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Summer2007

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Summer2007

MAGAZINE

INSIDE: TODD McFARLANE ON WRITING SPIDEY & SPAWN!INSIDE: TODD McFARLANE ON WRITING SPIDEY & SPAWN!

SCRIPT &PENCILS FROMBENDIS & CHO’S MIGHTYAVENGERS

SCRIPT &PENCILS FROMBENDIS & CHO’S MIGHTYAVENGERS

CONCLUDEDFROM BACK ISSUE

#23: STAR TREKWRITERS

ROUNDTABLE

CONCLUDEDFROM BACK ISSUE

#23: STAR TREKWRITERS

ROUNDTABLE

RISE OF THE...SILVER SURFER

WRITERS:STAN LEESTARLIN

ENGLEHARTMARZ

DeMATTEIS

RISE OF THE...SILVER SURFER

WRITERS:STAN LEESTARLIN

ENGLEHARTMARZ

DeMATTEIS

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WRITE NOW | 1

MAGAZINE

Managing EditorERIC FEIN

Cover art byMIKE ZECK and PHIL

ZIMELMAN

DesignersRICH J. FOWLKS

and DAVIDGREENAWALT

TranscriberSTEVEN TICE

Circulation DirectorBOB BRODSKY,COOKIESOUPPERIODICAL

DISTRIBUTION, LLC

PublisherJOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To:THE SILVER

SURFER WRITERSTHE STAR TREK

WRITERS

And…ALISON BLAIRETOM BREVOORT

CARMEN Q. BRYANTCHARLES COSTAS

KIA CROSSLAUREN CROSSMICHAEL EURYRICH J. FOWLKSSTEVEN GRANT

DAVID GREENAWALTBOB GREENBERGER

CHRIS IRVINGJIM McCANN

TODD McFARLANECHRIS POWELL

JIM REIDVARDA STEINHARDT

STEVEN TICEJIM WARDENMIKE ZECK

PHIL ZIMELMAN

Issue #16

Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! is published 4 times a year byTwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh,NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Fax: (919) 449-0327.Danny Fingeroth, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Write Now!E-mail address: WriteNowDF@aol.com. Single issues: $9Postpaid in the US ($11 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issuesubscriptions: $26 US ($44 Canada, $60 elsewhere).Order online at: www.twomorrows.com or e-mail to:twomorrow@aol.com All characters are TM & © their respectivecompanies. All material © their creators unless otherwisenoted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorialpackage is ©2007 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrowsPublishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a sharedtrademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing.Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

The Writin’ Side of MeInterview with Todd McFarlane ......................................................................page 3

SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE Cosmically cool Q & A with some of the greatest Surfer scribes ever: STAN LEE, J.M DeMatteis, Steve Englehart, Ron Marz, and Jim Starlin ............................................................................page 25

STAR TREK COMICS WRITERS ROUNDTABLEPart 2 (Continued from Back Issue #23)

Another kind of space-spanning survey, featuring:Mike W. Barr, Peter David, Laurie Sutton, Len Wein, and many more.................................................................................................page 55

Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers .............................................................page 69

FREE PREVIEW of Draw! #14 ......................................................................page 70

Nuts & Bolts Department

Plot to Pencils to Script to Finished Pages: SPAWN #52Pages from “Messiah”by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo ......................................................page 17

Plot to Pencils to Script to Finished Comic: AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #1Pages from “Happy Accidents,”by Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli ...............................................................page 35

Creating Comics Step By Step (Part 2 of 3)Steven Grant delivers the second part of his information-packed series on making comic books ..............................page 41

Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #3Pages by Brian Michael Bendis and Frank Cho ....................................page 51

Summer 2007

Conceived byDANNY FINGEROTH

Editor-In-Chief

Read Now!Message from the Editor-in-Chief ....................................................................page 2

TODD McFARLANE | 3

T odd McFarlane’s comic book career spans morethan twenty years and dozens of popular characters. As artist, his work has graced the

pages of The Amazing Spider-Man (where he co-created Venom), The Incredible Hulk, and DetectiveComics. His professional writing career kicked off withthe launch of one of the bestselling series of all time,Spider-Man. After years as one of the industry’s top creators, Todd joined several other popular comic bookartists to form Image Comics. There, he launched hisown creator-owned series, Spawn, which soon caughtthe attention of Hollywood and was the inspiration for alive action movie and an animated series. In addition tohis comic book work, Todd also heads up his own toyand collectible company, McFarlane Toys. A busy man ofmany interests (including part-ownership of theEdmonton Oilers NHL hockey team), Todd was able togive us some time to speak about the subject of WriteNow: writing for comics and related media.

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: Did you write as a kid at all, or inschool, Todd? Was that anything you were interested inthen?TODD McFARLANE: I was pretty good at sort of shortstory stuff, but I think that was just a byproduct of mywild imagination as a whole.

DF: What kind of short stories? What would they beabout?TM: The teacher would assign us to do a factual composition about, say World War II, I couldn’t dosomething like that. But if they said, “Go home andcome up with a made-up story and bring it in,” and youcould add fantasy stuff and big, dramatic melodrama toit—the equivalent of the Jack-in-the-Beanstalk stories—then I could put in a flying elephant, and purpledinosaurs a thousand feet tall, and I could do it easily.

DF: This was in elementary school?TM: Oh, yeah. You know, the “creative writing” classes.

DF: What about in high school or college? Did you doany writing then?

TM: Not nearly as much. The writing there was moreserious so a lot of it was more historical reports anddissertations in some of the classes. And you had less ofa chance, or at least in the classes that I was taking, tojust have fun with writing like I did when I was in highschool or younger.

DF: I’ve read that you didn’t really read comics untilhigh school. How’d you avoid them?TM: Umm…I played a lot of sports. You know, when wewent on road trips, Mom and Dad would stop at the 7-Eleven and buy a couple of Slurpees and a couple ofcomics and throw them in the back to me and my twobrothers, so it’s not that I was devoid of comics. I’d reada handful, so I was aware of what comic books were. Inever bothered collecting them, though. But at the ageof about nine I started collecting baseball cards andfootball cards, so I was collecting, it just was in a differentplace. Later, all of a sudden I went, “Hey, you knowwhat? Let me check out these comic books that I keepsort of walking by.”

Interview conducted by Danny Fingeroth via telephone 5-30-07Transcribed by Steven TiceCopy-edited by Eric Fein, Danny Fingeroth and Todd McFarlane

THE WRITIN’ SIDE OF ME:

THE TODD McFARLANE INTERVIEW

DF: You must have been drawing as a kid.TM: Oh, yeah. I was the proverbial “best-artist-in-the-class” kid from Day One. It really goes back to the firstMajor League Baseball game I went to in the Anaheimarea in California which I got to attend because, as a kidin kindergarten, I won an art contest. I drew a pitcherthrowing a ball, and it got hung up in the stadium. Mydad said, “I’ll take you to the ball game and you can seeyour artwork and you can watch the game.” So we went.Maybe around then I would have started collectingcomic books or done something different, but Dad tookme to a ball game that day, and I got to see art, and atthe same time became mesmerized by sports. And thatwas after watching sports on a black-and-white TV mywhole life, then walking into a stadium. That was a bigmoment for a kid back then. In person, you see thebright green grass, and the reds were fire truck red, andit was like walking into the Land of Oz. You went fromthe black-and-white into the color. You just went, “Wow.”

