A List of Things I’ve Learned About the Comic Book Industry…

The letters printed in letter columns in no way represented the consensus of the readership. They may have been the ones that reflected what the letter-selector wanted to believe represented the readers' opinions. Some letters were phony or so heavily edited that they didn't even represent the letter-writer's views.
Most of the editors were very sharp, creative and benevolent. But a couple of them were managing with the same kinds of skills you'd employ if you were running a Jiffy-Lube.
No freelancer was paid what he or she was worth.
And most of those on staff were not either.
When a new comic failed to sell and was canceled, that might have meant that the readers weren't interested in it. But at least as often, it meant that the company didn't know how to market it and/or that the publisher gave up on it too quickly.
Approximately 50% of editorial alterations made on the work of the writers and artists were made mainly because someone in the office wanted to look like they were making a vital contribution.
When a popular writer or artist was replaced on a comic, the readers would always hate the new guy for a while, no matter who it was.
The sales figures published in the little Statement of Ownership boxes that ran in some comics were sometimes rough approximations and occasionally pure fiction.
When one artist did the inking on the penciled art of another, the penciler might like the finished product because "He inked it just the way I would have." Or he might have liked it because "He did things I never would have thought to do." The penciler might also have disliked the result for either reason.
Still, most artists would vastly have preferred to ink their own work. And better artwork would frequently have resulted if they had.
Your work being turned in late was a major crisis which demonstrated unprofessionalism on your part no matter what the reason. Your check getting to you late was an understandable delay that was no big deal and no one's fault so don't complain about it.
An awful lot of people who worked in comics could not look at a page of comic art and recognize who had drawn or lettered it.
Better comics generally resulted when one writer was more or less in charge of a feature or character for a long time and could make it his or her "own."
But it was usually a personal mistake for a writer to get possessive about a strip or character if they did not own the copyright. That made it jarring when they were replaced, as everyone eventually was and is.
In the constant struggle to get books to press on time, the unsung, unappreciated hero was usually the letterer.
The credit for Editor often did not tell you who was really doing the work you'd normally associate with that job title. There were Editors who never even read the comics they theoretically edited.
While there certainly were writers and artists lacking in ability, poor artwork was more often the function of miscasting.
And it was rarely the result of the artist "hacking it out" or just doing a "grab the money and run." Some of the guys who were maybe not good enough for their assignments tried like hell.
If a comic underwent a major change of writer and/or artist in its first six issues, the comic would probably fail.
From about 1970 on, if a reader bought an issue of Heroguy Comics, he wanted a full book of new Heroguy material; no back-up features of other characters (not even Herogirl or Hero-Dog) and no reprints of old Heroguy adventures. Reprints were fine in their place and their place was in comics devoted wholly to reprints.
From about 1970 on, readers rarely had the patience to love a comic that did not come out monthly.
For some reason, many readers never caught on to the oft-true practice where the great artist who drew that great cover was not the person who drew the insides. It was a lot like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football when Lucy held it for him.
A couple of my favorite writers and artists had deep, permanent loathings for each other.
If as a writer, you pitched an editor three or four ideas for stories and the editor bought any of them, it would be the one you liked the least. This is true with any kind of writing in any field at any time. It's the same with artists submitting rough sketches.
Comics were a great field to work in for a time while you tried to work your way towards something with greater possibilities. And if you got to an "all the work you can handle" situation, that was not always good because it gave you a powerful disincentive to try anything else. I am very glad that I got into the field but even gladder than I never made it my entire profession.
Many people do not understand that writing a comic book is not just writing the captions and dialogue. It involves coming up with a plot, figuring out how to develop that plot beat by beat, figuring out how to tell that plot one panel at a time…and writing the copy and dialogue that appear on the pages.
Comics are not about drawing individual panels that are pleasing to the eye. They're about drawing individual panels which tell a story as you go from one to another. A drawing can be absolutely magnificent in a stand-alone context but wrong from the standpoint of storytelling.
One of the biggest mistakes made by beginners involves the density of information. They try to convey too much of it in one panel or too little.
Copying the work of another writer or artist is sometimes best described as an "hommage." But sometimes, the more appropriate term is "plagiarism."
It is impossible to make a decent living in comics if you don't love what you do.
If your hero is as unheroic or as insane as your villain, then I really don't care who triumphs in the end unless, of course, the villain is out to destroy Los Angeles.
