At least once a week, I get an e-mail asking me, "How do you write comic books?" About half want to know how you do it — format, craft, approach, etc. — and the other half want to know how you get a job or sell your work. To the latter, there isn't a lot I can say. I do have a stock line which I think is very good advice. It's to not try to become a Comic Book Writer. It's to become a Writer who writes many things, one of which is comic books. That's a distinction that I think is as important to one's creative mental health as it is to one's marketability.
Beyond that, there's not a lot I can tell the job seekers. The business is what the business is and I'm not in touch with large chunks of it these days. It seems to have bifurcated into two categories: The one where people hire you to work on their properties and projects and the one where you invent a new book and new characters and find a publisher. Some publishing houses embrace both and some creators do both but the rules of play and entry are very different and it's important to be aware of that. The kind of gigs where you get hired to write Spider-Man or Green Lantern or Star Wars are very hard to come by and if you aspire to that, be aware that you'll be battling many, many others for the opportunity. Concocting your own gig may actually be easier but it will require more investment of time and spec work…and if you aren't an artist, it'll probably mean finding an artist and forging a partnership. And right now, that's about all I have the energy to write about that kind of endeavor.
How to actually write a comic book is a simpler chore if you'll accept this answer: However it works best for you and your collaborators. Since I got into the biz, I have railed against the notion that there is one correct way to write a comic book. There isn't. I've seen dozens of different script formats in terms of margins, spacing, columns, tabs, etc. Last year, I was talking with the folks who make Movie Magic Screenwriter, which is the software I use for writing TV and movie scripts, about them doing a template for the way I most often format a comic book script. If and when we do that, I will somehow manage to append a note that says even I only use it for about half my projects. That's because how you work needs to be dictated by (a) the needs of a given piece of material and (b) the particular skills of the parties involved. If I'm supposed to do a funny comic with Sergio Aragonés, it's a very different challenge from when I'm supposed to do a grim 'n' gritty project with someone else.
At one point in the eighties, I was simultaneously writing three comic books a month for three different publishers, working with three different artists on three different kinds of material. For DC Comics, I was writing (and eventually editing) Blackhawk, a war comic. For Eclipse, I was writing (and I think editing, though we never made it clear) DNAgents, a super-hero comic. And for whatever publisher hadn't gone out of business publishing it so far, I was doing whatever I do on Groo the Wanderer, a silly comic. The comics all looked entirely different from one another and so did their scripts. My collaborators all had different skill sets and in some cases, a lot of input into the stories. In some cases, not. When they did, I adjusted what I did to be able to best embrace what they did.
On two of those, the dialogue and copy were usually written after the artist drew the book. On the other, the words came before but might be revised later. On one, I was more likely to sketch out suggested layouts. On another, the artist sketched out suggested layouts and then I sometimes erased his and placed balloons where I wanted them, then he would redesign his panel compositions to put the characters under the balloons I had placed. On one, there were times when I had an editor. Then, I not only had to do my end of things in a way that would convey what I wanted to the artist but to the editor, as well.
If it sounds like I'm trying to be confusing…in a way, I am. I'm trying to disabuse anyone of the notion that there's one right way to do this. I not only want beginners to know this but I think some longtime professionals could stand to be more open to different breakdowns of collaboration. Too often, I think, they have a great working relationship with Artist A and that becomes the way they want to work with everyone. Artist B comes along and they force him to work like Artist A even though B may, for example, be better at breaking down an action into a panel-to-panel flow and worse at interpreting the emotional content of a scene. I would especially like longtime pros to stop telling beginners that their way is the way.
This is all I have time to write about this today but I intend to return to this topic over the next few weeks. This is an exciting time in comics in that creators are bringing forth a wider range of styles and genres and viewpoints than I have ever seen. When I broke in, you kind of had to do Marvel Comics to work for Marvel, DC Comics to work for DC, etc. The publishers had much narrower vistas as to what readers would buy from them and there weren't that many publishers. Now, there are more publishers and they're all open to a wider range of looks and feels. Some of them don't even want a book that looks like anything they've published before. Since we have more places to go, I think we need to look at a wider range of routes you can take to get to them.