Write Now #20

Spring2009

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WILL EISNER

FRANK MILLER

WILL EISNER

FRANK MILLERMICHAEL USLAN

COLLEEN DORAN

#20Spring2009

#20

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ISSUE!

MICHAEL USLAN

COLLEEN DORAN

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WRITE NOW | 1

MAGAZINE

Issue #20

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: [email protected]. 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:[email protected] All characters are TM & © their respectivecompanies. All material © their creators unless otherwisenoted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorialpackage is ©2009 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrowsPublishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a sharedtrademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing.Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

SPRING 2009

Conceived byDANNY FINGEROTH

Editor-In-Chief

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

Managing EditorROBERT

GREENBERGER

Consulting EditorERIC FEIN

ProofreadingERIC NOLEN-

WEATHINGTON

DesignerDAVID

GREENAWALT

TranscriberSTEVEN TICE

Circulation DirectorBOB BRODSKY,

COOKIESOUPPRODUCTIONS

PublisherJOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To:ALISON BLAIRETOM BREVOORT

KIA CROSSDEBORAH DEL PRETE

F.J. DeSANTOWILL EISNER

MARK EVANIERDAVID GREENAWALT

KATE HUBINSTEVE KANEDAVID HYDE

ADAM KERSCHDENIS KITCHENJACKIE KNOXJIM McCANN

FRANK MILLERERIC NOLEN-

WEATHINGTONCHRIS POWELL

BEN REILLYALEX SEGURA

VARDA STEINHARDTSTEVEN TICE

MICHAEL USLANSTEVE WACKER

THE SPIRIT SECTION begins on page 3

He Dared Evil on a Dark KnightInterview with Frank Miller ................................................................page 4

Keeping the FaithInterview with Michael Uslan ............................................................page 6

THE SPIRIT NUTS & BOLTSThumbnails to Pencils to Script to Finished Comic:WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT #24Pages from “Veterans’ Benefits,” by Sergio Aragonés,Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin and Wayne Faucher..............page 18

Producing ResultsInterview with F.J. DeSanto ..............................................................page 25

Odd Lot PerspectiveInterview with Deborah Del Prete ................................................page 30

Not-So-Secret AgentInterview with Denis Kitchen ..........................................................page 32

Will Eisner and the Art of AdaptationN.C. Christopher Couch looks at a pair of Spirit stories........page 36

The Spirit of Comics!Interview with Will Eisner(re-presented from Write Now! #5)..............................................page 43

On the Creator’s Life:Interview with Colleen Doran..........................................................page 51

Being Discovered… Again… and Again… and Again…Alex Grecian on breaking into comics—several times ............page 65

Nuts & Bolts DepartmentScript to Thumbnails to Pencils to Finished Comic: AMAZINGSPIDER-MAN #574Pages from “Flashbacks,” by Marc Guggenheim, Barry Kitsonand Mark Farmer ................................................................................page 60

“But What Does Danny Think?”Danny Fingeroth sums up seven years of Write Now! ..........page 69

FeedbackLetters from Write Now!’s Readers ................................................page 71

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While the impetus for focusing on the Spirit in this issue of WriteNow! was the recent Frank Miller-directed movie, I never need muchof an excuse to spread the word about Will Eisner and his creation.The things Eisner discovered, invented, interpreted and demonstratedover his long career are every bit as relevant to established andaspiring comics writers and artists today as they ever were.

In the pages that follow, we hear from some of the key peoplebehind the movie (Eisner-fanatics all); from a few of the creators onthe current run of Spirit comics; from Will’s longtime publisher andfriend; from a critic who has given eye-opening attention to Eisner’swork; and, finally, from the Master himself, via an interview I wasfortunate enough to be able to do with Will in 2003.

Eisner called the comics supplement he supplied to newspapersThe Spirit Section, and that seemed an appropriate title for this seriesof features that follows. I hope you enjoy Write Now!’s own “SpiritSection.”

—Danny Fingeroth

S E C T I O N

THE SPIRIT SECTION | 3

RANK MILLERchanged the waycomics are done,

starting with Daredevil,moving on to re-visionBarman in The DarkKnight Returns. Other tri-umphs for the writer-artist included MarthaWashington, 300, and, ofcourse, Sin City, whichwas turned into a sleep-er-hit movie which he co-directed. A longtimefriend and colleague ofWill Eisner, Miller was thenatural choice to bring TheSpirit to life as its writer-director.