DF: With your love of sports combined with your artistictalent, you could have gone on to paint sports portraitsor do sports magazine illustration. What was it aboutcomics that made you at some point realize that thestorytelling in them appealed to you?TM: This is weird, Danny. I remember the day of con-sciously going into a store to buy my first handful ofcomic books. I mean, I close my eyes and recreate it. Iremember the books that I bought. They were on aspinner-rack. What I don’t remember is, “why now?” Imean, why, at the age of sixteen? I’d been walking bycomic books all my life. The closest I can give you is thatI had been that incessant doodler for so long, but Ididn’t have any focus for my art, and maybe I was justgetting older, going, “Somewhere along the line I’mgoing to have to figure out what to do with this.” And sowhat happened very quickly was that when I boughtthose comics and fell in love with them and became afanatic of comics, that I went, “Aha! Now I know what todo with this doodling. Train myself to draw Americansuper-hero comics.” Because I had, like, fifty styles backthen, and all of them were raw, at best. And so Ithought, “Focus on this one task called ‘super-herocomics,’ see if you can teach yourself this, because it’skind of cool.” And from there on, from the time I startedcollecting, I stopped drawing just willy-nilly doodle stuffand Mad magazine type stuff, and I just went,“Everything’s now going to be super-heroic stuff.”

DF: Was there any friend or relative who said, “Hey, youshould check these comic book things out,” or did it justsort of dawn on you?TM: Like I said, I’d walked by that store 500 times. And Ijust thought—because comic books were only 30, 35cents back then, and I had a couple of bucks in mypocket—”I’m going to go buy five comic books.” Why

then? I don’t know. And those five soon turned into35,000.

DF: Now, you said somewhere that you got over 700rejection letters? I remember seeing them at that exhibitat the MoCCA [Manhattan’s Museum of Comic andCartoon Art] last year.TM: I sent off about 700 samples, and about half ofthem came back rejects, so about 350 out of the 700were officially rejected. The other ones just filed it in thegarbage and didn’t even bother to send a rejection letter.

DF: What kept you going through that?TM: A lot of the same things that keep me going now:stubbornness and immaturity—the two things I’d rathernot teach the youth of America. You know, I give seminars and discuss, how do you succeed? I hate tosay it, but it’s about characteristics I’d rather not evengive my own boy, let alone you good people readingthis. But you’ve just got to get myopic and stubborn.Those aren’t really the best traits to have. But that wasit. I was blinded by my own talent to think that I wasbetter than I was.

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A treat from Todd’s archives—one of his earliest drawingsof Spawn, done when Todd was in high school.[© 2007 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.]

DF: Well, that’s often what it takes to get through therough spots. When you sent in the art, was it drawingstories you had written, too, or you would take otherpeople’s stories and interpret them your own way?TM: At first it was just pin-up shots. But then, the peoplewho were responding, said, “Hey, you’ve got to give uspage-by-page story stuff.” So there were two ways ofdoing that. You could either, go and look at a comicbook and then do your own re-imagining of an existingcomic. I did that from time to time, and, as I’ve told kids,it’s a good way to do it, but make sure you don’t takethe Byrne-Claremont X-Men at the peak, or whatever’s atop ten book and try to do better than that. Go get abook that’s floundering, and re-imagine that book,because you’ve got a much betterchance of inspiring somebody to hireyou with that than trying to draw likeNeal Adams or write like ChrisClaremont. But I also did, at that time,create my own characters. So in highschool I created this character amongstmany, called Spawn, and I actually didlike a 25, 30-page comic book of that,and that was part of some of my sampleswhen I was sixteen. And then they justwent dormant until I pulled them out inthe early ‘90s.

DF: Sort of like Erik Larsen with theSavage Dragon.TM: That’s it, yeah. Along those lines.

DF: So you would do some of your ownstories and some adaptations of otherpeople’s stories, it sounds like. TM: When I was re-imagining someoneelse’s stuff, like if I were looking at a badlydrawn Captain America story, then I woulduse that story, but draw it my own way. If itwas my character, the true writing camethen. I wasn’t trying to rewrite CaptainAmerica. They’ve got a writer for that book. Iwas never, at that point, trying to take over awriter’s spot. I was trying to take over anartist’s spot. But when I did my own comic,then there was no writer, so I had to be theletterer, writer, penciler, inker, all that stuff.

DF: And would the character always beSpawn, or did you have other characters, aswell?TM: I had some other ones. I had a groupcalled “Blood, Sweat and Tears,” and then Ihad this other one called “the Bruise Crew.”

DF: So people may think, “Oh, Todd just suddenly started writing one day, with

Spider-Man #1, but actually you had writing experience.TM: I was writing, but not nearly at the prolific pace thatI was drawing. I was probably doing five pages of artwork for every one page I was writing, where a truewriter writes all the time. But at that point, my first drivewas to do artwork.

DF: I imagine you weren’t doing much writing once youactually broke into Marvel and DC as an artist.TM: When I first broke in, it was strictly as a penciler.

Spawn #1 helped launch Image comics as a major comic book publisher. Cover art by Todd McFarlane. [© 2007 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.]

TODD McFARLANE | 5

SPAWN #52 NUTS & BOLTS | 17

Here’s a rare glimpse of the creative process Todd uses to create an issue ofSpawn, specifically 1996’s #52 (cover by Greg and Todd shown above).

On this page, we see Todd’s skeleton plot-outline for the issue. It’s a “beatsheet” style plot, which Todd used as notes for his telephone plot conversationwith penciler Greg Capullo.

[© 2007 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.]

[© 2007 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

Savage Dragon © 2007 Erik Larsen.]

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Todd hand-wrote his script for page 4 of the story on an overlay thatwent over a copy of Greg’s pencil art (see next page). Todd and Gregare working “Marvel-style,” aka plot-first style, where the dialogue iswritten after the pencil art is done.

Also shown is how panel one of the page came out. You can see theentire page later in this Nuts & Bolts section.[© 2007 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.]

He started out as a distant gleam in outer space, and ended up more than 40 years later—appropriately—on the “silver screen.” Bad, bad Norrin Radd—better known as the SilverSurfer—first appeared in the pages of the classic Fantastic Four #48, the first part of what

has come to be known as “The Galactus Trilogy.”

Over the intervening years the Surfer has starred in two ongoing series and a whole bunch of limited series and one-shots. And that’s not to mention the hundreds of guest appearances he’smade across the Marvel Universe. The Surfer has been written by some of the finest writers in thebusiness, and they took their cues from the men who created him back in 1966, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

As the story goes, it seems that, after discussing the Galactus story with Stan, Jack went home todraw it. When he brought in the penciled pages, he had added a shining character riding a surfboardthrough space, a character that hadn’t been part of the team’s plotting session. Queried by Stan asto who the figure was, Jack said that he figured a character as awesome as Galactus would have aherald to announce his coming to the worlds he would devour. Stan liked the idea, one of themnamed him the Silver Surfer, and the rest is comics history. It turned out that the Surfer became oneof Stan’s favorite characters to write for reasons he discusses on the next page.

In honor of the Surfer’s 40-plus years of traveling the skyways of the Marvel Universe—and his cinematic debut in this summer’s blockbuster bonanza, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer—I decided to get together a virtual roundtable discussion of some of the greatest Surfer Writers of all time. I say “virtual” because I didn’t actually sit these guys down in one room. As with our now-legendary Spider-Man Writers Roundtable in issue #14, I asked them all the same dozen questionsand am running their answers consecutively. So there’s no “cross-talking” as there no doubt wouldhave been were all these writers in the same room, and if a Roundtabler doesn’t have an answer toa given question here…it’s because he chose not to answer it.

Of course, there was one writer who got his own very special set of questions. Needless to say,that was The Man himself—Stan Lee! I couldn’t really ask him what it felt like taking over a characterwith a legacy like the Surfer’s—since he was responsible for so much of that legacy! His eruditeanswers lead off the section, and then we go roundtabling with the rest of the Surfer-crew.