The ability to write dialogue that feels natural and conversational when read on the page has less to do than one might think with the ability to write dialogue which sounds natural and conversational when read aloud by an actor.
In most fight scenes, the amount of time it would take actual combatants to throw all those punches is often less than one-tenth the time it would take them to speak all the words in their word balloons while they battle.
The paper that's available to the artists to draw upon gets worse with each passing year. So do the brushes, pen points and ink they use on that paper.
The drawing paper that most pleases the penciler will always displease the inker and vice-versa. And when letterers lettered on the same pages, they never liked either kind but they were stuck.
Whenever anyone tells you you are one of the two best writers (or artists) in the business, the other person they like will always be the person you think is the most untalented person in the field.
The two most important things an editor brings to a project are to create the proper working environment in which the work will be done and to place the right people in the right positions. And "right" is at least as important as "good."
Readers will usually have a deep fondness for what they read when they first got into comics and so will have a natural antipathy for a major revamp of those books and the characters in them.
Better comic books usually result when the writer and the artist are friends with good channels of communication. Sometimes, it helps if they are the same person but not always.
A character cannot register more than one emotion or perform more than one action per panel. That's because there's only one drawing of that character per panel. I don't think the "multiple image" trick works unless you're trying to convey super-speed a la The Flash. And I don't think going through multiple moods in the captions and word balloons work since the visual only shows us one mood.
When a comic ships late, it is not always the fault of any of the creative talents involved. Often, it's the fault of the traffic manager or schedule-maker but the talent will usually get blamed anyway.
People too often confuse the job of the editor with the job of the proofreader.
In comics, as in all the other arts, the most difficult response to get out of your audience is laughter.
Some of the best comic books ever done were done by writers and artists who were amazingly fast.
And being fast was often not because the person wrote or drew amazingly fast but because they were dedicated enough to sit at the keyboard or drawing table all day and/or all night.
An artist should never try to draw the female form until he or she has seen — and preferably, drawn — a lot of them in person. This applies to the male form also but not quite as much because comics don't do variations on the male form as much as they do on the female form.
Plots need to be the right length. Some very poor comics have resulted from trying to cram a good 25-page storyline into twelve pages or to spread a good 12-page storyline over twenty-five.
The more powerful your protagonist is, the harder you have to work to come up with a credible challenge to him or her.
Colorists often have to make up for the fact that the artist has not bothered to think about the source(s) of light in the panels.
"Stunt" storylines like marrying off or killing beloved continuing characters have very little impact because everyone knows they're stunts to be undone at a later date.
When a character is killed in a comic book, that character is only dead if the present controller of the copyright wants him or her to be at that moment.
If a comic book page needs arrows to tell the reader the order in which the panels should be read, it's probably not a well-designed page.
Adding more word balloons and sales blurbs to the cover of a comic book rarely makes it more saleable but those additions always lessen the impact of the image.
A lot of us try too hard to turn whatever we work on into a facsimile of the first comic book we really loved as a child.
Sometimes, having one of the best artists ink the work of another of the best artists results in a comic that, while nice-looking, isn't as wonderful as what either artist would have done on their own.
When you write a comic book with a lot of captions, stop before you submit your script and read over all those captions to make sure they're all in the same tense.
The Comics Code might have been necessary in the fifties but they could have gotten rid of it in 1970 and the only thing that would have been different is that a few comics might have been a little better.
Word balloons usually overlap everything in the panel but sometimes, part of one is tucked behind a character's head or some object in the panel. When they are tucked behind, no part of them should overlap something or someone that is supposed to be closer to "camera."
"Villain" is not spelled "villian," nor is "weird" spelled "wierd."
The word "anniversary" refers to a number of years. If a comic has been published for 20 years, we can celebrate its anniversary. If it has been published for 100 issues, that is an impressive achievement but it is not an anniversary.
In any ongoing series, the writer needs to remember that some readers did not read previous issues.
If anyone else working for the company has the same first name as you and a last name that starts with the same letter as yours does, you will eventually receive one of his paychecks.
Readers like to see the character clearly from time to time in full-figure poses. This is especially true when the comic features characters who are visually interesting. Don't always show the character in shadows or head shots.
If you run a "pin-up" page in a comic, less than .0001% of the readers will actually pin it up.
When a writer needs to convey a lot of exposition that can only be done via dialogue, that writer needs to think of something visually interesting that the characters can be doing as they say all that stuff. Standing around talking is not visually interesting.