Frank took a few minutes to give us talk to usabout the character and the film…

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first discoverThe Spirit, Frank? Which characters and stripsappealed to you?FRANK MILLER: I first discovered The Spirit when Iwas on a bicycle when I was 14 years old pickingup comic books and discovering the works of WillEisner who I thought was a new guy who wasblowing everybody else out of the water. Then Idiscovered it was all written and drawn before Iwas born. So yeah, that’s how I discovered TheSpirit. My favorite characters were the Spirit him-self, Commissioner Dolan and Sand Saref.

DF: Please talk a little about your process of usingart from the Spirit comics to do storyboards. How didyou go about picking stories, scenes and characters?How did you come up with the idea to do that in thefirst place?FM: I drew my ass off. I did not use Eisner’s artworkexcept as inspiration for the director of photographyand for the crew and for the actors. But I did not

Conducted via e-mailby Danny FingerothDecember 4, 2008

F

He Dared Evil on a Dark Night:

THE FRANK MILLER INTERVIEW

The first The Spirit movie poster. Art by Frank Miller.[© 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark isowned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patentand Trademark Office.]

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[© 2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.]

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION

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ICHAEL USLAN is the producer on The Spirit,and shepherded the project along for morethan a decade. He’s also executive producer

of all the Batman films, including 2008’s box-officephenomenon, The Dark Knight.

Michael is a writer, producer, and entertainmentlawyer, with a list of awards including an Emmy, aPeople’s Choice and an Annie. Among other achieve-ments, Michael is also the man who brought Stan Leeand DC Comics together for the historic Just ImagineStan Lee Creating the DC Universe line of graphicnovels (as recounted in detail in Write Now! #18).

His many comics writing credits include the Batman:Detective #27 graphic novel, and an upcoming arc inDC Comics’ The Spirit series.

I spoke to Michael over the phone in the periodleading up to the release of The Spirit movie. Whilethe main topic was the creation the movie’s script,needless to say, our conversation digressed here andthere, in what I think were productive directions. Hisinfectious enthusiasm for the project—and for every-thing he works on—comes through loud and clear inthis wide-ranging interview. Enjoy!

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: Thanks for taking the time to talkabout The Spirit, Michael. You’re credited as the pro-ducer. But, like most movies, this one has other folkswho wore producers’ hats and I know you’re eager togive them credit.MICHAEL USLAN: F.J. DeSanto’s a co-producer, LindaMcDonough is a co-producer. Producing with me is theutterly amazing Deborah Del Prete and Gigi Pritzker.And executive producers are my wonderful, wonderfulmentor Benjamin Melniker, and Steve Maier.

DF: I guess I’ll start at the beginning. When did youfirst see The Spirit comic? Was it like the rest of us, in

Jules Feiffer’s book, The Great Comic Book Heroes?MU: Y’know, that’s been a source of debate betweenme and one of my best friends, Bobby Klein. Bob, whois now a genius at Intel, was my comic book buddygrowing up, and to this day we, from time to time, co-write introductions for DC Archives editions. We justdid a piece for Roy Thomas’s TwoMorrows’ All-StarCompanion Volume 3, so we still dabble in it togeth-er. Bobby and I have been debating that, and there arethree possibilities. I thought it was the Feiffer book.Bobby thinks that it was the Help! magazine reprintthat came out in 1962. And I can’t tell you for sure.Bobby does make a strong case that it was the Help!magazine first. And then after that, the early Spirit sto-ries I saw would be the ones in the New York HeraldTribune, then the two Joe Simon-edited reprint issuesover at Harvey. Then there were “The Spirit Bags”reprints. And then, by the time I got to high school, the

Conducted via phone November 6, 2009 by Danny FingerothTranscribed by Steven TiceCopy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, Bob Greenberger and Michael Uslan

M

KEEPING THE FAITH:

THE MICHAEL USLAN INTERVIEW


Spirit appeared on the cover of the undergroundcomic, Snarf, I believe, and then had the two fifty-centissues of his own, if memory serves me. By then I hadlatched onto other Eisner stuff. Bobby’s father workedat the Fort Monmouth army base, so we were privy toWill’s PS Magazine, also, on a regular basis.Something that we saw really early on may have pre-dated all of this—but it wasn’t Eisner. Bobby and I usedto go to a flea market, Collingswood Auction, near ourhomes, near Asbury Park, New Jersey, and every Fridaynight they had a backdate magazine stand there, andthis guy would come in from New York with boxes andboxes full of old, old comic books, and because theywere old, he sold them for a nickel apiece.

