor. I have absolutely no interest in mythology, Thor’s trademark “thee-thou-thine” faux-Medieval dialogue feels corny to me, and Thor is traditionally about as bright as a week-old glowstick. And yet...and yet...he’s been one of comics’ mainstay heroes for nearly a half-century, which means there had to be something in the concept that the audience can identify with. I just couldn’t find it. And, worse, a few years back when I was doing a handful of Marvel books, I had to write Thor from time to time.

So I finally broke it down, and once I did, it was embarrassingly obvious:

Thor is about a rebellious son who can’t please his father no matter what he does.

Odin’s a jerk. He claims to have a very clear vision of Thor’s destiny, one that doesn’t involve wasting time with Earthlings, but like many fathers, he’s much better at articulating what Thor isn’t supposed to do than what he is supposed to do. There’s poor Thor, just trying to follow his heart, while Odin--time and again with all the compassion of a hurricane--punishes Thor for breaking specious rules that were never very clear to begin with.

THAT, I got. THAT, hundreds of thousands of teenage readers have been getting since 1962.

Characters, if they’re to have any longevity, have to speak to universal concerns. The Golden Age of pop culture is lousy with the tens of thousands of forgotten characters who weren’t really about anything definable. A few have adapted by becoming corporate icons--the Wonder Woman of 1942 is only barely recognizable as the safely sexless Wonder Woman of today--but, by and large, time is much kinder to the Spider-Mans of pop culture than it is the Betty Boops and Great Gildersleeves. Whether it’s a character you inherited or one of your own invention, you have to find in him or her the truths that will mean something to today’s audience and, hopefully, tomorrow’s.

Waid Wednesdays #12: Characters Are Not Furniture

Losing two of the next five days to cross-country flights, but no complaints from me. I’m on my way to the Orlando MegaCon this week, and while (like most of you) I’ve come to hate flying, it’s worth it: MegaCon has become one of the largest and best-run comics/anime/sf conventions in this country, and whatever fannish subgenre floats your boat, attending this show is worth the trip.

The casualty, of course, is that this post will be a bit shorter than the norm—but still valuable, I trust. It’s a bit of beginners’ comics-writing advice I don’t hear discussed much:

Everybody wants something. Or, to put it another way, characters are not furniture.

I know, I know. In a chumpish attempt at wordplay, I just lost you. “Characters want furniture?” No. Characters, from the main ones to the most incidental, need to do more than just stand around like furniture. When they exist solely to move the plot along, they stand out, and not in a good way In a kidney-shaped coffee-table sort of way. It’s an easy mistake to make: “Hey, I need to fill the readers in on my bad guy’s background. I know—I’ll have a cop at the crime scene explain the bad guy’s childhood. Or maybe a psychiatrist.” Or “I need to show what a twisted badass the killer is. I’ll put a gym teacher in here for him to kill.” Right instincts, but that’s building furniture. Furniture that solves your plot-and-exposition problems, yes, but it’s always worth the effort to turn these people from exposition machines into genuine characters. Otherwise, you’re missing some opportunities to entertain.

One way of turning your wooden puppets into real boys and girls is by giving them quirks. You could, for instance, have your crime-scene cop munching peanuts. You could give the gym teacher a stutter or ridiculous taste in clothing (even for a gym teacher). That’s one way of going about it—but it’s the cheap and obvious way.

The better way is to, as you write, always bear in mind that—just like in real life—everyone on the scene wants something. Even the admissions nurse who has no dialogue wants something—he wants to go home early because he’s tired, or he wants time off for his kid's soccer game, or he wants to ask the cute intern out, or he wants his nylon uniform to stop itching so much. That desire doesn’t necessarily have to be voiced or even obvious, and it certainly doesn’t have to be a story point, but being aware of what each of your characters longs for helps give them weight in a scene and is a more subtle but less clumsy way of making them feel real.

Concrete if inadvisable example: Having an unusually petite and feminine female light up a big, smelly cigar is certainly a way of making her more colorful, but it’s a purely arbitrary bit of business. On the other hand, deciding for yourself that she smokes cigars because she believes they draw attention to her that might otherwise go to the bigger, louder people around her...same visual, deeper character, and your having made this choice for her might further suggest some interesting way for her to interact with the other characters that doesn’t take us out of the story but does add something to the page.

In WATCHMEN, Alan Moore pulled off a much more elegant example of this. Rorschach, the moral-absolutist detective, is constantly snacking on sugar cubes throughout the novel. (It’s actually a plot point about midway through, when discarded sugar-cube wrappers become evidence that he was present at a crime scene, but for the purposes of the story, any sort of clue would have served: lozenge wrappers, cookie fortunes, footprints, whatever.) Having Rorschach constantly snacking on any one specific thing is a colorful quirk. That he hungers specifically for sugar cubes—hard-edged, simple, precise little building blocks that are pure white—tells us gobs about what this detective really craves, and once you make that connection, this bit of business doesn’t feel at all arbitrary.

In the comments, if you will, your preference for next week’s post: the Black Art of punctuation and sound effects, or the totally overlooked reason why Thor has remained a popular character for forty years?

Waid Wednesdays #11: More on the Comic Book Editor

Following up on some of last week's post about The Job of a Comic Book Editor....

I made several big presumptions and (at least) one ill-phrased comment, all of which sparked worthwhile discussion not only here but also on the forums over at boom-studios.com and in person over drinks. These points are well worth addressing here.

Presumption One: You can follow my Inviolable Rules because you, the editor, are working with writers and artists who have some degree of talent and are not, in fact, illiterate or anatomy-carefree hacks who you inherited because they bought drinks and/or hookers and/or drunken hookers for someone higher than you on the corporate roster who seems oblivious to their lack of talent.

That's a bigger gimme than it oughta be. Luckily, lack of talent will generally bury the unworthy, but it's an absolute fact that all comics editors and publishers, myself included, rely on at least one creator who they believe to be sublimely talented but who everyone else rightly knows should be cleaning pools for living. I don't know why this one blind spot exists so relentlessly, but it's so absolutely true that I've come to accept it as some sort of weird Necessary Impurity built into the editorial desk.

