The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics [Paperback]

What's in the guide specifically for comics writing? Well, the answer to one beginner's question - "What format do I use?" is: "There's no one right way." The answer to another beginner's question: "Do I write out the whole script, panel by panel, balloon by balloon, before the artist gets it, or do I just write a plot outline for the artist, then script the captions and balloons after the penciller is finished?" is: "There's no one right way."

Mr. O'Neil repeats "There's no one right way" about 53 more times, just in case you can't read.

The only thing interesting and worthwhile here is "the Levitz Paradigm" a way to organize plots and subplots across different issues or even across titles. But as O'Neil notes, nobody gets a chance to do anything like that at DC unless they have already been working there for many years.

O'Neil has been writing comics a long time. He must know what he's doing. Maybe he can't articulate it. Maybe he doesn't want to release the REAL secrets and foster competition.

I just don't know.

Part One: (1) What are Comics? is answered in terms of a comprehensive vocabulary of comic book terms such as speech balloon, story arc, and inker; (2) A Full-Script Versus Plot-First compares the latter, which is the Marvel method developed by Stan Lee, with the former, the traditional approach for writing film and television scripts, with the strengths and weaknesses of each; (3) Story Structure provides a listing of the basic kinds of structure used in comics, including a detailed look at different examples of "The Hook"; (4) Creating Drama looks at the importance of keeping the action going and offers a key distinction between suspense and surprise; (5) Subplots presents the advantages and inherent dangers of subplotting; (6) Characterization spends as much time talking about dialogue and humor as well as about the hero and other characters; and (7) Script Preparation is about the physical act of writing and producing something that can be turned over to an artist (assuming, for the sake of argument, you are not going to do the whole comic book yourself in the spirit of Dave Sims, the early years).

Part Two starts by covering the rules for different types of comic book stories: (1) Miniseries give you a title with a predetermined number of issues, usually between three and six; (2) Graphic Novels are, for want of a better definition, long fictional narratives (sidestepping graphic novel miniseries like "The Dark Knight Returns"); (3) Maxiseries are essentially longer miniseries, like "The Watchmen" or "Crisis on Infinite Earths"; and (4) Ongoing Series, which are the staple of DC Comics and include titles like "Action Comics" and "Batman" that have been published continuously for over 60 years. Basically the same general rules are applied to all of these forms, with a different balance of consideration. The rest of this unit looks at (5) Story Arcs as ways of doing a miniseries in an ongoing series; (6) The Levitz Paradigm for tracking plots and characters over the course of multiple issues; (7) Megaseries, which is O'Neil's newly coined term for stories that cut across multiple titles for the same characters, such as Batman's "No Man's Land"; (8) Adaptations, which in this case applies not to turning great works of literature into comic books but rather adapting Batman movies back into the comic books that inspired them; (9) Continuity, or rather three types of continuity; and (10) Denouement, which is O'Neil's final pat on the back to his readers.

The Appendix has Mark Evanier's thoughts on "Writing Humor Comics," and a list of suggestions for the Comic Book Writer's Library. Overall, the book is much more descriptive than anything else, which ends up being both its strength and its weakness. Still, O'Neil does try to crystallize his thoughts into specific rules whenever possible. If anything, O'Neil is guilty of trying to cover too much and sacrificing, to some degree, depth for breadth. Throughout "The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics" the best examples are when O'Neil can go into detail (especially if it is regards to a comic we have actually read). The book is illustrated with examples from comics throughout DC's history, but the best examples are rough or finished pages paired up with the pages written up for the artist by the writer. This is where we get our best sense of how comic books are written and produced in the real world.

The companion volume to this work, "The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics," is written by Klaus Janson. There is actually a minimum of overlap between these two volumes, which offer a complimentary approach to the creation of comic books. These two DC volumes are worthy additions to the limited library that every aspiring comic book writer/artist should own, which would include Will Eisner's "Comics and Sequential Art" and "Graphic Storytelling," Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics," and even John Buscema's "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way."