DF: Who would want old comicbooks?MU: Right. And it was in thatbatch, for five cents, probablysometime around maybe 7thgrade, that I got an IW or aSuper reprint titled DaringAdventures with the Spirit in it.It was definitely not Eisner, butthat might have been my first, orone of my real early, looks at theSpirit as a character.

DF: The Feiffer book came out in’65, and it was definitely my firstawareness of the character.MU: Well, no matter which onesmay have been in what order, itwas certainly the Feiffer bookwith the color insert that wasthe one that had the impact.

DF: When did you meet Will?MU: I met Will when I was ateenager. As you know, I was atthe very, very first comic bookconvention ever held, whichwas in New York City, July,1964. Bobby Klein and I wentthere. My parents took us. It was at a fleabag hotel onthe Bowery called the Broadway Central—which latercollapsed on itself! My mother was appalled. We hadto step over unconscious drunks in the hallway inorder to check in. There were roaches on the wall.

DF: That was probably better than conscious drunks.MU: [laughs] Sure. That was the first convention, therewere 200 of us there. A few years later, I think it was

the convention in—I want to say ’68, but I don’t havethe con booklets in front of me—where Eisner made anappearance. I don’t know that it was the first big conthat he did, which I think came later, but at one ofthose conventions when I was in high school I didmeet Will just as he was being exposed to this thingcalled comic book fandom. I had a chance to hear himspeak, and to talk to him, and that, to me, was thebe-all and end-all, because as I began to go to theseconventions, that’s when I began to see The Spirit.That’s when I saw the inserts and expanded myhorizons in terms of this character, and began torealize that what Orson Welles and Citizen Kane areto cinema, that is what Will Eisner and The Spirit are

to comics.

DF: Did you have a friendshipwith him then?MU: I just sort of met him.We didn’t really develop arelationship until about 1994,when I got a call from Will. Heindicated to me that StevenSpielberg’s people and someother people in Hollywood hadcontacted him about the possi-bility of doing The Spirit as amovie. And, being the business-man that he was—and he wasa great businessman—he did alot of investigating, and spoke toa lot of people, and he saideverywhere he spoke to people,my name kept coming up. Andhe said, “I know you wentthrough hell and it took you tenyears to bring a dark and seriousversion of Batman to the screenthe way Bob Kane and BillFinger and the gang had intend-ed him to be, as this creature ofthe night stalking criminals fromthe shadows. And everyone tellsme you love comics, you know

comics, this is your passion. Is this something youmight be interested in?” I said, “Yeah!” So my businesspartner Ben Melniker and I met with Will at theHarvard Club on 44th Street shortly thereafter, and wehad a wonderful meeting of the minds. I think Willrealized at that point the unbridled love I had forcomics, and the passion I had for The Spirit, and myunderstanding of Will’s work on The Spirit. And slowly,over a period of time, he and Ben worked out the

Will Eisner firmly embraced the independent spirit(pun intended) of the underground comix, licensingDenis Kitchen to reprint some Spirit stories in 1972’sSnarf. Eisner also provided this new, then-topicalcover to the issue. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

MICHAEL USLAN | 7


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terms of the deal—which was always interesting to sitin on, because, from time to time, the two of themwould start speaking Yiddish to each other, and Iwould be sitting there picking out a word here, and aword there, and wondering what was going on. ButBen and Will had a very, very good understanding.They were roughly the same age.

DF: Is Ben still active?MU: Yeah. Ben is 95, and the other day, when it wasnice out, he was playing 13 holes of golf. Ben is a leg-end in the motion picture business.