Consequently, if you have any sort of editorial workload at all--at DC, editors and their assistants handle anywhere from four to eight monthly books; at Marvel, they handle twice that; and at Boom!, it's somewhere in the middle--you're probably stuck with at least one writer or artist you yourself would not have willfully hired. If you're lucky, there's enough talent there whereby stories are being produced that, even if they're not 100% to your taste, are good stories. If you're unlucky, you're shackled to a writer who's clueless. Good luck with that. All I can tell you is, in my experience and in the long run, you'll be able to sleep better at night knowing you've argued with the guy and served the story than you will if you cave in on your instincts to follow the path of least resistance.

Presumption Two: The writer you're trying to edit is a good guy who understands concepts like "company standards," "style guide," and "Just because Grant Morrison once had Batman shoot someone with a gun doesn't mean you can do it." A lot of companies, BOOM! included, are skittish about the word "goddamn," for instance, because as unbelievable as this is to me, there are still people out there who are more offended by one word of language than they are by the entirety of Dane Cook's existence. This presumption is directly entwined with....

Presumption Two-A: Your freelancers give a rat's ass what you say and are not arrogant prima donnas who bristle every time you suggest to them that "Spider-Man" does, in fact, have a hyphen in it. It's easy for me to sit here and say "Don't pose problems without offering solutions," but there are always going to be a few writers and artists who are so sensitive/insecure/gun-shy that they're going to perceive any suggestion you make as horning in on their job. Basically, not that you needed to hear this from me, that's their problem, not yours, but your life will be easier if you learn how to handle and massage those egos on a case-by-case basis. If you're calm and level-headed with your freelancers, I promise that they will eventually learn not to flinch every time you open your mouth.

And, finally, the rule "Never point out a problem unless you have a solution to offer" was clunkily phrased and, in retrospect, should have read as "If you're gonna point out a problem with the story, have a solution to offer." I didn't mean to suggest you should ever fear pointing out problems; I was instead heavily underscoring the point that if you think in terms of solutions, that tends to turn your kneejerk reactions into articulate statements with some thought behind them.

*****
As an editor, you're certainly well within your rights and your job description to enforce whatever editorial guidelines have been laid down by your bosses, and I kinda thought that was understood, but I apologize for not making that point more explicitly. It's easy for Writer Me to forget that not everyone in comics has an "I've Read 50,000 Comics In My Lifetime" inbred understanding of basically what material is and isn't considered problematic in American mainstream comic books.

I think the toughest, most stressful part of the editor's job is that serving the material and serving the creators don't always go hand-in-hand. If you're editing someone else's creator-owned book, it's an easier gig; ultimately, you can advocate for whatever you like, but the creator generally has final say so long as the publisher's still willing to publish his or her work. If you're working at Marvel or DC or Dark Horse or wherever on corporate-owned properties, you're expected by your corporate overlords to know where to draw the line between letting these crazy freelancers have their heads and protecting these corporate assets from stories or art that might "damage" them. Worse, the placement of that line changes from hour to hour and depends not only on the ephemeral definition of "damage" but also on (a) the clout of the freelancer, (b) your clout in the company, (c) however corporate might be overrreacting on some mail they got from an aggrieved crank, (d) whether your editor in chief had a fight with his wife this morning and wants to exert some power, (e) how seriously your boss takes the comments on message boards, and (f through z) any number of other random factors.

Comics Editorial really is a complex job on a corporate level, and as I have often said, I'm lucky that I'm the E-I-C and don't have to answer to anyone who isn't in tune with my own tastes and standards of craft. If I had to get screamed at by corporate overlords who were overruling my story instincts on a regular basis, I'd be in jail now. That gives me the luxury of never really having to worry about anything other than answering the question "Does this make the story better?", but I promise you, no matter how lenient or strict your own bosses are, when you carve everything else out of the way, that remains the only important question and must always remain your North Star.

And may I add...

...how honored I am that at last I can hear what my essays would sound like if they were read aloud by the dwarf from Twin Peaks. Thanks, Rogers! That gum you like is going to come back in style.

Waid Wednesdays #10: The Job of the Comic Book Editor

Look, SOMEONE's got to get this stuff out of the hands of the writers and artists and to press.

Comics editors, rumors to the contrary, are some of my favorite people, and I've always admired the good ones. In fact, when I broke into comics in the mid-'80s, I did so as an editor, at DC; I had little if any interest in being a comic book writer because I honestly thought I'd never be any good at it. That wasn't my career goal at all. I just wanted to help steer my favorite characters and work with my favorite creators. I'd read a kabillion comics, I was organized, I was excellent at punctuation and spelling, and so I thought that would be enough to conquer the job.

Oh ho ho.

I lasted just over two years that first go-around and helped produce some really good and fondly remembered comics. I found some new talent like that James Robinson kid, and I enjoyed the gig. But I also, in my youthful arrogance, made a thousand dumb mistakes (like inadvertently pissing off Will Eisner--that was a red-letter day) and was eventually thrown out into the snowy New York streets. (Luckily, I seem to have recovered reasonably well.)

As I found out when I took the Editor In Chief gig at BOOM! in 2007, the job has transformed immensely in the intervening two decades because of digital delivery. During my first tour of duty, artists and writers worked via FedEx, colorists still slapped colored dyes on paper, hot dogs were a nickel, and everything was basically hard-copy. Now, scripts are e-mailed, art is scanned and uploaded to the FTP, lettering's done with Adobe Illustrator, and in the entire time I've been at BOOM!, I've yet to have an actual, physical piece of art cross my desk.

