Over on his site, Michael Barrier has posted something that interests me greatly…and if you're interested in how to write comic books or even animation, it should interest you. As you may have seen me pontificate many a time, there are many ways to write a comic book script. This is because there are many different kinds of comic books and many different kinds of people who write and draw them with many different modes of talent and expertise. It has long amazed me how many people who work in the field or so aspire learn one way and thereafter believe it is the only way. In some cases, it's not that they think it's the best way. They literally think it's the only way.
Well, one way is for the writer to just sketch the whole thing out on typing paper, doing simple drawings and writing in the copy. I would guess that a solid majority of "funny animal" comics — and maybe even a majority of those about similarly "funny humans" — have been done that way. It was especially prevalent in years past at any company where most of the writers were gagmen or animators who were moonlighting or escaping from jobs at a cartoon studio, and some even wrote adventure or other non-funny comics this way. (Somewhere here, I have a copy of Don R. Christensen's sketched script for a Magnus, Robot Fighter.) Still, I have met experienced comic book writers and editors who deal exclusively in typed scripts and are stunned when they see one executed in this manner. They act like they spotted a unicorn.
Sketched scripts also confuse fans and historians, who think that the guy who did the script did layouts or breakdowns and is therefore deserving of co-credit for the resultant artwork. Well, maybe he is and maybe he isn't. This is a more subjective call that can vary not only from job to job but from panel to panel. As you'll see on the example before us on Barrier's site, the artist sometimes followed what the writer did and sometimes didn't. In such jobs, the artist nearly always has the freedom to just take the idea of each panel and stage the action however he or she may prefer.
What Mike has posted is a twelve-page Porky Pig script for a 1948 issue of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The script was written by one of my mentors and early employers, Chase Craig, who was an editor for several centuries at Western Publishing, the company that produced these comics. It was drawn (and also lettered, by the way) by Roger Armstrong, who was one of Western's best artists and one of Chase's favorites. The two men had a very odd, occasionally contentious relationship and working with both of them in the seventies, I kept finding myself in the middle of squabbles. Through them all however, Chase's admiration for Roger's drawing was undiminished.
As you can see, most of the changes Roger made were a matter of flipping the action from left to right or vice-versa, and probably for the better. I've seen examples where the artist stayed closer to the sketched versions and also where he changed almost every panel; also, cases where the sketched script was more or less detailed. For the record, I don't think "sketched" scripts warrant the writer receiving partial art credit except maybe in cases like with Harvey Kurtzman or Jack Kirby, where as writer (or plotter usually in Jack's case) he roughed things out on the final drawing paper. I believe this despite the fact that as you can see, Roger got a lot of his ideas for poses and attitudes from what Chase drew.
I guess this raises the question of whether a better comic book results if it's written by someone who sketches out the story, as opposed to someone who types. My experience at Western Publishing (and with Chase and Roger) suggests that no one who was doing comics in that era thought it mattered to the end product; that the determination was made wholly on the comfort of the writer. Some guys couldn't type or preferred not to so they sketched. Some couldn't sketch or preferred not to so they typed. Some (including Chase Craig) could go either way so they just worked in whatever manner they felt like using at that moment.
Some writers even drew because they thought it was more fun to draw. One of the main writers for Western for many years, a gent named John Brady, not only sketched out his scripts but partially colored them with colored pencils. I once asked Chase why Mr. Brady wasted his time doing that since it was so meaningless, since no one involved in the coloring of the printed comic would ever see what he did. His answer was along the lines of, "He just likes doing it. I guess it helps him create. Some guys have to be wearing a certain shirt or facing north or drinking lemonade in order to work. John needs to use his colored pencils." Chase didn't care one bit if a writer sketched or typed and didn't think it mattered to the final product, especially when the artist was going to be someone he respected as much as he respected Roger Armstrong.