DF: How did you become involved with Ben to beginwith?MU: When I initially began tonegotiate with DC for the rightsto Batman in early ’79, I knew Icould not do it on my own. Yes,I was now an experiencedmotion picture production attor-ney having worked for three-and-a-half years at the onlymajor studio at the time basedin New York City, which wasUnited Artists in its heyday. But Iwas too emotionally involved. Ineeded somebody who couldget in there and negotiate thedeal without just saying yes toeverything in order to get itdone. And I needed somebodywho knew how to mount a pro-duction, because I had beenlearning how you produce andfinance films, working at UA,where I was in charge of legaland business affairs over a num-ber of really great pictures—thatgave me my training, includingearly Rocky pictures, BlackStallion, Raging Bull,Apocalypse Now, which was a crisis every day ofwork. Interestingly, because they all knew at UA I wasa comic book buff, anything that was comics-orientedwound up on my desk, and for a long time we hadSheena, Queen of the Jungle—a character Will creat-ed—in development over there, and it was left to meto attempt to untangle the copyright morass and thelost history of Sheena. I spent an awful lot of timedoing that, dealing extensively with Will’s former busi-ness partner Jerry Iger, also with Thurman Scott, whoused to own Fiction House, and I talked to Will from

time to time, and to some of my buddies who werecomic book historians to make sure I was on the righttrack. It’s funny how life works, but there are manyinteresting ways that, either directly or tangentially, WillEisner’s path and mine crossed.

DF: So you were telling me how you got involved withBen Melniker.MU: At the time, I was reading about Ben every day inthe front page of Variety. He was setting motion pic-ture history back then. First of all, as a backdrop: Benran MGM for 30 years. He started with them in 1940,and was with them until about ’72. Ben put togetherthe deals for Ben Hur, Dr. Zhivago, 2001: A Space

Odyssey, Gigi, and all theirmusicals of the ’50s and ’60s. Itwas Ben who had the dealingswith Stanley Kubrick and DavidLean, and was in charge of allthe David O. Selznick picturesfor them. He negotiated GraceKelly’s contract with her dad. Henegotiated Elvis Presley’s con-tract with Colonel Tom Parker.And it goes on and on and on.

DF: Sounds like an amazingguy. Now, to bring things backto The Spirit… Eisner calledyou, which is fascinating. Thatmust have been an incredibleexperience and a tribute towhat you had accomplished.MU: It was a really, really coolthing that happened, and it wasbecause of the success of thefirst Batman movie, andbecause of the people that heknew in the comic book indus-try, in particular, who pointedhim in my direction, that said,“This is the guy who has under-

gone a human endurance contest for the ten years it tookto bring Batman to life as a dark and serious movie.”So we met, we hit it off, we had an understanding.Then it took some time for Will and Ben to work outthe details. And we knew. And I told Will that this wasgoing to be a challenge, a long-term thing, because theSpirit is a guy in a fedora and tie, without superpow-ers, without all the toys and gadgets and vehicles, whohas heart and soul, who has the human interest ele-ments of Frank Capra, the film noir elements of OrsonWelles, the suspense elements of Alfred Hitchcock, all

Eisner’s cover to 1940’s Eisner & Iger Studios-pro-duced Jumbo Comics #15, featuring his creation,Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The Spirit debuted inthe same year. [© 2009 the respective copyright holders.]


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DC Comics is currently producing amuch-praised run of new Spirit stories bytop creators. Here, we see the cover toWill Eisner’s The Spirit #20. It’s penciledand inked by Paul Smith, of Leave it toChance fame.

Here’s the first page of Sergio Aragonés’thumbnail drawings to the issue’s story. Sergio’sfamous self-caricature makes the page more thanjust information. It’s a welcome to co-creatorsMark Evanier and Chad Hardin. But the page alsocontains important information as to where pen-ciler Chad will find reference for the art that—starting on the next page—Sergio has sketched in.

[© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]


THE SPIRIT #24 NUTS & BOLTS | 19

Sergio and Mark are longtime collabora-tors (on Groo and many other projects).Here’s how Mark describes their workingprocess for this particular story:

“Sergio made up a storyline and wroteit out in his way. Sometimes, when wework together, we discuss the plot inadvance and sometimes, we don't. TheSpirit has generally been one of the‘don't’ cases. I’ve had almost no input intoany of the stories before they're drawn.