That said, the core of the Comic Book Editor's job is essentially the same as it ever was. The editor is the supervisor. The manager. The coordinator. S/he, when the system is running smoothly:

* sets the deadlines;
* makes the initial assignment to the writer (if work-for-hire--or coordinates delivery with the writer or writer/artist if it's their property);
* reminds the writer a few weeks later that the script is running late;
* receives the script, reads it for content and continuity, and asks for rewrites if necessary, see below;
* ultimately copy-edits the accepted, final script and sends it to the artist;
* pokes a late artist about HIS deadline;
* receives the art via FTP;
* checks the art against the script to make sure they mesh and that the storytelling is clear, asking for redrawing if necessary, see also below;
* forwards the script and art FTP info to a colorist, sets a deadline, and provides him any necessary reference;
* indicates, on copies of the art, where the balloons, captions and sound effects should be placed (though if the script breaks all that down panel-by-panel well enough, most letterers today can handle that on their own);
* sends the script and the art FTP info to the letterer and sets a deadline;
* reviews the coloring for obvious errors (inconsistencies in characters or locales) and storytelling blunders (accidentally coloring night scenes as day, for instance);
* proofreads the whole project once again after the lettering's done, checking the lettering placement and reading the whole book to make sure it all works now that it's all of a piece;
* sends it out in this stage to the writer and artist for their review in case they want to tweak anything or may catch something you've missed;
* somewhere in the middle of all this, figures out what the hell the cover illustration should be;
* solicits a cover sketch (or several) from an artist to ensure that there's room for trade dress and that the illustration's not too similar to anything else in the pipeline;
* makes a final idiot check to make certain that, say, any two-page spreads fall on even-odd pages not odd-even or that the creative credits are included and accurate;
* notifies the publishing coordinator that the book's ready to be sent to the printer;
* and, finally, checks the proofs when they come in a few weeks later to make dead certain that everything's where it's supposed to be.

Rinse, repeat.

On top of all this, editors have to process and stay on top of vouchers from the creative team, write up solicitation information for the sales catalog and try to work far enough ahead so they're not having to guess or make stuff up, stay in constant phone and e-mail communication with the creative team to keep spirits up, assuage egos, manage deadlines, and more. I'm sure there're a dozen other things I and other editors have to do every day that I've overlooked, but those are the big bullet points. In some ways, I think I've made it sound harder than it is, and in other ways, I can't believe I or anyone could go through all those steps on nine or ten separate projects a month and not be driven insane.

And--AND--that's just the nuts and bolts of it all. That's a peek behind the curtain for those of you who have no inside knowledge already but are curious. Any orangutan who follows the above recipe can be an editor, but it won't make him a good editor, because what makes a good editor is nowhere on that list.

What makes a good editor is staying the hell out of the way as much as possible.

As an editor, you're there to facilitate the creative process, not impose on it. Yes, any time the writers or artists or colorists or letterers or anyone else wants to ask your advice or get a ruling on something, or anytime you feel like someone could be encouraged to do better, you have to be there for them. Have to be. That's the job, whether the project is, say, BATMAN and creative types are serving as work-for-hire, or something the creators own and you're serving them as a hired editor (as with, say, Steve Niles's 30 DAYS OF NIGHT).

That's much easier to do if the project is creator-owned and you're just there essentially to keep the trains running on time. If, on the other hand, you're a DC or Marvel or Dark Horse or BOOM! editor who's assigning work, then if you did your job properly to begin with, then the people you've hired can be trusted to do what they do without excessive meddling. The less work you have to do, the more energy you can put into the million other things you have to do that day. The ideal situation you're shooting for as an editor is to groom a collaborative creative team to the point where their work sails effortlessly through production and the most you have to do is fix the spelling and the commas.

If something bugs you at any point along the way--dialogue's not clear to you, or that girl's head looks too big, or whatever--yes, absolutely, speak up. But for the love of all that is holy, remember that the editor's primary role is to help the creative team tell their story, NOT make them tell YOUR story. The best comics editors have the smallest egos. The worst ones feel like they have to justify their salaries by making changes just so they can leave their fingerprints. Every creative medium has those guys, and they're all loathsome. If the creators don't have a clear idea of what you've commissioned them to do, that's your fault. And if they can't do it to your satisfaction, then you've hired poorly and should fish the talent pool anew. It's rare that, as an editor, you never have to step in at all to request some changes or clarifications, and that's absolutely your right to do so, but know what you're doing before you do it.

Here's Mark Waid's First Inviolable Rule For Editors, Including Himself: Never point out a problem unless you have a solution to offer. "This isn't quite working for me, try again" is insanely unhelpful. Your solution doesn't have to be "the" solution; you're gonna talk it over with your writer or artist, you're going to clearly articulate why something's not working in your eyes, and then you're going to listen to how they respond, negotiate the best fix if theirs is different, politic it out if they don't acknowledge a problem, and be ready to dismiss your concern if they make a good case that they're right and you're wrong, because if you're working with talented folks, that will happen. For years, I had a very good editor with one infamous trait: his bomb sights were off by about five pages. Without fail, every single time he'd call me up to talk about something in a script that bothered him, the problem was never exactly where he thought it was. The first few times we worked together, I'd listen to his criticisms and they wouldn't make much sense to me, but every time we'd talk it out, we'd eventually realize that the problem was with an earlier or later scene. I got used to his rhythms, I'd hear "this scene seems off," I'd think "actually, that scene's fine, but if he's bothered, that definitely means something's wrong somewhere," I'd figure out the appropriate fix, we'd both be happy. But the important point was that even though his sights were off, he was trying to articulate the problem, and that helped me zero in on it. "Eh, I don't know what's not working, take another swing" would not have been nearly as helpful.