So polish up your silver coating, align your surfboard’s rudder—and let’s get this beach-party started!

Danny FingerothEditor-in-Chief

SILVER SURFER ROUNDTABLE | 25

SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE

WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE

WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLE WRITE NOW! SILVER SURFER WRITERS ROUNDTABLEW

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STAN LEE ON THE SILVER SURFERWe kick off our Silver Surfer Writers’

Roundtable with an e-mail chat with the Surfer’sco-creator, Stan Lee, in which The Man gives us histhoughts about everyone’s favorite sentinel of theskyways…

DANNY FINGEROTH: You’ve always had a specialfondness for the Surfer, Stan. What is it about thecharacter that appeals toyou? After all, a nearlynaked guy surfingthrough space on a“board could as easily beseen as silly as dramatic.(And you are the guy“who wrote the “SilverBurper” parody in NotBrand Ecch.)STAN LEE: I loved the factthat I could express somuch of my ownphilosophy through theSurfer’s dialogue. Throughhis eyes we could seehow mankind’s foiblesand insanities would register on a being fromanother world. And I likedthe fact that I could havehim speak in a stylizedmanner—not a dialect, not an accent, just a veryindividual way of framingphrases and sentences.

DANNY: I know Jack drew the Surfer into theGalactus story as a “surprise,” but who named the character?STAN: I don’t rememberwhat Jack originally called him, but I named him The Silver Surfer.

DANNY: The Surfer started out as Galactus’ herald.Did you and Kirby know from pretty early on that hewould rebel against Galactus, or did that evolve asthe story went along?STAN: His rebellion against Galactus evolved.However, I knew that it had to happen, because Iwanted the Surfer to be a good guy—in fact, morethan a good guy, almost a Christ-like guy—and there

was no way he’d continue to obey Galactus if itmeant the death of innocent planetary inhabitants.

DANNY: Did you see the Surfer from early on as notjust an exciting supporting character, but as a figurewho could carry his own title? How did you know hecould headline his own book?STAN: I didn’t know that he could, but the more stories I wrote about him the more I liked him andthe more I was determined to have him carry his

own title.

DANNY: Would it be safe to say that Spider-Man representsyour more freewheeling sideand the Surfer the more seriousyou? Either way, please elaborate.STAN: You summed it up perfectly. I don’t know how Ican elaborate on a perfect summation. Although Spideywasn’t always all that free-wheeling. As I recall, I tried toinject many dramatic elementsinto his stories as well

DANNY: What did JohnBuscema bring to the portrayalof the Surfer?STAN: I think John brought asense of really fine illustration.To me, he made the Surfer stories seem more than comic-book artwork—he seemed togive them a more mature, classical, ultra-dramatic look.

DANNY: Is or was there a specificactor or public personality—or writer—you think of whenwriting the Surfer’s dialogue(aside from Laurence Fishburne,

who voices him in the FF2 movie)?STAN: Not really. I don’t know of any actor, or anyone,who phrases things the way I had the Surfer do it. Itwas just my own contrived little style.

DANNY: Of all the characters that you and Jack cameup with, why do you think the producers of FF2 choseto use the Silver Surfer for the sequel? STAN: I never discussed it with them, so your guess isas good as mine. But, since we’re guessing, I’d think itmight be because his flying surfboard gives us a great

This classic cover to Fantastic Four #50 was the climax ofStan Lee and Jack Kirby’s “Galactus Trilogy” that intro-duced the Surfer. Cover art by Kirby and Joe Sinnott.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Now that’s we’ve heard from Mr. Lee, let’s find outwhat the Roundtable has to say about the Sentinel ofthe Skyways…

DANNY FINGEROTH: What is it about theSurfer that’s so appealing? After all, a nearly-naked guy riding through space on a surfboard could as easily be seen as silly as dramatic.

J.M. DeMATTEIS: It’s a testament to Stan Lee and JackKirby (and John Buscema, who did such brilliant workon the original Surfer series) that he doesn’t seemridiculous. If you look at Kirby’s original Surfer, there’snothing remotely silly about him. He radiates dignity andpower (in context, even the surfboard works). AndStan’s dialogue took what was there in Jack’s extraordinaryvisuals and deepened it. The Surfer was curious, grave,

and philosophical. This was a character you had to takeseriously. Hey, if you didn’t—Galactus would come andeat your planet!

For me, though, where the character really came intohis own was in the Lee-[John] Buscema series. Thosefirst six issues of the original Surfer run are among myfavorite mainstream comics of all time (the third issue,which introduced Mephisto, is probably my singlefavorite Marvel comic): a wonderful mix of adventure,philosophy, and raw emotion. Stan was really trying tostretch the boundaries of the Marvel universe, giving usa protagonist whose greatest power wasn’t his cosmicbolts: it was his compassion. The Surfer, as Stan hasoften noted, is a character with a genuine spiritual component—and that set Norrin Radd apart from therest of the Marvel Universe, making him utterly uniqueamong the Lee-Kirby creations.

STEVE ENGLEHART: When played right, he’s the archetypal

visual effect. Also, his background, origin and purposeare so totally different from any other character thatan audience is apt to see in any movie anywhere.

DANNY: Do you think the Surfer works best whenhe’s in a fantastic setting, or when he’s in a morenormal, earthlike environment?STAN: Both. In fantastic settings he’s one of the mostunique characters anyone will ever see, while in anormal, Earthlike environment he best personifies thealways exciting “fish out of water” theme.

DANNY: Considering their deep connection, do youthink Alicia would have ever gone off with the Surfer?STAN: Not if I were writing it. I’d never have Alicia beunfaithful to ol’ Ben. Besides, as I recall, Shalla Balwas the love of Norrin Radd’s life. I’m not surewhether she’s supposed to be alive now or not, but ifshe is—he’d never rest till they were reunited. At least,he wouldn’t if I were writing it.

DANNY: What are you proudest of that you’ve donewith your writing of the Surfer?STAN: I think I’m proudest of the fact that the SilverSurfer seems to mean so much to so many older,more literate, more sophisticated readers.

DANNY: Would you ever want to write another Surferstory? Who’d be your dream artist to draw it?STAN: Perhaps, if I ever had the time. Hey, there areso many great artists who could do a fantastic jobwith the Surfer. There’s Alex Ross, John Romita Jr., JimLee—I could go on and on. Incidentally, since I’ve

been away from comics for so long, there’s one thingI truly regret. I’ll occasionally thumb through a comic-book that catches my eye because of the sensationalartwork, but since most of today’s terrific artists arenew to me, I never can remember their names. Sothere are many more I should be mentioning,because I love their artwork but regretfully, I can’trecall their names.

In fact, my memory is so unreliable that I’ve evenforgotten if you have any more questions for me. So Imight has well sign off now—but not without oneenthusiastic EXCELSIOR!

Stan Lee co-created the Marvel pantheon of charactersincluding—in addition to the Silver Surfer—the FantasticFour, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men. His hit Sci-FiChannel series, WhoWants to be aSuperhero?, returnsfor a second season on July 27th. And Stanwill soon be getting his own star onHollywood’s Walk ofFame!

SILVER SURFER ROUNDTABLE | 27

The Surfer’s firstcover appearance, in FF #49, althoughhe debuted in theprevious issue. Artby Kirby and Sinnott[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“noble savage.” That sense of alien aloneness with agreat heart appeals to lots of readers. The problem iswhat he looks like. Your first reaction is, he looks terrific—but the longer-term reaction is, there’s an impenetrablereflective barrier around him that means you can’t getclose to him. You can understand him, you can feel hispain, but all that time his form—and he’s all form, beingnaked—is a solid wall between you, the reader, and him,the character. It’s subtle, psychological, but it’s why, Ibelieve, he could be simultaneously highly acclaimedand a hard sell. Why he could work as a poster but notas a comic.