“Sergio’s version was sent to the editor, JoeyCavalieri, who sent it to the artist, Chad Hardin,and I got a copy either from Joey or Sergio.Chad penciled it his way, then turned it in toJoey, who sent the art off to the inker and aXerox of the pencil art to me. Once I got it, Ihauled out my copy of Sergio’s breakdown andused it as a guide to help as I composed copyto fit what the artist had drawn. I think I had tophone him once or twice to ask about certainstory points.”

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F.J. DESANTO | 25

.J. DeSANTO is co-producer of The Spirit movie. Hehas a number of motion pictures currently in develop-ment including The Shadow (Columbia Pictures)

which he is co-producing with Michael Uslan, Sam Raimiand Josh Donen, Shazam (Warner Bros) with Peter Segaldirecting, Doc Savage (Branded Entertainment), Sabotage(iNDELIBLE Entertainment), and Loony (iNDELIBLEEntertainment). Also, he co-produced the animated direct-to-home DVD Turok: Son of Stone (Classic Media) whichwas distributed by the Weinstein Company. In 2005, heserved as an assistant to the producers of Constantine(Warner Bros).

He has been responsible for acquiring, developing andmaintaining a large slate of projects based on comicbooks, graphic novels, manga and anime while also over-seeing deals with writers, agents, comic book companies,creators and movie studios. Before joining iNDELIBLEEntertainment in 2008, he was the Senior Vice Presidentof Production and Development and Producer for ComicBook Movies Inc., and spent nine years as Vice Presidentof Development for Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker(Executive Producers of the Batman franchise).

F.J. is also a comic book and manga writer. He has writ-ten an original manga based on Star Trek: The NextGeneration for TokyoPop, for release in 2009, and is a co-writer (with Michael Uslan) on an arc of The Spirit for DCComics. He is currently developing several graphic novelprojects for 2009.

I spoke with F.J. in his iNDELIBLE Entertainment office inOctober, where we talked about the creation The Spiritmovie, as well as many other topics.

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: You have an interesting overall takeon The Spirit movie, F.J. Please share it with the WriteNow! readers.F.J. DeSANTO: The movie, to me, feels like, if Frank Millerwere to do a Spirit graphic novel, this would be it. It’s fil-tering Eisner through his eyes and pen—you’ll see framesof it that look exactly like something Frank drew, and that’sexciting.

DF: Tell me a little bit about the origins of the movie.FJD: Michael Uslan can give you the better details, butwhen I started working with Michael, which was at theend of ’94 or the beginning of ’95, he had just gotten therights from Will. Because of the success of Batman, Willunderstood that Michael had the proper love and under-standing of The Spirit. As a kid, I’d always see the charac-ter at conventions and stuff, but never knew much abouthim. But then, obviously, being in an office with Michael,there were comics, and I spent a good portion of my firstcouple months there just reading everything, starting withThe Spirit Casebook, and then the Warren Spirit reprintsThose were my education. The Spirit Casebook is huge.This is the Kitchen Sink book, and that’s what Michaelwould use a lot of, because the story “Ten Minutes” was init, and a lot of the other main Spirit stories. From thatpoint on, I watched Michael for years trying to set thismovie up, from the time I started as his assistant, andthen eventually his head of development, and then thehead of production. When I was pitching it myself toplaces, I was amazed at the complete lack of understand-ing people would have of the character. But we pitched itactively for a long time. And, believe me, people madeoffers. There was a prime-time animated series offered by

Conducted October 27, 2008, in person, by Danny FingerothTranscribed by Steven TiceCopy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, F.J. DeSanto, and Bob Greenberger

F

PRODUCING RESULTS:

T H E F. J . D E S A N T O I N T E R V I E W


26 | WRITE NOW

a big studio. But again, there wereall these little caveats like, “You’vegot to make him a ghost,” or,“You’ve got to put him in spandex,”and it was just literally, “Nope,” andwe’d just walk away. And this hadbeen going on for ten, twelveyears.

DF: Did you guys have an “eleva-tor pitch,” a short summary of theconcept you could give people?FJD: Michael did it best by tellingthem the story of “Ten Minutes,”because it embodied the tone andfeel of Eisner. And there was aSand Saref story. We xeroxed cer-tain stories together, like SandSaref, to show the best of TheSpirit. But the pitch was very sim-ple: “the greatest work in the histo-ry of comics, the Citizen Kane ofcomics.” It was just always present-ed that way, always presented as aguy who has no superpowers, whois a middle-class superhero, possiblythe first Jewish superhero. That washow we pitched it, the average guy protecting his neigh-borhood.