Here's Mark Waid's Second Inviolable Rule For Editors, Including Himself: if you want something changed, it had damn well better make the story better, or else shut the hell up. "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" are five words that are almost always more destructive than they are helpful. "Wouldn't it be cool if this whole story were a flashback?" "Wouldn't it be cool if you gave him a robot dog?" "Wouldn't it be cool if you cut away in the middle of this Superman story to show Wonder Woman making a sandwich?" "Wouldn't it be cool if you made this scene more like my favorite scene from Star Wars?" Answer: no. (Sub-answer: yes, all these things, and worse, have been said to me. Okay, not the sandwich, but the actual request was even stupider.) If you're asking for changes without really, seriously understanding how those changes might affect the overall story, then stop talking. Also, if you're in that twenty percent of comics editors who didn't understand what I just said there, then please find another job. I'm not insisting that every script, every line, every drawing, every splash of color is somehow some perfect gem that can't be meddled with; everyone creative in this field needs someone looking over his or her shoulder to make sure they're not fumbling the ball, as we all do sometimes, and creators have to be willing to work collaboratively. But a good editor knows that the only changes worth championing are the ones that make the story better. If you're an editor unable to defend your editing in detail, on those grounds, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Whether they're working on something that's ultimately theirs or ultimately Time-Warner's or Marvel's, no one wants to feel like a typist or an art robot. Let them be creative; that's their job. The editor's job is to get their best work out of them or, if necessary, replace them if they're not meeting the standards of the publisher. The first, last and only question is always: does this make the story better?

Waid Wednesday #9: The Proposal, Part Two

Continuing the sample proposal from last week....

THE SERIES

ISSUE ONE: We introduce Samantha, Wolf, the concept of the Hunter-Killer squad and the Ultra-Sapiens. We OPEN with the home life of Ellis and introduce him and his kindly parents as people we genuinely like and care about. But when Ellis begins to exhibit weird powers, his parents freak. Not at him; at the realization that this is a warning, that powered Ultra-Sapiens are approaching and Ellis is inadvertently “mirroring” their powers.

Ellis is freaking, too—he has no idea what’s going on or that his parents are anything other than what they’ve always seemed. The parents quickly smuggle Ellis out of the house and order him to run as far and as fast as he can...then, in order to cover his escape, they make a stand against a marauding band of Hunter-Killers, led by Samantha, who hit the house like a tornado.

Turns out Mom and Dad are long-escaped Ultra-Sapiens who have been keeping their background secret from their son—and they won’t go down without a fight. Mom sacrifices herself, Dad goes down in battle, much action, much mayhem—and then it’s complicated by the reveal that Ellis refused to abandon his folks and doubled back to the battleground.

Ellis’ mirroring powers kick in hard, he thinks he’s saving his father—but then Dad turns on him. Better Ellis is dead, he says, than kidnapped and dissected by these monsters. Ellis is forced to kill his father in self-defense, and Samantha and her team scoops Ellis up. Issue one ends with Ellis’ parents dead after having been revealed to Ellis as Not At All What He Thought They Were; Ellis’s home and life utterly obliterated; Samantha taking him into the H-K program; and Wolf on their trail.

ISSUE TWO: More background on the Ultra Sapiens program is revealed in this issue—a little more “origin material” without giving away too much or revealing too many allegiances.

On their way back to headquarters, Ellis begins to manifest a new power. The agents assume he’s trying to escape and they move into attack-ready mode despite his protests, but it’s Samantha who realizes the significance of his power flare-up. Ellis isn’t trying to escape—what this means is that there’s another Ultra-Sapien in proximity! Sam gets a sitrep and realizes the Ultra-Sapien is way high atop their Most Wanted (and Best Hidden) List and that he’s a clear and imminent danger to his surroundings. Sam makes the hard call that there’s no time to ease Ellis into this world or “train” him—even if they’ve got a read on the rogue Ultra, by the time they get Ellis to HQ and double back without him, the trail will be cold. No, they’ve got to bring Ellis into this and hope he lives.

With Wolf still secretly trailing them (staying far enough back not to have his powers replicated by Ellis, a sure tell of his presence), the team finds the rogue Ultra. By issue’s end, Ellis has been separated from Sam and the others and is facing this guy alone—or, rather, with Wolf now reluctantly at his side (Wolf still can’t risk Ellis being captured or killed, not until he knows more about the kid.)

Note also: this issue will detail Samantha’s predicament—that the power in her weapons is actually bio-energy she herself radiates, energy for which the weapons allow safe release.

ISSUE THREE: Ellis and Wolf against the Ultra in a battle that will form the foundation of their future friendship. On the one hand, Ellis is distrustful of Wolf since he still doesn’t quite know what Wolf had to do with his parents’ deaths; on the other hand, through the action of battle, both Ellis and Wolf inadvertently demonstrate to one another how unshakeable their moral codes are, which will be a huge point of commonality between them.

Once Sam and her crew reunite with Ellis (Wolf having vanished again), they take him to Headquarters and we see the operation in action. More secrets of the Hunter-Killer program revealed: first, the headquarters doesn’t technically “exist” geographically—it’s a locale imagined by and carved out of dimensional space by The Architect, one of the Ultras who’s been co-opted by the H-K program. It’s oversimple to say that the HQ exists “in his head”; it’s more that the Architect is a quirky but insanely powerful telekinetic who can link you to a dimension in which nothing exists except what he creates mentally out of thin air. So long as the Architect is on our side, it’s the safest place for the H-K program to house itself since it cannot be accessed or even located by potential enemies. One of the drawbacks of the place is that the look and details of it tend to shift and change whenever the Architect gets a new notion or idea (meaning everyone on-site hates the day each month when his subscription copy of Better Homes & Gardens shows up).

Others introduced are Stalker, who (up until Ellis’s arrival) has been the H-Ks’ primary Ultra Sapiens tracker, and Cloaker, the single most important field agent in any mission because he has the mental power to fool observers into seeing the agents however he wants them to be seen—as Asian tourists, as a visiting swim team, as anything but Threatening Guys With Guns. Cloaker’s weird and a bit slimy—Steve Buscemi-ish—but everyone’s always nicest to him because he has the power to make bystanders “see” you in your underwear.