RON MARZ: You know, it’s kind of curious. Obviouslythe character was created during an era when surfing,thanks in great part to musicians like the Beach Boysand Jan and Dean, was being popularized in the publicconsciousness. And on a very surface level, the Surfercould very easily be seen as camp, but you just don’t getthat reaction, even from non-comics readers. Somehow,Stan and Jack captured some magic. There’s majesty tothe Surfer, both visually and in terms of his character.

I guess the other side of the coin is the Black Racer, aKirby creation who is in a lot of ways a DC counterpartto the Surfer. But with him, the reaction is just the

opposite. People take one look at this guy zippingthrough space on skis and immediately think it’s ridiculous.

JIM STARLIN: Well, at the time I got hold of the Surfer, it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been trapped onEarth. His adventures in outer space were just beginning,so to speak. Plus there was this nobility about the Surferthat was so appealing. But the big draw, for me, was thefact that writing the Silver Surfer gave me yet anotherchance at furthering Thanos’ story. Every time I cameback to Marvel, it was really to write and draw the Titanagain. Surf, Warlock and Captain Marvel were never any-thing but excuses to do another Thanos tale.

FINGEROTH: Was there anything you consciously (or, in retrospect, unconsciously)set out to accomplish during your run on theSurfer?

DeMATTEIS: My run on the series [Volume 3, issue #’s126 –145] was a little frustrating. I had a very big storyplanned for my initial arc—among other things, it dealtwith the death of Galactus and Galactus’s desire to havethe Surfer’s forgiveness before he died. I remember writing up a lengthy outline for the arc, which my editorread and approved, being as excited about the story asany I’d ever done—and then having it shot down by thePowers That Be (after I’d already begun working on thestory) for reasons that escape me. (Perhaps somethingto do with continuity or another upcoming Big Event.)So I had to shift the storyline in midstream and then, as

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Here’s the cover to the premiere issue of the Surfer’s first soloseries, from 1968, and a panel from page 6 of the issue, whichillustrates the Surfer’s eloquent frustration with humanity. Script isby Stan and the art is by John Buscema (pencils) and Joe Sinnott(inks). [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I recall, my next idea was shot down, as well.My whole run on the book felt like that: jumping through hoops, trying to adjust storieson the fly. (Time, and distortions of memory,may have magnified that feeling.) That said, Igot to work with brilliant artists like Ron Garneyand Jon J. Muth (among others) and do somegood work. Still, considering how much I lovethe character, I never got to do the Surfer I wanted to. Of course, if I’d done the storiesexactly the way I’d originally envisioned, I stillmight not have been satisfied.

ENGLEHART: Make him work as a comic. Therewere 20 years of disappointing Surfer numberswhen I got there and I liked the challenge of trying to turn that around at long last.

MARZ: First and foremost, I set out to not embar-rass myself. Surfer was very literally the first job Ihad in comics. Silver Surfer Annual #3 was notonly my first job for Marvel, it was my first timewriting a comic script ever. So to say I was a rookieis an understatement. When Jim Starlin steppedaside and Marvel handed the book to me, it wasvery much on-the-job training. So I don’t know thatI had any goal in mind other than trying to tell agood story every issue, and get better at the craft ofwriting. Jim’s Surfer issues were hugely entertaining,and set a real high-water mark for the character, soI wanted to continue that as best I could.

STARLIN: Yeah, despite the flippancy of my previousanswer, Surf was always a character I loved andthought had tremendous untapped potential. One ofthe things about the Surfer was that he’d aidedGalactus in destroying who-knows-how-many planets and killing countless folk. But this noblecreature never seemed to be bothered by the evilacts he had aided and abetted. So this was a track I,early on, decided I wanted to explore.

FINGEROTH: Was it more—or less—pressure to be writing a character who, while a Marvelicon, wasn’t as high-profile as, say, Spider-Manor the X-Men?

DeMATTEIS: To me the Surfer is as high-profile asSpider-Man or the X-Men. He is, in many ways, the ultimate Marvel character. A fusion of Kirby’s cosmicgrandeur and Stan’s very human heart. I don’t know ifthat creates pressure—once you start writing, the storyand characters take over and it’s got very little to dowith how you feel about it—but it does create a situationwhere you feel a great sense of responsibility to thecharacter. If you’re writing the Surfer or Spider-Man, you

want to do your absolute best. Better than your best.

ENGLEHART: That stuff never matters to me.

MARZ: In my mind, less pressure. Spidey and X-Menwere franchises, especially so in that period. I had agood relationship with the editor, Craig Anderson, so Ididn’t feel a lot of pressure. Although, I do rememberseeing a sales chart fairly early on in my run and Surferwas selling a lot of copies, a hell of a lot more thanSuperman. And I thought, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Here’s this rookie writer, writing a characteryou’d have to consider as second-tier, and we’re kickingSuperman’s ass. It didn’t seem quite right.

STARLIN: It’s always so much easier taking on the second stringers. In fact my favorite characters to do arethe ones that are on the verge of cancellation like

SILVER SURFER ROUNDTABLE | 29

In 1978, Marvel produced its very first self-contained graphicnovel, The Silver Surfer, published by Fireside Books. It featureda new, alternate version of the Surfer’s origin, sans the FantasticFour, and re-teamed Lee and Kirby for the first time in severalyears. Inks are by Joe Sinnott.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE NUTS & BOLTS | 35

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #1

“Happy Accidents”

Plot for 23pgs.

Second Draft

PAGE 1

Panel One

Open on Iraq…

A military convoy is escorting an armored VIP car from the

Department of Defense as it tours one of the supposedly safer “Green

Zones” in Iraq. The VIP car is a black four-by-four with black, bulletproof

windows.

Panel TwoIn the bed of one of the convoy’s trucks, a soldier spots an

unauthorized car approaching. It’s a local car. It’s pretty beat up, and it’s

veering towards the convoy.

Panel Three

The soldier and other men from his unit draw their weapons and shout

out warnings for the car to change course.

Panel Four

But it’s no use, the car picks up speed as it heads right at them. The

soldiers have no choice but to open fire.

Panel Five

We cut to the inside of the car, where we can see that it’s clearly a car

bomb. It’s filled with armory shells and containers holding gallons of

gasoline. The suicide bombers drive on as both their car and their bodies are

riddled with bullets. The bombers are zealots, chanting oaths to both Al

Qaeda and Hydra.

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #1 “Happy Accidents”Script for 23pgs.

PAGE 1Panel OneLOCATOR CAPTION: Baghdad, Iraq.ELECTRONIC BALLOON (no tail): Desert Eagle to convoy. Status of“Carrot Top”?GUNNER IN FIRST CAR: “Carrot Top” is secure, sir. We’re tenminutes out to base and all’s clear. No sign of—GUNNER IN FIRST CAR: Hold up!

Panel TwoGUNNER IN FIRST CAR: We have contact! I repeat! We havecontact!GUNNER IN FIRST CAR: Vehicle heading this way!Panel ThreeFIRST SOLDIER/BRST:<PULL OVER!>SECOND SOLDIER/BRST: <STOP or we will OPEN FIRE!>Panel FourFIRST CAR (in the distance): Son of a @#%*! They’re speeding up!Panel FiveFIRST SOLDIER/BRST: It’s an I.E.D.!SECOND SOLDIER/BRST: LIGHT IT UP!SFX (guns): BRRATSFX (guns): PKA PKA PKA

Panel SixSFX: TNK TNK TNKFROM INSIDE THE CARBOMB/ BRST: <HAIL HYDRA! Cut off alimb, two more will grow in its place!>

Here are plot, script and art from Avengers: The Initiative#1. Initiative is a series that spins out of Marvel’s Civil Warlimited series. As a result of CW ‘s events, it was mandatedthat each state would have a government-supervisedsuper-team. Initiative focuses on the training of theseheroes, including MVP, Cloud 9, Armory, and Trauma.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

36 | WRITE NOW

PAGE 2Panel One

Suddenly, a heroic figure leaps out of one of the convoy’s armoredvehicles! It’s THE GAUNTLET, the one American super hero who’sfighting the War on Terror on the front lines!