In any office that employs more than 7 people, there is always one employee who knows where everything is and keeps the office functional and operating. The readers of the comics that come out of that office are usually totally unaware of that person.
If you write comic books for more than five years, you will one day come up with a sensational idea for a story and you will then write several pages of it before you realize you did it before.
Sound effects should not cover the drawing of whatever is making that sound.
Ever since Amazing Spider-Man #50 in 1967, it is required that any super-hero comic at some point has a storyline in which the hero gets fed up with being a hero and quits and throws away his or her costume.
Retroactively changing something in a character's origin story is a sneaky, devious way to generate a new plot.
If in a comic you use the phrase, "Trapped in a world he never made," you need to explain (a) what world he is trapped in, (b) what world he did make and would prefer to be in, and most importantly, (c) how many worlds has this character made and how is it that he or she has the ability to make worlds?
Fans often say about some artist, "He can't draw Superman" or "He can't draw Spider-Man" or you can insert the name of any established character…but that's not true. A professional comic book artist can draw any character. He or she just may not draw them to match your favorite version of how that character looks.
In a store, if a potential customer looks at a comic and isn't sure if he or she already has that issue, he or she will decide not to purchase it. For that reason, the cover of this month's issue should look nothing like the cover of last month's issue. If nothing else, they should have very different color schemes, especially in the logo.
If (and only if) it will not crowd the drawing in the panel, small word balloons should float near the person speaking what's in them. They should not be jammed up against a panel border, away from their speaker and situated so the white in the balloon meets up with the white on the other side of the panel border.
If you work in comic books and you meet someone who asks you what you do, you should never hesitate to tell him you work in comic books. And I wish those who act ashamed of it would do me and themselves a favor and get the hell out of the business.
The word "hack," used to describe a writer or artist is sometimes intended to suggest that there is something seriously wrong with the person's attitude towards their work and in that sense is usually really wrong and really insulting.
The word "nerd" used to describe a reader of comic books is sometimes used as a term of affection and sometimes as a genuine insult. To avoid confusion as to which I mean, I've stopped using it.
In the history of comics, way too many people got their jobs not because they were suited for them but because they were related to someone with hiring power…and that person may well have gotten his or her job because they were related to someone with hiring power.
Some of the people who did poor work in comics may not have been very talented but they were the best person the editor could get at the time…and better than the alternative.
When a cover was drawn and rejected, 95% of the time it wasn't because the artist did a poor job drawing it but because someone (possibly not that artist) did a poor job deciding what scene or arrangement of elements should be on that cover.
Many writers in comics do their best work on a book where at the moment, they are the only writer handling the characters in it.
When there are too many different interpretations of a character out there, none of them is the "right" one, especially when it's Batman.
If the writer of a comic has trouble figuring out what's happening on a finished page, it's poor artwork no matter how exciting some of the individual images are.
If the artist of a comic doesn't understand the story he's drawing, it's a poor script no matter how exciting some of the copy is.
The best editors are the ones who understand going in that if the finished comic is great, no one's going to give a whole lot of credit to the editor.
If the comic you're working on is done in "assembly line" manner where the next person can't do his or her work until you do yours, being late is a really awful thing to do to the others on that "assembly line."
When a comic is deemed uncommercial and canceled, everyone should remember that once upon a time, the publisher of Marvel Comics made that decision about Spider-Man, The Hulk and The X-Men.
When you first hold in your hand a copy of a printed, for-real comic book that you worked on, you will have a little tingle of thrill that you will never again experience on anything else you do for the rest of your life.
Too often, to get a great cover or a sensational special storyline, the makers of a comic will violate the "reality" of that comic — for example, inserting outer space aliens into a world where there are no outer space aliens — and while that might boost sales for a time, eventually that comic will pay for it.
One of the worst ways you can resolve a super-hero story is to give the super-hero a power or strength he or she never had before.
Often, an artist will complain that the scripts they've been given are "too wordy" and when that artist is later given the chance to write his or her own scripts, that artist will be "wordier" than anyone they ever worked with.
Often, the best compliment you can get out of your editor is "Get to work on the next issue" and you should not take that lightly.
If your character wears a cape, it should be more or less the same length in every panel and it should not get shredded more than twice a year.
When working on a comic you don't own, be cautious when infusing characters with experiences from your own life. Remember that someone else will probably be writing those characters some day and they may just decide to change that character who to you represented your father into a psychotic serial killer and pedophile.