DF: Had many of the producers you pitched to heard ofthe Spirit or Eisner?FJD: It’s interesting. Michael would call this era “theGolden Age of comic book movies,” and it is. But I wouldsay, in my 15 years with Michael, the first five years wasconvincing studio people that the comic book was anacceptable form of source material. And then you had X-Men and Spider-Man. People went, “Oh, these comicbooks are great.” Everybody wanted a comic book proper-ty, but it had to be a superhero. So that was the next fiveyears. And the last five years is when it sort of blew wideup. People became open to stuff like Road to Perdition.“Hey, there’s comics-based stuff that’s not superheroes.”So to the studios now, a comic book is a piece of sourcematerial that’s no different than a novel, a play, or a news-paper article. And now you have guys my age—mid-thir-ties—guys who are now execs, and who now have thatunderstanding about comics, who look at Eisner and thesource material as something to be revered.

DF: So obviously, a Spirit movie this was in the works longbefore Frank was involved.FJD: We went down the road with a bunch of writers. Wewent down many different avenues. But just, look, thisbusiness is silly. A lot of it’s fate, a lot of luck, a lot of it’sputting the pieces together. It really took off once we part-nered with Odd Lot, because it gave us the freedom of anindependent company getting behind it and putting ittogether, as opposed to just, we’re going to set it up at astudio.

DF: What else has Odd Lot done?FJD: They did a great movie calledGreen Street Hooligans with ElijahWood. There was a Jennifer Lopezmovie, The Wedding Planner andsome other movies.

DF: How did Frank become attachedto the movie, and then did he throwout everything you had and comeup with his own story, or did hework with what you guys had beenworking on?FJD: We had always been under theimpression that Frank was going togo do Sin City 2, but suddenly hewas available. And then Michael hadthe first conversation with him, andit just sort of snowballed. It hap-pened very quickly.

DF: Did Will have any input on earlyversions of the story?FJD: Will had passed away beforeFrank came onboard, but we hadspoken with him about the film. Hewas very much like, “Ah, do whatev-

er you want.” But at his last San Diego Comic-Con, in July2004, myself, Michael, Deborah Del Prete, and LindaMcDonough, who’s the other co-producer, along with me,on it—we sat with Will, because we had just finished ourdeal with Odd Lot, and started talking to him. We werejust announcing the project. Jeph Loeb was originallyinvolved, but then he went through that horrible tragedywith his son’s death, and he had to back out. So we satdown with Will, and the only thing he was really adamantabout was, “Don’t make it a period piece.” That was theonly time he sort of got agitated, and he specifically said,“Whenever I wrote and drew anything with the Spirit, itwas of its time. If you go back and look at it, it was alwayscontemporary.” That was the one thing he was really firmabout. “What else, Will?” “Do whatever you want.”

DF: So the story as it appears on screen, where did thatoriginate?FJD: It’s a culmination of Frank knowing what he wantedto do, and then we all discussed it. Everything previous toFrank coming on board was out the door. It was all fromscratch. Frank very much knew from the start it was goingto be about Denny Colt and Sand Saref. Michael and I hada lunch with Frank in midtown when we first started talk-ing about the movie, and he had all these ideas. And Iremember another lunch with Frank—it was me, Deborah,and Linda. They were in New York doing a film, and wemet at a restaurant in Madison Square Park, and Frankcame, and he had stacks of photocopies of Will’s comics.He started shaping the story by going through the Willstuff. Later, I’d get calls from Frank’s office—because I was

Green Street Hooligans was an Odd Lot pro-duction that featured a post-Lord of the RingsElijah Wood. [© 2009 the copyright holders.]


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eborah Del Preteis a longtimecomics fan who

has had a successfulcareer in Hollywood.She’s directed (SimpleJustice, Ricochet River)and has produced overa dozen films, includingThe Wedding Plannerand Green StreetHooligans. She’s apartner (with GigiPritzker) in Odd LotEntertainment, which teamed with Michael Uslanand co. to produce The Spirit for Lionsgate Films.