Panel TwoFrom his giant mecha-glove, THE GAUNTLET projects an enormousenergy hand that wraps around the car bomb…

Panel Three…right as it EXPLODES! THE GAUNTLET stands firm,unflinching, as he’s backlit from the explosion.

Panel FourThe convoy comes to a stop as some of the soldiers go up to THEGAUNTLET to salute him and/or congratulate him. THE GAUNTLET tellsthem that there’ll be time for that later. First things first, they should securethe perimeter!

PAGE 2

Panel One

SOLDIER: It’s not slowing down! It’s—

GAUNTLET: Everyone FALL BACK!

SOLDIER: THE GAUNTLET?!

Panel Two

GAUNTLET: I’ve got this one.

Panel Three

GAUNTLET: Got it well in hand.

Panel Four

SFX: BWCHOOM

Panel Five

SOLDIER: Damn, sir, that was ALL RIGHT! We had no idea YOU were

assigned to this detail.

(space)

SOLDIER: Just want you to know, Sarge, all the boys are proud to have

you HERE…

SOLDIER: …while all them other CAPES are busy coolin’ their heels back

home! Or fightin’ among themsel--

GAUNTLET: Not now, soldier. First things first. You men secure the

perimeter…

Panel Six

GAUNTLET: …while I check on the “package”.

For this series writer Dan Slott and artist Stefano Caselliwork in a hybrid version of the Marvel method and fullscript. Dan writes a plot that has the description of eachpage’s action broken down into panels, but without finaldialogue. Stefano draws the story, and then Dan writes hisscript based on the penciled pages.

Stefano pencils and inks his work, so what we see in thisNuts and Bolts section is his inks and printed comicspages—which show how important the role of coloristDaniele Rudoni is in the finished art.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

s we said last issue:

“Steven Grant has a long and successful career as acomic book writer. He, along with Mike Zeck, broughtthe Punisher to new heights of popularity with theirgroundbreaking limited series. Steven has also scriptedstories featuring Spider-Man, Batman, and evenRobocop. He is also the creator of the popular inde-pendent comic book series, Whisper. Steven has aweekly column, Permanent Damage, onComicBookResources.com.

“In ‘Creating Comics Step by Step,’ which first ran onPermanent Damage, he explores the process of howwriters craft their stories. Steven has taken manyagreed upon approaches of professional writers andpresents them in an easy to understand and fun way.”

There are ten (up from nine) essays for this series.We ran the first three last issue and are happy to runthe next three here, with the last four scheduled toappear next issue.

So grab that highlighter for the important pointsSteven makes (which is all of them) and enjoy thismiddle third of his Master Class in creating comics!

—DF

Step 4: PLOT

The term “plot” is often misconstrued, and just asoften segregated from “character,” especially by criticswho subdivide fiction into “character-driven” and “plot-driven” stories, by which they generally mean eitherthe character’s behavior and responses determine thedirection of the plot (and wherein plot is sometimesinvisible) or the requirements of the plot predeterminea character’s responses. The distinction is largelyoverblown, and often used to separate “mainstream”fiction from “genre” fiction and imply an innate superiority of the former over westerns, detective stories, horror stories, science fiction, etc., all of whichdo have their own content requirements before youcan join their club. But that’s really smoke, obscuring asimple fact:

Character and plot, in practice, are indivisible.

Character without plot is a painting, a static persona:Mona Lisa, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned,eyes lightly dancing, hands crossed just a bit unnaturally in her lap as a storm seems to gather overa landscape behind her that’s cultivated but still seemsto suggest something of the wild. Her hint of a smilehas captivated viewers for centuries, but its meaning islost, unknowable. She’s only a moment in time,trapped there forever, and while we can judge hercharacter by what da Vinci left on canvas, that’s allwe’ll ever have. She projects a character, but we can’teven know what of it is real and what we’re projecting.She has no story moving through time.

By STEVEN GRANTCopyright © 2007 by Steven Grant.

CREATING COMICS STEP BY STEP

STEVEN GRANT | 41

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa from 1503to 1506. Does this world-famous work of art tell astory? Should it?

STEPS 4-6

A

She has no plot.

Story, loosely defined, is character in motion throughtime. Plot is the shape of that motion. There’s a concept in physics called the Heisenberg principle,which says that in order to truly understand sub-atomic particles you have to know two things—thenature of the particle and its movement—but if youslow down or stop a particle in order to determine itsnature, it no longer has any movement to know, whileif you don’t interfere with its movement you can’t discover its nature. You need both, but in getting oneyou lose the other. Fiction’s a lot like that. If you fixateon character, you lose a sense of plot. If you fixate onplot, it’s easy to abandon your character. It’s not ascomplicated or indeterminate as nuclear particlephysics, but you’ve got to keep your eyes on both elements at the same time.

Like I said, there has been a longstanding tradition ofbeing dismissive toward “plot-driven” stories, and it’snot a wholly inaccurate presumption, but the distinction is unnecessary: a better term for a storywhere the plot overwhelms and dictates a character’sbehavior is “bad story.” But there’s no reason to stigmatize plot or character during development; somewriters are naturally more attuned to thinking mainly interms of plot and others in terms of character, andmore often writers will generate some stories fromplot and start plugging characters into it and other stories by wrapping a plot around some character(s)they’ve conceived. I’ve done both; I suspect most writers with any sizable output have. The process ofgetting to the story is unimportant. Only the resultingstory is important. The reader will only care how yougot there in retrospect, if then.

So you’ve got your general idea, and you’ve whittleddown the many possibilities it suggests to a generaltheme. At that point either characters that can carryand personify the theme are starting to occur to you (if the character wasn’t already part of your originalidea) or you’re getting an idea for a plot. Start loose on either, and, again, don’t get so in love with any concept that you won’t throw it out to make your storybetter. Take whatever you’ve got and start working outthe other.

Since we’ve already covered character, let’s start withthat. I mentioned the three most basic questions toask about your main character:

• What does he want?

• What is he willingto do to get it?

• What’s he afraidof?

Answering thosethree questions bringsyou not only to therudiments of characterbut also to the rudi-ments of his plot. Goalis plot. Determinationis plot. Fear is plot.

A spoiled girl wants tokeep her family home.She’s willing to lie, cheat,steal or kill to keep it.She’s afraid she’s goingto lose everything thatever meant anything toher if she doesn’t stay single-mindedly focusedon her goal.

That’s the loose plotoutline to Gone With The Wind. As soon as you knowwhat your character wants, that’s the beginning of your plot. And of your character. You just ask differentquestions of both.

• Character: why does he want it? • Plot: what’s he going to do to get it?

Plot is really problem-solving. Initially, you presentyourself with a series of questions/problems, and thenyou answer them. The answers you choose determinethe direction of both plot and character, and those inturn (not to mention where they come into conflictwith each other) generate other problems/questions,and the process recurs. And both plot and characterdevelop.

Complications:

Your character does not exist in a vacuum. He’s partof a world, whatever world that happens to be. Choiceof world is what determines genre, and once youchoose a world you play by the rules of that world; ina story set in the Wild West your character can’t suddenly haul out an Uzi unless you intend it to be avery different kind of genre. Presumably he’s not goingto be the uncontested lord of his world, unless he’s

42 | WRITE NOW

Gone with the Wind—like mostwell told stories—uses characterto propel plot and vice versa. [™ & © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.]