Ellis—who, remember, is still reeling in shock from everything that went down in issue one—gets the tour but is uneasy. He pretends to go along with Sam and the program for now, but by issue’s end, we realize that he’s keeping to himself some serious reservations and suspicions about this whole operation. He trusts no one except, potentially, Wolf—who has proven to be the only one in Ellis’s world now who is straight up and is exactly who he says he is, something not even Ellis’s parents could have claimed.

ISSUE FOUR: Take the recent “Iraq/Haliburton/oil field contracts” scandal-scenario and replaced “oil fields” with “superhumans.” The U.S. Government has uncovered the existence of a small band of Ultra-Sapiens in a war-torn, third-world country, and a high-level administration official has “arranged” for his corporation to secretly take “possession” of them for the corporation’s own ends. Ellis and Cole must get into the war zone and deal these Ultra-Sapiens out somehow before this happens.

ISSUE FIVE: An Ultra-Sapien who’s a “telemech”—able to read thoughts and transmit them as electrical impulses—is on the loose, and Ellis and Cole are dispatched to deal with him. Once they confront him, they realize he’s not a hardass criminal; he’s a poor bastard whose life was ruined by the Project, and he wants revenge. He’s gathered enough information to blow the Hunter-Killer program wide open and is about to feed it through every fax machine and modem line on Earth in one big burst of information. Do Ellis and Wolf take him down with extreme prejudice for the greater good?

ISSUE SIX: Ellis and Wolf have to shut down a full-scale riot at a prison nicknamed “Area 52”—a virtually unknown Guantanamo Bay-style facility where captured Ultra-Sapiens believed to be “hostile to the U.S.” are held and tortured in utter violation of anything resembling civil rights.

Further adventures will continue in this vein. Every mission will have a hard, character-revelatory moral choice at its center. And as we barrel into the back half of the year, Morningfrost’s relationship with the Hunter-Killers will become more antagonistic, leading to an all-out war between the H-Ks and their leader.

*************
There. A little wordy, maybe, and we changed a lot of the details as I wrote the actual series, but in answer to numerous requests--a sample Proposal.

Next: The Job of an Editor

Waid Wednesday #8: The Proposal, Part One

The difference between a pitch and the next stage of the development process—a proposal—is story. A proposal must demonstrate that your pitch has “legs” by providing a more specific outline of events, additional background on the characters, and some sample plots.

As with most every document in comics, there is no “right” way to format a proposal, but I’ve found through years of experience that this is what works best for me:

Lead with the high concept, a brief but dynamic one- or two-sentence description of the idea—

—follow that with a little more detail on the bigger picture, clarifying the who, what, where, when, how and why of it all—

—next, give brief bios of the main characters—no more than a short paragraph for each, but enough about them so that whoever’s reading your proposal can have a good handle on them by the time they get to—

—the outline, a more detailed version of “the bigger picture” that walks us gradually through the series an issue or two at a time. Provided it’s interesting to read, feel free to devote about a page to synopsizing issue one, a half-page or so to issue two, and gradually less detail for the next handful of installments. At this point, you’re still in the proposal stage, so you’re walking the fine line between showing you have confidence in your ideas and revealing that you’re so in love with them that you have every page of your opus worked out nine years in advance, which frightens every editor ever. If, as you’re writing your proposal, you’re not sure of the difference, imagine buying a car. Imagine buying it from a confident, knowledgeable salesman who demonstrates its most attractive features and then lets the merchandise do the talking. Then imagine buying it from a salesman who won’t let you leave the showroom until he explains in excruciating detail exactly how the high-performance fuel injection system interfaces with the 1.6L 4cyl VTEC-E engine and insists on giving you the 82-year history of the factory that tooled the camshaft. My point is, don’t overwhelm.

Then end your document with a fitting summary/conclusion.

To give you a more concrete example of what works, here’s my proposal—broken up over two posts—for a series I did a few years ago for Top Cow called HUNTER-KILLER (and which I’m relaunching this summer as a HUNTER-KILLER VS. CYBERFORCE mini with artist Kenneth Rocafort). Yes, technically, at this point, I wasn’t “selling” anything—since the very basic concept came from Marc Silvestri, the publisher (and artist), the book was already green-lit, and I probably didn’t have to go into this much detail—but simply for my own peace of mind, I chose not to break format. Having to write a formal proposal would, I knew, push me to think through every aspect of the series.

*******
HUNTER-KILLER PROPOSAL
First draft/September, 2004

THE HIGH CONCEPT: Genetically engineered beings hunt rogue agents from their own secret program, desperately scrambling to keep these “Ultra-Sapiens” from becoming Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of the world’s superpowers, power brokers, and madmen.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: What ordinary citizens don’t know is that the Cold War wasn’t fought over nuclear détente. It was clandestinely fought over the Ultra-Sapiens race, a eugenically created strain of covert super-beings with various powers and abilities—some fairly mundane, some earth-shattering. In 1962, when the public thought ballistic missiles had been planted in the jungles of Cuba, the small communist country had in fact become the assembly point for an army of Russian Ultra-Sapiens. JFK was not weighing the consequences of nuclear retaliation as history has taught us, but of super-human retaliation. So fearful were the world's super powers the existence of their Frankenstein's monsters would become known, even the perceived threat of nuclear annihilation was preferable to the truth.

During the height of the Cold War, Russian and U.S. diplomats were not only tracking nuclear missiles but Ultra-Sapiens. Like some perverse real-life version of Pokemon, these altered humans were being counted and measured by their power, and secret treaties were struck in order to achieve a constant state of détente. If America had one who, for instance, could wipe out a small town with the poison in his sweat glands, Red China was allowed two that could become invisible.

In between the end of the Cold War and now, however, the vast majority of Ultra-Sapiens banded together and revolted against years of being treated as military property. After wiping out the agencies which tracked them and most records of their own existence, some retired, some went into hiding, and some put themselves on the open market.

TODAY

Now a new organization, the HUNTER-KILLERS, has been gathered to once and for all find—and decide the fates of—these rogue super-beings. Some are harmless, some are evil, but all of them must be accounted for. Moreover, those who are deemed to be a threat to the public safety, regardless of their moral leanings, must be “accounted for” with extreme prejudice.