Deborah took some time to tell me how the script toThe Spirit was developed.

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When Michael Uslan came toyou with what he called “one of the greatest comicsproperties ever,” you knew he was talking about theSpirit. What had been the significance of the Spirit toyou before that?DEBORAH DEL PRETE: I was a life-long comic fan,mostly DC Comics (Superman, Batman, WonderWoman, etc.) but when I started to go to San Diego’sComic-Con when I moved to L.A. in 1992, I discoveredWill Eisner and The Spirit. I was amazed by themature writing and modern style that came from acomic from the ’40s.

DF: From your perspective, how did the script andstory come about?DDP: Basically, I worked closely with Frank Miller onthe script. He wrote a first draft after I told him he hadcarte blanche to use any of his favorite Spirit stories.We agreed it would focus on the Octopus as the mainvillain and the Spirit’s childhood sweetheart, SandSaref.

DF: What were the biggest challenges in adaptingThe Spirit to the screen in terms of overall toneand of the characters’ dialogue?DDP: Taking so much rich material (The Spiritcomics) and boiling it down to one story. Also,making sure it had a contemporary feel.

DF: What kind of notes did you find yourselfgiving on the script?DDP: I gave the kind of notes I always do. I try tospeak for the audience so it’s mostly about whenI think something is unclear or if I think there is alogic issue in the storytelling. I think my mostsignificant notes came after we did the table read.

At that point, I felt we needed two more scenes—oneearly in the film with the Octopus and Silken whenhe’s asking his henchmen why they haven’t foundSand Saref. After I told Frank we needed that scene,he came back withthe wacky “foot thing”scene, which I loved. Ialso felt we needed alater scene with Ellenand Dolan, and onenight Frank wrote thefather/daughter scenethat helps to give theaudience a betterunderstanding of theSpirit’s complicatedrelationships.

DF: How did Frank’sunique approach tostoryboarding helpthe development ofthe script?DDP: Working withFrank is like workingwith no other director.First of all, he com-pletely storyboarded the movie so it made it muchclearer to all involved exactly what he’s looking for.


D

ODD LOT PERSPECTIVE:

THE DEBORAH DEL PRETE INTERVIEW

The Wedding Planner was a hit movieproduced by Deborah Del Prete.[© 2009 the copyright holders.]


32 | WRITE NOW

enis Kitchen began his career in 1968 as a self-published underground cartoonist, leading tothe formation of his pioneer publishing compa-

ny, Kitchen Sink Press. For thirty years he publishedcreators such as R. Crumb, Will Eisner, HarveyKurtzman, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Scott McCloud,Dave McKean, Mark Schultz, Howard Cruse, JustinGreen, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and CharlesBurns. During these years Kitchen Sink won industryawards far disproportionate to its market share, andsometimes more than any other publisher. In 1986 hefounded and for eighteen years served as President ofthe Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a 501 (c) 3non-profit organization dedicated to defending theindustry’s First Amendment rights. Since the demise ofKitchen Sink in 1999, he has diversified his activities.He is a partner with designer John Lind in Kitchen,Lind & Associates and with Judith Hansen in Kitchen& Hansen Agency, literary agencies representingprominent comic artists and writers. He has expandedDenis Kitchen Art Agency (founded in 1990) into anentity exclusively offering original work by Eisner,Kurtzman, Capp and other clients.

Here, Denis takes some time to answer my questionsabout his unique relationship with Will Eisner.

—DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first becomeaware of Will’s work, Denis?DENIS KITCHEN: I was too young to have seen theoriginal Spirit newspaper inserts. I first became awareof Will’s work when Harvey Kurtzman featured “BringBack Sand Saref” in his Help! magazine #13 in late1961. I was fifteen and pretty damn impressed. I don’tthink I saw anything else until Harvey Comics pub-lished a two-issue Spirit experiment in 1966. By then Icertainly wanted to see more, but there was no organ-ized fandom, no reprint programs, no way to even fig-ure out how many Spirits there were. It was a com-plete vacuum except for a handful of fans doingmimeo zines, and I wasn’t in that tiny loop.