If you work a lot in comics, you will encounter many, many people who think the work of which you're least proud was the best thing you ever did and who couldn't care less about what you think is the best thing you ever did. Learn to say "Thank you" instead of gritting your teeth.
At least one writer or artist whose work you admired as a reader will turn out to be a colossal jerk when you finally meet them. But it may not be much more than one.
Anyone who puts you down for what you do is probably jealous of what you do.
If the main reason you love going to conventions is having people praise you and ask for your autograph, you might need to reassess your sense of security in this world.
And be honest with yourself about how many of the people who ask you to autograph your work only care about enhancing that book's resale value.
It can be a wonderful thing to be a Comic Book Writer or a Comic Book Artist but it's always better to be a Writer or Artist who does many things, one of which is comic books.
In the previous century, the decisions about who would write, pencil, letter, ink or color a comic book usually had a lot more to do with "Who's available?" and/or "Who needs work at the moment?" than with "Who would be the best person for this job?"
And some assignments — not a majority but some — were assigned according to who was kissing up to the assigner or maybe to what he or she could do for that assigner in other areas.
If you work in comics for an extended period, look over the books published by the company or companies that buy your work and ask yourself, "What comic am I totally unqualified and ill-suited to work on?" Then prepare for the call where they say, "We discussed it here in the office a lot and decided you're the perfect person for this job!" It will be that comic.
The fact that a comic book was canceled does not mean it was not a good comic.
The fact that a comic book was canceled does not mean it was given enough time to find an audience.
The fact that a comic book didn't sell well does not mean that a better marketing division could not have caused it to sell better.
The fact that a comic book was canceled does not mean that it didn't sell well. Companies have been known to cancel books based on incomplete or even misread sales figures.
It may even have been a matter of the guy with the power to cancel a comic making a political move against someone else in or around the company.
If an inker cannot capture all that the pencil artist put into the faces, it's bad inking no matter what the rest of it looks like.
Most tricks involving fancy lettering styles in word balloons have not worked unless they were in a comic strip done by Walt Kelly.
Most tricks involving Wally Wood-style lighting have not worked unless they were in a comic book done by Wally Wood.
When you eliminate "thought balloons" as a tool for the writer to use, you usually wind up with too much exposition in the captions and a lot of your characters talking aloud to themselves in unnatural ways that are really "thought balloons" disguised as "word balloons."
Having to write real short stories (six pages and under) is a very good training ground for comic book writers and many who've never done it could benefit from doing it.
Sleeping with someone who works in the same office or on comics that have something to do with yours will almost always lead to problems of some kind.
Writing and sending off to press a "next issue" blurb when you really aren't sure what's in the next issue can easily lead to you writing a story of which you are seriously not proud.
A one-issue "fill in" story on a comic produced by temp talent will almost always read like a one-issue "fill-in" story produced by temp talent.
If the hero in the comic you're writing has a secret identity, you should not do a story in which that secret is threatened or apparently revealed less than twelve years after the previous story in which that hero's secret identity was threatened or apparently revealed. Fifteen is better.
If you come up with a story idea for a long-running comic book and you think, "I can't believe no one else has ever thought of this," the odds are that everyone has thought of it…and that's the reason they never did it.
If there's an excess of expository dialogue and captions on the last few pages of a story, the writer either didn't pace out the story properly or the plot was too complicated for the confines of the page count. If the comic was done "Marvel method" (dialogue after pencil art), that might mean that the artist didn't pace the story out properly.
Never mind that you can put out a real slick black line with your digital or real brush. It's where you put that line that matters.
Editors would get more work delivered to them on time if they were more honest with the freelancers as to when it's really needed.
You know that trick where you hand in the work deliberately late thinking "They won't have time to screw around with it?" That trick never works the way you hope it will.
Some comic book companies used to pay writers more for stories that were supposed to be funny because they recognized that funny is harder to achieve than serious.
If you draw Superman or Batman or some other character who's been around for decades, you should not draw that character exactly the way someone else did and you should not draw that character completely unlike the way anyone else did. Somewhere in-between is where you want to be.
A professional who seems like a helluva nice guy when you meet him at a convention and tell him you love his work and want his autograph can be an extremely non-nice guy when you deal with him in a work capacity, especially if he rightly or wrongly perceives you as a threat to him.