A few Ultra-Sapiens have been assimilated into the Hunter-Killer organization, using their special abilities to help enforce its agenda and/or cloak its presence. Most field missions, in fact, are led by a female U-S named Samantha Argent (more on whom below).

The Ultra-Sapiens are each powered by and marked with a latticework of bioengineering visible just under the skin—“tattoos” in shapes and locations on the body that suggest their powers (near the eyes for vision powers, on the skull for mental powers, etc.).

THE CHARACTERS:
ELLIS (age 22) is our POV character, a second-generation Ultra-Sapien who has only recently learned of his power, which was kept from him by his parents until their death. Ellis can mirror/mimic the powers of other nearby Ultra-Sapiens, making him a perfect “dowsing rod” for the Hunter-Killers as they track rogues—the closer Ellis gets to them, the stronger the mirroring effect.

A man of action, Ellis is also very contemplative, an armchair philosopher who’s always looking for a greater meaning in the agency’s overall agenda. Ellis deals with regularly making hard life-and-death decisions by immersing himself in the writings of Empericus, Baier and other moralists and ethicists in his off-hours.

And when we say life-and-death decisions, we mean it. Every adventure should hinge on a completely unpredictable climax. Even the missions that seem like milk runs end up throwing some sort of surprising “can’t/must” dilemma in our boys’ laps, and we Ellis’s decisions will always be surprising. The harder and more unpredictable the choices he’s faced with, the richer and more interesting a hero he’ll be.

WOLF (age indeterminate—mid-thirties, at least) is the buddy in this buddy book, an Ultra-Sapien who sometimes works for Ellis’s agency and sometimes works solo. As his name suggests, he’s our tough guy, a super-assassin with great strength, speed, and reflexes. His is the most extensive “tattoo”—a full-body overlay that allows him to fade into near-invisibility.

SAMANTHA ARGENT (mid-twenties) is the coordinator of the Hunter-Killer project and often a field agent vying with headstrong Ellis for control of the missions. Samantha, also an Ultra-Sapien, has a tattoo and/or special clothing that allows her to manipulate the electromagnetic energy coursing though her veins and coalesce that energy into ammunition for her unique armaments. Samantha, in contrast to most action-heroines, actually has a warmth and a sense of humor to her; she’s tough and in charge, but she’s by no definition a bitch. She’s enough at ease with herself to successfully maintain a non-emotional but furniture-breaking physical relationship with one of the other members of the cast.

MORNINGFROST is the prime villain of our series. The head of the Hunter-Killer project, those under his command have no idea he’s manipulating them based on his own (accurate) visions of the future. Eventually, they will find out about his machinations and turn on him.

******
Breaking this long doc up into two posts; second half to follow next week.

Waid Wednesday #7: Ground Floor Stuff

When I talk to aspiring comics writers, they’re often most mystified not by the scripting (there are plenty of script books out there) or the language (most anyone who’s interested in doing this for a living already knows what a “panel” is, what “balloons” are, etc.). They’re freaking out because they don’t know where to start. Almost no comics editor will read a spec script cold; whether you’re angling to sell your own series or write for an existing property, you need to start with a Pitch, generally followed by a Proposal.

The Pitch is your first chance to demonstrate your understanding of the Economy Of Storytelling--that you know how to pace a comics story and have some clue as to how much fits on the page. And no editor will have faith that you can squeeze a complete story into a hundred panels if you can’t squeeze your idea into two pages. True story: back when I was on staff at DC, a well-meaning but green freelancer sent me his pitch for his creator-owned series. It was sixty-two pages long. Worse, because this writer was friends with my boss, I was forced to actually suffer through this paper cinderblock, and it was arguably the most miserable experience with fiction I’ve had to this day. I would honestly, truly rather read Moby Dick backwards than crawl through a sixty-two page document that was sixty-one pages too long, and even if it had been filled to the brim with moments of staggering brilliance that would humble Jack Kirby and Alan Moore, I still would never have been interested in seeing it published because I had zero confidence that the writer could demonstrate any sense of economy in his storytelling.

(Footnote: Three years and four editors later, the series was actually published, and I would swear to this day under oath that its eight relentless issues actually weigh more than eight issues of any normal comic.)

The Pitch isn’t about story so much as it is about testing the waters (oh, how clever a metaphor that will appear to be in a moment). A Pitch Document explains, in broad strokes, the characters and the story and the “feel” of it all. (Is it drama? Comedy? Crime? Romance?) Not too much detail is necessary at this point; all you’re really trying to do is gauge the interest of whoever’s reading it. Make it enticing, show confidence, and for the love of Murphy, keep it short. By way of an example, here’s a write-up (done with artist Mike Wieringo and, sadly, declined) that I worked up a few years ago when I was asked to pitch for Aquaman. It is not a perfect example of a Pitch Document if what you’re pitching is your own concept--this document builds on preexisting knowledge of who Aquaman is, basically, and what he can do--but read it for form and feel.

AQUAMAN
Mark Waid/Mike Wieringo
Preliminary Pitch for a One-Shot/August 3, 2003

I am so sick of people making fun of Aquaman that I’m beginning to take it personally. For the last ten years or so, the way we’ve been scrambling to combat Aquaman’s “Dork of the Sea” image--and I’ve been guilty of trying this, too--is by making Aquaman increasingly darker, grittier, and tougher, the brooding, angry king beset with trouble. Each incarnation of the character seems grimmer than the last, to the point where all that’s left for us to do is give him two hooks. And a peg-leg.

Yes, the seas can be turbulent and stormy, but y’know what? Far more often, the ocean is a universal symbol for peace and contentment. It’s a calming influence. If it weren’t, Bermuda would be deserted and Hawaii would be an industrial trade port. It is most people’s “happy place.” Yes, the ocean is the set piece for “A Perfect Storm,” but it’s also the world of “Finding Nemo” and “The Little Mermaid.” I have never yet met anyone of any age who didn’t come away from Sea World envying the guides who swim with the whales and porpoises. I propose we turn this “grim Aquaman” paradigm around for a one-shot and see what happens.