STEVEN GRANT | 43

either going to be brought low or you’re writing a veryboring story, so there will most likely be other peopleand at minimum other forces in his world whose goalswill at least temporarily align or conflict with his. Ispoke of primary and secondary characters; every timeyou introduce one, and answer those three questionsand then start to answer new questions the answersgenerate, each character develops their own plot.Where the plots intersect is the soil where your largerplot grows.

Traditionally every protagonist has an antagonist. Inthe simplest stories, common in comics, either bothare after the same goal (known from Hitchcock as theMacGuffin, the something the characters have anexcuse to fight over) or the protagonist’s goal is tokeep the antagonist from attaining his goal (TheShocker wants to rob a bank because that’s what hedoes; Spider-Man wants to stop him because that’swhat he does). Those are plot-driven types of stories:in either the structure of the story determines the overall arc of the character’s behavior, and, windowdressing aside, any character used in them is basically interchangeable with any other character used in them.

On the other hand, it’s how the characters play in

them that distinguishes one storywith that framework from thenext, which is why one story maybe far more memorable thananother with basically the sameoverall plot. It’s all in the details. Itstill all comes down to characterin the end. How your charactersact on the worlds they exist in, areacted on by those worlds, and thereactions of each to the actions ofthe other are your story. This canbe as simple as a super-hero fightwhere a villain hits a hero and thehero hits back or as complex as apolitical chess game betweenopposing sides of a major publicissue, or two expert generals oneither side of a war manipulatingwhole battlefields.

The main thing to remember is that conflict isdrama, and, as mentioned before, there are threekinds of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs.himself. Adversaries need not even be traditional enemies; loved ones in adversarial relationships arethe stuff of many stories. Breaking away from traditionalconcepts of hero and enemy can increase conflict, asAkira Toriyama plays with consistently in Dragonball:no matter how much martial artists respect andadmire each other, only one can win the title of TheStrongest Under The Heavens, and it’s the emotionalcomplexities of the players, and their struggles againsttheir own perceived weaknesses as exposed in combat,as much as the fight scenes that makes Dragonballa success.

As you develop your plot, which can simply beunderstood as the string of events that carries yourstory from start to finish, or the sequence of obstaclesand resolutions that a character or characters experi-ence on the way toward the achievement of their goal,a number of things must constantly be kept in mind.Unless you’re writing a story that calls for randomaction—they exist, but they’re tricky—all events addedto your plot must serve several elements of your story

A superhero-supervillain confrontationis always more satisfying when a character’s motivations are multi-dimensional, as in this Spider-Man vs.Shocker battle in Amazing Spider-Man#46. Script by Stan Lee. Art by JohnRomita, Sr. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

MIGHTY AVENGERS NUTS & BOLTS | 51

PAGE 13

4- Ext. Street- same

Ultron takes Sentry's blow. Catching it. Slamming into it with her hand hard.

1 - ULTRON

Robert...

2 - Spx: smackfoom

3 - ULTRON

Your physical defeat has been calculated...

5- High looking down, Sentry, still being held by Ultron, looks up in horror. A big shadow covering half

hid face and its not raining on him anymore.

4 - ULTRON

And executed.

The Mighty Avengers launched out of the finalissue of Marvel’s Civil War (#7) and was formed byTony Stark as a government-sponsored super team.

Here we have some of Brian Bendis’ scriptand Frank Cho’s art (his inks over his pencils) forTMA #3. The issue pits the Avengers against anew version of Ultron, and she is a foe to beware—and yes, we said she.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

52 | WRITE NOW

Brian favors writing full scripts (scriptscontaining each panel’s action and copy) anduses modified screenplay formatting, whichemploys a “slug line” to give the setting of ascene, and then just a few lines to describe theaction in each panel. Dialogue and soundeffects are then centered on the page.[© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Page 14-

1- Ext. S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier- day

Big panel. Over the Sentry's head, looking straight up. The massive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier is heading for

him/ us.

Ultron is throwing it at him. Shooting it at him.

2- Int. Helicarrier science center- Same

Maria hits her head hard against the console. The monitors are flickering Ultron's face. Some are in and

some are out.

Some show ULTRON, some show the devastation. People are falling all over each other. Wonder-man has

grabbed Black Widow and a science tech. Wasp is floating and dodging chaos.

1 - Spx: clang

2 - S.H.I.E.L.D. DEPUTY COMMANDER MARIA HILL

Agh!

3- Ms. Marvel lifts her head up among the chaos. Ares is on top of her. Everyone struggling with the

gravity and free-fall. To barks an order.

3 & 4 - MS. MARVEL

Simon!

Go!

4- Ext. City- Same

High looking down.

The Sentry is flying right for us with genuine panic in his eyes.

Powered, ready for what he has to do, a god moment. Backlit to lighting that is bolting sideways. A real

Superman moment. If superman was actually cool.

He is tearing up through the battered caverns of the city.

mike w. barrMike was a long-time DC Comics writerand short-time DC Comics editor with twinpassions for Star Trek and mystery fiction.He was the debut writer for DC Comics’run of Star Trek and has also written theTrek novel Gemini.

peter davidThe self-proclaimed writer of stuff’s creditsinclude a well-regarded run on DC’s versionof Star Trek in addition to numerous novelsfor Pocket Books. He also co-created thefiction-only series Star Trek: New Frontier.

michael jan friedmanA novelist who is also a Star Trek fan, Mikesold one story to Pocket Books, whichbrought him to DC’s attention, and hebecame a successful writer for them in the1980s and 1990s. Mike has written countlessnovels for Pocket Books and more recentlyhas tackled the Wolfman, Aliens, andPredator for DH Books.

glenn greenberg“I am a former editor and writer for MarvelComics, which is where I wrote the StarTrek: Untold Voyages limited series.Currently, I’m an editor and writer forScholastic Inc. and a recurring writer forSimon and Schuster’s Star Trek: Corps ofEngineers line of e-books. My first e-book hasalready been published, and I’m currentlywriting my second one.”

andy mangelsA long-time fan, Andy turned his passioninto a career as a comic-book writer, critic,historian, and novelist. He and writing partnerMichael A. Martin have written for several ofthe Trek franchises at Pocket Books.

martin pasko“I have more experience than I’d care toadmit with branded entertainment propertiesin a variety of media. While still in myteens, I began a comics career working formany publishers, including a long associationwith DC, both freelance and on staff. I’vealso written and story-edited for TV, bothlive-action (Twilight Zone, Max Headroom,Roseanne) and animated (the originalBatman [The Animated Series] and manyother series). After a long stint at DC as aneditor and Creative Services manager, Inow freelance and run my own consultingbusiness, creatively developing clients’ toyand game properties into story-drivenentertainment. I’m told I’m the only oneon this panel to have written both the Trekcomic books and the comic strip, as well ashaving supervised the comics’ productionas an editor.”

laurie sutton“I’ve written DS9 for Malibu and Voyager forMarvel, and have enjoyed being an editor forboth DC and Marvel. I first encountered theonce-in-a-lifetime, original-run Star Trek in1966 when I was 13 years old and visitingBrownsville, Texas, while on a family road tripvacation (our own ‘trek’ if you will!). It wasdinner time and we were all going to godown to the Holiday Inn restaurant, but thisprogram came on the TV and that was it forme! I was fascinated, entranced, hooked! I satlike a five-year-old with my face as close tothe screen as possible. Thank goodness myparents observed the obvious and let memiss dinner and watch the show. Theirsimple, single ‘indulgence’ set the course ofmy life, to a large extent. If they’d made mecome to dinner, I might not have followed theTrek path with the sort of joy and freedomI have to this day.”

len weinLen can count among his earliest comicswriting assignments several issues of GoldKey’s Star Trek title. Years later, after co-creatingSwamp Thing and serving as editor-in-chief atMarvel and Batman editor at DC, Lenreturned to the 23rd century with a multi-issue stint on the title, in time to celebratethe series’ 20th anniversary.

howard weinsteinAt 19, while attending the University ofConnecticut, Howard sold the script to “ThePirates of Orion,” which was aired duringthe second season of the animated Star Trekseries (now available on DVD). Additionally,he provided story help to Star Trek IV: TheVoyage Home. He subsequently wrote severalnovels and short stories for Pocket Booksand Star Trek comics for DC, WildStorm, andMarvel.

ur sister publication, Back Issue, published part oneof a writers roundtable discussing the joys and pitfallsof adapting Star Trek from screen to comic book.The discussion over there included topics on going

from screen to print, working with licensing restrictions, therole of the artist on such a property, and how the various

companies that have handled Star Trek through the yearshave been to work with. Of course, the preceding summaryis no comparison to actually reading the first part.

