A number of folks are writing me this morning about this message in which I explained the way most (not all…most) Marvel Comics were produced during the period when Bill Mantlo was doing his major work for them. Many seemed to miss that I was just talking about those comics during those years and they're writing to correct me by saying, "Here's how I currently work."
One of the things that has always fascinated me about comics is this: Writers are all a little different from one another. Artists are all a little different from one another. That's all obvious and so is the fact that each piece of work is or should be different. Where it has been allowed (and it hasn't always), folks have developed different ways of working — particularly, different ways of collaborating — that bring out the best in the creators.
There is no "one" right way to write and draw a comic book…and some bad ones have resulted because writers and artists have been shoehorned into the way that is wrong for them and/or wrong for a given project. At Marvel, for example, they developed this plot/art/script method of writing a comic that was built around the specific talents of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The method sometimes didn't work as well with writers who weren't Stan or artists who weren't Jack or Steve…and indeed, later collaborations of Stan's with other pencillers, or other writer/penciller combos on the same comics, modified the process a bit. I don't think they always modified it enough but that's another discussion.
In the last decade or two, changes in technology have changed the way comics are done and I don't just mean Adobe Photoshop. There were many changes in the creative process because of Federal Express and fax machines. There were many because most companies went from printing in Sparta, Illinois on cheap presses and cheaper newsprint to more upscale, deluxe paper stocks and printers. In any case, the way we do comics now is quite unlike any of the many ways they were done back in the seventies. In most cases, I think the evolution is for the better but there are a few exceptions. That too is another discussion.