Our POV character in this story is a female marine biologist--and since Aquaman’s turf covers the world, there’s no need to make her American. (In fact, Russian is preferable--I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the culture of Russian courtship, and that could really play in nicely.) At any rate, our biologist--let’s call her Yelena for now--may have heard the name “Aquaman” here and there, but to her, he’s about as real and significant as, say, German football stars are to you and me.

Yelena’s work is done with grungy old equipment and spit-and-bailing-wire technology, the best she has to work with. Her whole world has a gritty feel to it-- --so when this bright, blond, shining knight of a man pops out of the water and into her life, she’s addled simply by the contrast. Their paths cross, and she’s drawn into an Aquaman adventure that takes us out on (and under) the water.

Yelena’s not reluctant. To Yelena, this “Aquaman” is, yes, mysterious like the sea--but in a warm, enticing way. To Yelena, he is otherworldly, like a fairy tale character come to life. He rarely speaks (though when he does, he’s staggeringly charming), he lives in the water, and he smiles. Constantly. In fact, at first, Yelena has a nearly impossible time taking him seriously. He’s like a walking cartoon.

And yet...the more she gets to know him, the further she’s drawn out of her world and into his, she’ll come to realize that there’s something going on behind those wide eyes of his. Looking in them, she sees peace and confidence; looking through them, she’s gradually introduced to an underwater world of absolute wonder, a place that is far more colorful and in tune with nature than is her own gritty lifestyle. Once she surrenders to the implausibility of it all, she’s rewarded a thousandfold, and so are we. Aquaman’s joy becomes her joy becomes our joy.

There will be no mocking. NO jokes about how “dumb” talking to fish is. Anyone with a keyboard can make cynical jokes. That’s easy. What’s harder is reminding you why, when you were a kid, you thought the idea of living underwater or riding on the backs of whales WAS cool. We can do that. We can remind you, and Yelena’s awed voice will be there to back us up.

* * * * * *
That’s a sample Pitch Document. Breezy but with some personality to it. Not specific on story but strong on concept. Text broken up into chunks so it’s more inviting to read. Again, you’re just exploring an editor or publisher’s interest at this stage. If they’re intrigued by the Pitch, they’ll ask you to put together a Proposal.

Next: The Proposal

WW #6 Follow-Up: Good With The Treasure Hunting, Not So Much With The Treasure KEEPING

Judging from the comments, the "Six Qualities" list sparked one of our more interesting debates. The comments certainly had me thinking and reflecting. Some clarifications:

1) I apologize if anyone thought I was deliberately belittling Dr. Henry Jones or the Indy movies. At least one commenter seemed to have taken it personally. Not my intent. Raiders is still one of the greatest screenplays of all time and one of the best movies in anyone's film collection, including mine. But I honestly think that what I love most about that movie is its subversiveness towards the classic movie-hero tropes--most notably that if you take Indy out of that movie, the plot stays virtually intact. Okay, yeah, it might take the Nazis a little longer to find the Ark out there in the desert, but they still get their faces eaten off by tampering with Forces Unknown. ("Find the ark and get it to the US Government. He did that." Please. Only because the Villain Defeated Himself.) I really don't mind this. And, more importantly, I surrender to it.

2) I still feel like you have to stretch the definition of "successful" in order to make it fit Indy, who loses things almost as often as he finds them and manages to leave an awful lot of archaeology-unfriendly destruction in his wake, but I certainly accept that "successful" doesn't always mean "at the obvious goal" and can mean "at an unintended goal" so long as you can sell the audience on the idea that the latter's just as significant. (Not always a given.)

3) I have no idea how Frodo manages to bypass this list, but I'm convinced I could figure it out if I liked him as a character even remotely and hadn't spent eight moviegoing hours silently imploring his comrades to just leave the little bastard behind.

4) I probably should have added the word "altogether" to the statement "if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities". Not backpedalling, just emphasizing the earlier point--not every hero has to have all six qualities firing on all cylinders all the time. But, as I said, if I look back on some story of heroic fiction that I've written and realize I failed to have my protagonist hit these touchstones even once, the story feels "off" unless I did it on purpose.

Agreed all around that sometimes the most interesting stories are about the protagonist acquiring one or more of these traits as part of his journey. In fact, to further the discussion, let's let's expand on the original list. Here's how I interpret the Six Qualities. YMMV. (In fact, since it's not even my list to begin with and I no longer know how the original author interpreted these terms, MY mileage may be the one that's varying.)

COMPETENT--this doesn't leave a whole lot of room for interpretation. Hero doesn't have to be consistently brilliant--that's dull--but it seems like you want your hero to be at least baseline not-a-total-buffoon. I suppose there are exceptions--within the world of the Pink Panther, Clouseau is a hero, I guess--but I'm not sure these guidelines translate well to slapstick comedy.

BRAVE--again, pretty self-explanatory. Fundamental, I'd say. Because no matter how quirky or comically cowardly your hero seems, anyone who's willing to start down the path of the Heroic Journey however reluctantly is, to some degree, "brave."

MORAL--I take "moral" at its strictest definition: demonstrating a consistent ethical code, not necessarily MY ethical code. Dr. Doom is actually "moral" in that sense. I do think that if your hero's all over the map morally, it's much harder for the audience to keep his motivations straight.

SELFLESS--toughest to infuse consistently without making your hero a dull boor. Personally, I like selfless heroes more than heroes with feet of clay--personal preference--but I fully understand why they don't resonate widely. In Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies of all time, Marty McFly shows only the occasional flash of selflessness--his goal is, in fact, 100% selfish and his own welfare is almost always at the forefront of his actions. But the key word there is "almost"--there are the occasional flashes of selflessness in act three, and I'd argue that without them, the story would be more hollow.