So let’s get re-introduced to the participants, and thenget back to the discussion…

—DF

STAR TREK WRITERS ROUNDTABLE | 55

Conducted via e-mail by Robert Greenberger, October through December, 2006.

O

star trek WRITERS ROUNDTABLE PART TWO(CONTINUED FROM BACK ISSUE #23, NOW ON SALE)

a quick introduction to the dramatis personae:

Leonard Nimoy (Spock) andWilliam Shatner (Kirk) in a recent

photo marking the Original StarTrek TV series’ 40th anniversary.

[© 2007 Paramount]

Greenberger: Each Trek ship has its own crew, butsometimes you need to add to the complement inorder to tell your story. Are you better off grabbing anobscure character from one episode or creating yourown recurring ensemble to pick from?

Sutton: It depends on who you grab!!! Barclay was a goodone—so many paranoias upon which to play!And, honestly, what reader is going to care aboutUnknown Red Shirt Shot by Phaser? Personally, I utilizedthese sorts of throwaway characters as mouthpieces toadvance the story. (Then there was the time that I inventeda character to honor a friend of mine and the editorialvision went elsewhere! *another sigh* ) But to answer thequestion directly: In order to tell the story, use the characterwho will do so to best advantage, known or invented.

Greenberg: I’ve tended to use pre-established characters,no matter how obscure. I think it’s fun to take abackground or minor character that you’ve seen but knownothing about, and provide some history or characterization.In Untold Voyages, for example, I used the alien ensignthat Uhura scolds at the beginning of Star Trek: TheMotion Picture. Remember him? He defends CaptainDecker after Kirk assumes command of the Enterprise,and Uhura tells him, “Our chances of returning from thismission in one piece may have just doubled.” I gave hima name—Ensign Omal—and had him substitute for Spockas Science Officer when Spock was away on leave.

Weinstein: Depending on the story, either or both. Oneenjoyable aspect of doing the comics (and print fiction)is the chance to take a minor character from TV or a

movie and make that person a real 3-D character.But it’s also fun to make up brand new characters,since we couldn’t make any mold-breaking changes tothe series regulars (though I enjoyed giving secondarycharacters like Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and Saavik biggerroles than they ever had in TV/movie Star Trek).

Pasko: With the original series, budget limitations usuallyprecluded going much further than pointed ears and blueskin in the depiction of aliens (this was long before thelater features and the other four series, whose FX budgetsallowed for a wide range of non-humanoid crewpersonsand aliens). And even Star Trek: The Motion Pictureincluded odd-looking aliens only as background extras inwalk-bys or in the scene on the massive rec deck setwhere Kirk addressed the assembled crew. So I was waryof trying to invent new supporting cast except as throw-aways (killed or moved off the Enterprise by the end ofthe issue), and tended to keep them humanoid to avoidviolating the “feel” of the source material at that time.I kept remembering those multi-armed and animal-basedaliens Filmation created for that dreadful pseudo-animated show. They just felt “wrong” to me, and I didn’twant to make the same mistake. Today, of course, I’d beFerengi-ing it up along with everyone else.

But I think your question really has more to do withhow the writer is structuring the comics series than thecharacter mix; the considerations you raise come into playonly if you’re structuring the book as an ongoing soapopera, which I didn’t. Otherwise, Roddenberry’s old“Wagon Train to the stars” pitch provides the answer: theship’s size is such that around any corridor is a previouslyunseen crew member (or prisoner/passenger/guardian of

special cargo, etc.) who provides the jumping-off placefor a story. Wagon Train, after all, was more

like an anthology show with Ward Bond andthe other regulars wrapped around the gueststar’s story like a framing device, and in his

original conception, Roddenberry wasenvisioning a science fictional equivalentof that (the second pilot and the firstseason’s “Charlie X” are perhaps thepurest examples of how that structureplays). It’s been said that it was NBCwho steered Roddenberry towardmore conventional formatting.The only advantage of comics over

film that I felt I could leverage was thatI could call for menaces—as opposed to

supporting cast—that were more visuallyspectacular and larger in scope than theoriginal series’.

56 | WRITE NOW

Though the original Trek series wascancelled after just three seasons,Captain Kirk and the crew of theEnterprise found themselves back inaction in a Saturday morning animatedseries which reunited most of the cast ofthe original series and ran for 22 episodes

during the 1973 and 1974 TV seasons.[© 2007 Paramount]

STAR TREK WRITERS ROUNDTABLE | 57

Barr: Depends on the needs of the story. New crewmencan sometimes reveal something new about establishedcharacters, but sometimes a story has a need that onlyreviving an established character, with his/her baggage—Kevin Riley, Tonia Barrows, etc.—can serve.

David: I think the best approach is to use both.That’s what I did with NewFrontier. John Ordover,in hiring me for the gig,suggested using several one-shot or occasional characters,such as Shelby and Lefler andSelar, to intermingle with thewholly original characterswho were going to populatethe ship. That way thelong-time fans have a vestedinterested in characters they’vemet before, and at the sametime will become invested inthe new guys.

Wein: Generally, some obscurecharacter from some episode.I won’t be seeing any licensingrevenue from anyone I create,so why help fill Paramount’scoffers?

Mangels: Mike and I did acombination of adding newcharacters and spotlightingobscure characters in all thestories we wrote—in addition tocovering core characters, ofcourse. It’s made difficultbecause of that old jugglingjob of moving establishedcharacters forward when theycan’t move forward becausethey’re on a show still airing.The key in creating newcharacters is to not allow them to overshadow the maincharacters (as I feel some DC books did in the past),but to add flavor and further interaction to your main cast.

It was also fun to explore the secondary characters.Paramount wasn’t quite as restrictive with whatyou could do with them, as long as you didn’t godrastic with things that might be contradicted onthe show. Our last DS9 story was a very taut thrillerwith Garak, and allowed us a lot of exploration ofhis history.

Friedman: As I started writing the ST: TNG comic, itbecame pretty clear that Paramount didn’t want usinventing new characters. Later on, we had a lot morefreedom. However, I enjoyed mining episodes forsecondary characters to use in my comic stories, likeLt. Rager, Sonja Gomez and so on. I wrote one standalonestory in which someone’s murdering Starfleet engineers,so I was able to mention some of Geordi’s predecessorson the Enterprise-D.

Greenberger: Klingons or Romulans?

Sutton: I like the visuals of the Romulans. They havesuch a sexy, subdued elegance. But I like the Klingons ascharacters because they are so no-holds-barred medieval.

Greenberg: Hmmm… if you put a gun to my head, Iguess I’d have to answer Klingons. But I’m using theRomulans in my next e-book.