RELEVANT, at least as I interpret it, means that the hero's goals or needs are in some way relatable to our own--the more relatable, the better. The reason Spider-Man's popularity overtook Superman's back in the '60s was that Spider-Man's problems were relevant to us--family worries, trouble at school, feeling like you can't catch a break. Meanwhile, Superman's biggest problem was that he couldn't figure out how to enlarge the Bottle City of Kandor.

And SUCCESSFUL we've already discussed. Successful at something important to the audience, something the importance of which (if it isn't the stated goal) clearly supersedes on an emotional level any failed goals.

I repeat: not a recipe. Rules of thumb. But, for writing pulp adventure, rules I find useful.

Waid Wednesday #6: Six Qualities of a Hero

Late posting. And thin. Sorry. Horrific week, dead desktop computer beyond resurrection. So, this, sent to me almost two decades ago by award-winning writer/artist Ty Templeton, who in turn cribbed it from a then-recent PSYCHOLOGY TODAY article. Author lost to time (and to Google), exact citation lost to time, but this list has been in my head nonetheless ever since I first read it and is an invaluable checklist/touchstone that, to this day, I refer to every time I write a story in any genre.

THE SIX QUALITIES OF A HERO:
Competent
Brave
Moral
Selfless
Relevant
Successful

While all six characteristics are not always 100% present in every hero (see: Jones, Indiana, who fails u-t-t-e-r-l-y and r-e-p-e-a-t-e-d-l-y at Quality Six), I find the list terrifically insightful and have come to learn that if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities, I had better be able to articulate why...and if/how that makes it a better, more compelling story. Because generally it does not.

In the comments: debate. And, for extra credit, defend Indy to my satisfaction. Good luck with that.

Waid Wednesday #5: Rainbow Of Confusion

Slight change of plans. I billed this installment last week as “A Unit Of Entertainment”—the importance of building a conflict and a resolution into every chapter of your serial fiction, and some tips on how—but that post’s turning into a term paper, plus I want to embed some examples from a specific story, so as soon as I wrestle the word count down and get clearance to reproduce a short script I did for a friend’s upcoming book, we’ll tackle that one. Probably next week.

In the meantime, this week’s post was cued by a question from a longtime listener/first-time caller. Christine asks: “I often overdo captions, probably because the theatre bug always makes me want to monologue, and captions can be a monologue broken up over corroborating or subverting images. What are the ideal ways to use a caption as a character-revealing and/or story-telling device in a short or long comic?”

This is an awesome question, because answering it gives me license to rant about my least-favorite narrative device in modern comics: multiple narration. You might want to put on a helmet for this. But first, let’s address Christine’s questions more directly.

Captions can be a great character-revealing device when they are used sparingly. First-person narrative captions, in particular, are a great way of letting us into the characters’ heads. But—as I keep insisting—comics is a visual medium. That means the writer has to be careful not to overuse captions in lieu of showing us the story. I wrote THE FLASH for DC for ten years using captions in the “first person immediate” tense, but that was a character choice—it made sense to me that the fastest man alive would be telling his stories in the moment. The danger was always the temptation to tell more than show. It’s deceptively, temptingly easy for a writer to overwrite captions because they’re generally the easiest part of scripting (it's so much easier to write monologue than dialogue). But the comics page is all about balance—words and images working in tandem to tell a story with depth and immediacy that that neither can accomplish alone.

Here are my pocket guidelines about caption use:

One: Err on the side of paucity. You really don’t want to have more than about twenty words in a caption, max—in script terms, no more than two lines of type across the page. (This applies to word balloons, as well, btw.) Any more than that runs the risk of creating a big block of type that’s just wearisome to read. And four of those in one panel and eleven of those on one page exhausts the reader. Don't make each page a chore.

Two: Always be aware that the caption creates a distance from the story that word balloons and thought balloons do not, same as v/o narration creates a distance in film. If there’s something about your story that demands that distance, go to it. But always ask yourself if dialogue might be a better way to immerse your reader more fully into the story.

Three, and most important: Find ONE VOICE for your captions. ONE. If your captions are third-person, stay with that. If they’re first-person, find ONE narrator and stick with him or her. Do not cross the streams. Do not interrupt the reader by confusing him as to who’s talking. And for the love of God, American superhero comics, stop having five different characters narrating a scene when all I, the reader, have to differentiate their voices is caption color. This has gotta stop. Frank Miller introduced multiple narration to mainstream comics twenty years ago with BATMAN: YEAR ONE, which was narrated half by Bruce Wayne (in scratchy, handwritten journal-entry captions) and Gordon (in faux-typewriting font captions). It worked then because it was fresh and exciting and the two voices and two caption styles were radically distinct. Now it is old, tired, and easy, and as storytelling tricks go it runs the risk of creating more confusion than insight.

(This makes my head hurt worse than anything in comics today: This month’s issue of Superteam X is tag-team narrated by everyone on the team plus their android butler, and immediately, I’m lost in a narrative where the voices are all the same but I’m supposed to know—and remember from panel to panel and page to page—that all the red captions are Team Leader’s, all the orange ones are Spunky Sidekick’s, all the blue ones are Plucky Speedster’s, etc. I’m not talking about a Rashomon set-up where Each Hero says to the group, “Okay, here’s what I think happened” and then we flash back to three pages that are clearly narrated from that particular POV. I’m talking about—I am not making this up—coming across an eight-page fight sequence with so many heroes narrating it that they ran out of colors. Martial Artist’s captions were medium-blue, Subatomic Guy’s captions were dark blue, everyone all sounded the exact same anyway, and the writer got to clock out at two-thirty rather than actually have to put some effort into integrating words and pictures. Multiple narration is very hard to do well and not for beginners.)

As in TV or film or the stage, comics captions/comics narration can be used ironically, can be used to reveal character, can be used to artfully step over the dull stuff...but they should work with the story you’re telling, not in isolation. Balance, balance, balance.