Weinstein: Klingons. That may be because the later TVseries and the movies included much more culturaldevelopment for the Klingons than for the Romulans.Romulans pretty much were pills, but Klingons are fun.Any characters who get to say things like “I’ll cut out hisheart and drink his steaming blood” are fun to write!

Pasko: I was allowed to use only the Klingons becausethe Romulans hadn’t appeared in the feature film. But Ialways thought both races were overused, when the coreideas of the property—especially its notions aboutintergalactic diversity—offer limitless potential for all sortsof antagonists, especially recurring enemy alien races.(And, of course, the spin-off shows took greater advantageof that built-in value by creating many more recurringantagonists such as the Borg.) But of the two groups you

In addition to scriptingmany Star Trek comic

book adventures,Peter David has written

more than two dozenStar Trek novels

including the NewFrontier series, whichis based on a concept

he conceived withJohn Ordover.

[© 2007 Paramount]

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

Edited by top DC and Marvel Comics artist MIKE MANLEY, the Eisner Award-nominated DRAW!magazine is the professional “How-To” magazine oncomics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue featuresin-depth interviews and step-by-step demos from topcomics pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling, aseach artist invites you into their studio to reveal theirworking methods and tricks of the trade!

Issue #14 features in-depth interviews and demosby DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE (JLA, Batman,Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein, Superman, JusticeLeague Elite), OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WBAnimation), and STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max).Then, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS bring youPart III of COMIC ART BOOT CAMP: “UsingBlack to Power up Your Pages”, covering the bestways to use black placement to enhance and kickup the energy in your pages. Plus, there's a colorsection, a new MAHNKE cover, and more!

(88-page magazine) SINGLE ISSUES: $9 US

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US:$26 Standard, $36 First Class (Canada: $44,Elsewhere: $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

NOTE: Most issues contain nudity for purposes of figure drawing. Intended for Mature Readers.

DRAW! #8MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT &

ROB CORLEY, ALBERTO RUIZ

DRAW! #11STEVE RUDE, JIM BORGMAN,

ROQUE BALLESTEROS

DRAW! #13ALEX HORLEY, KYLE BAKER,

COLLEEN COOVER, BRET BLEVINS

DRAW! #10RON GARNEY, GRAHAM NOLAN,TODD KLEIN, MARK MCKENNA

We hope you enjoy this FREE DRAW! #14 PREVIEW!

DRAW! #14 Preview 71

Conducted by Mike ManleyTranscribed by Steven Tice

Doug Mahnke is an artist’sartist. He does all of the

hard things well, and makes itlook easy. He’s one of the rareartists in the medium ofcomics who can flex betweenfunny, fantastic action and hor-ror. From Seven Soldiers ofVictory: Frankenstein to TheMask, Major Bummer,Superman: Man of Steel andthe JLA, Mahnke’s powerfulfigure work has always stoodhead and shoulders abovemany other artists working inthe field. It’s not surprising tofind out that the man whodraws such powerful anddynamic heroes is also a com-petitive power lifter. DRAW!Editor Mike Manley catchesup with this busy artist andfather of six from his homestudio in Minnesota.

BATMAN ™ AND©2007 DC COMICS

DRAW!: What is your typical workday like?

DOUG MAHNKE: It has varied quite a bit over the years,but I’ve settled into some fairly regular habits, as it has becomeobvious to me what gets the job done. I could divide this upinto two different days, which is the productive day vs. theunproductive day. They do their best to coexist, although I feel

the unproductive day always gets the better deal as the produc-tive one has to pick up the slack.

Productive day: I get up by 5 a.m. and go right down to thestudio. The first thing I tend to do is turn on the computer tocheck e-mail and let my brain warm-up by visiting some of myfavorite sites, all of which tend to be weightlifting-oriented. By6:00 or 6:30 I get to work penciling or inking, whichever is the

priority at the moment. I might just sit in silence or turn on theradio. I get into ruts where my “atmosphere” is concerned, andwill go for very long stretches doing one thing then suddenly shiftand do another. It might be talk or sports radio for a month orthree, then some local music station for a while, then I might lis-ten to a Greek or Italian station on the net for days. I will also putin a movie to keep me company. Most recently on a long produc-tive day—which actually stretched into two days—I watched thefirst season of The Beverly Hillbillies over and over again. I’m notactually watching it very often, just listening to it. Oddly, I didthis recently with the Jet Li movie, Hero, which is in Chinese.

As I sit and work I hear the house wake up, as one after anoth-er my six kids and my wife rise until the house is full of noise.Usually after seven I go upstairs for a quick breakfast with the fam-ily, then back downstairs. It might be a bowl of oatmeal and someeggs or a protein drink. Coffee is a major player in myregular day, although I try to drink green teanow and then at the recommenda-tion of DC editor PeterTomasi. I also drink YerbaMate. The bottom line is

caffeine, which I am pretty sure is the secret to the success of thehuman race as we know it. Back to work after breakfast, and I try toget at least one page finished by 10 a.m. I eat a snack then... proba-bly a piece of fruit and more protein. Back to work and try and geta little more done before lunch, which can happen at any timebetween 11:00 and noon, or whenever my kids have lost theirminds with hunger. After lunch I will goof around on the computerfor a little bit, but I keep it down on productive days. I find keepingoff of the computer the best way to get work done. The computercan kill your day. I don’t play any games or do much with it, buttime flies even when you’re looking for reference.

After my goof-off time, it’s back to work, which will be moreof the same, penciling or inking. If everything has gone well, aproductive day can have me finished with my work by 3:30. I’llknock off then and lift weights until supper. I don’t have a set pat-tern for the amount of penciling I will do before inking, although

I do know it’s best for me to mix the two, so I can makerealistic projections of when I can finish a page.

Unproductive days for me are almost identical toproductive days, except everything is slower. I get towork later, I eat longer, I linger on the computer, Iget distracted by some pointless Internet thread. Icould be looking up some military reference, thendiscover myself an hour later looking up informa-

tion on the old Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please SitDown cartoon. I might find myself paying too much

attention to some facet of a page that will probably end up coveredin a word balloon, or using some ink that is so thick I can barely getit to pour from the dropper, let alone flow from my nib. Out of afive-day work week, if I have two slow days it takes a couple ofultra productive days to make up the difference. The problem lately

has been to turn the heat up on the productive days, as they feelthey contribute enough. Occasionally I will work late, but I justfunction better in the morning work-wise than in the evening.

Recently I’ve gone through a very long “anti-productive”slump, possibly the worst I’ve had in my 18 years of comic

drawing. I chalk it up to a couple of things... one is comingoff of an enormous productive stretch that lasted a coupleof years and left me mentally exhausted. When I say “anti-

productive” I mean in terms of quantity, asthe quality is pretty high. I also was in a carwreck one year ago on October 14th, whichis the date of my anniversary. My wife and I

were going to go out for a quick bite at oneof our favorite restaurants. To do so we were

driving our kids to my sister-in-law’s place.About one mile away from our home we were

rear-ended, while waiting to turn left off of thehighway. I saw the car coming at the last moment in my

rear view mirror and hit the gas, getting us moving justenough to diffuse a little of the impact. The driver, a young guy,nailed us at 45 to 50 miles an hour. My seat broke and threw mebackwards, the back of my head smashed into my oldest daugh-ter’s head, just above her right eye, severely fracturing her sock-et and the bones on the right side of her face. (I’m happy toreport a full recovery by the way)... it could have been prettygrim. I received a concussion, but being the true professional

totally behind the eightball with a big deadline, I went home that

DOUG MAHNKE COMICS

72 DRAW! #14 Preview

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©2007 DC COMICS