DF: How did you first meet Will?DK: I started drawing my first underground, Mom’sHomemade Comics, in 1968, and successfully self-published. Then I started publishing others, the begin-ning of Krupp Comic Works (later Kitchen Sink Press).Phil Seuling, the impresario of the earliest comic bookconventions, became aware of my small Midwest oper-ation around 1970. Phil began distributing Krupp’stitles and also hired me to do custom cartoons for hiscatalogs and flyers. He invited me to be a guest at hissummer 1971 convention in New York City. It was myfirst and, it turns out, Will Eisner’s first convention aswell. I was rummaging through back issue boxes likeany other fan when Maurice Horn, a French comics his-torian, saw my name tag and said Will Eisner was look-ing for me. I assured him he was mistaken, but heinsisted on taking me to meet Will. We met in a privatesuite and, after quick formalities, Will expressedintense curiosity about underground comix: their distri-bution, the freedom, the royalty system, etc.


D

NOT-SO-SECRET AGENT:

THE DENIS KITCHEN INTERVIEW


I explained what we were doing at all levels and hesaid these were all the things he wished he had hadwhen he started. I tried talking about the “old days” ofcomics, a subject I was intensely curious about, buthe’d drop a tidbit or two and kept coming back toundergrounds. It was a pretty heady experience.

Will’s interest was purely academic because he hadn’tactually seen any undergrounds, so we walked downto the dealer’s room where Phil had several tables cov-ered with the latest. Will grabbed one at random,flipped through it and stopped at a particularly explicitand disturbing S. Clay Wilson page. Will blanched. Hehad no idea just how outrageous some comix were. Inormally took glee in seeing undergrounds shock anolder generation, but I was suddenly aghast that I was“losing” Will, the new convert. As we debated the mer-its of complete artistic freedom, a young artist namedArt Spiegelman, standing nearby, joined the fray along

with fans and soon Will, clearly uncomfort-able, excused himself. I didn’t see himagain the rest of the weekend and figuredit was the last time I’d ever talk to him.

DF: When did you first work with him?DK: I followed up the convention with aletter and samples of other comix. I sug-gested he might find them more palatable,which he did. Then I wasted no time. Iproposed reviving The Spirit. He was skep-tical that my hippie market would beresponsive, especially after the Harveynewsstand experiment had failed just afew years earlier, but he agreed to let megive it a try.

DF: What do you think there is about theSpirit that could make the characterappeal to a wide audience?DK: Well, to start, Will’s art is so wonderfulthat it just pulls you in, especially the clas-sic splash pages, the distinctive feathering,the luscious women, the masterful layouts.No offense to Write Now!, but art is theinitial attraction for all comics. Then withThe Spirit you also have the skillful writ-ing, likable characters, memorable villains,concise plots packed generally into justseven pages. You’ve got romance, action,mystery—the whole package. And, as we’veseen, it’s timeless. The Spirit has beenentertaining generations for almost 70years.

DF: Have you been involved in the previousattempts to make a Spirit movie?DK: Not really. At Kitchen Sink I optioned Alan Moore’sFrom Hell, was heavily involved with The Crow, andgot Mark Schultz’s Cadillacs & Dinosaurs on CBS, butWill regularly optioned The Spirit on his own duringthe nearly 30 years that I was his publisher. Thatincluded the made-for-TV movie. When Mike Uslan’sgroup exercised their option a dozen or so years back,they tied it up until the movie Frank Miller just made.So when Kitchen Sink went under in 1999 and my rolechanged to being Will’s art and literary agent, the diewas already cast in terms of The Spirit in Hollywood.However, my partner Judy Hansen and I are working todevelop certain of Will’s graphic novels.

DF: What was your involvement with the current Spiritmovie?DK: Hands off. I’ve met with the producers and Frankand saw his script drafts, but I’m not in the movie

Eisner did a new cover for the first Kitchen Sink Enterprises-published issue ofThe Spirit magazine, which picked up the numbering from the WarrenPublishing run. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

DENIS KITCHEN | 33


ike most creators, especially of pop-ular culture, Will Eisner’s Spiritstories would often reference

well known works of fiction as wellas celebrities from all fields. Eisnerwas saturated in the works of O.Henry and Guy DeMaupassant,among many others, as well asin the popular radio, music, andmovies of his time. Part of thefun of reading The Spirit iscatching Eisner’s cultural refer-ences. (“Awesome Bells,” forinstance.) In a few cases, though,Eisner made a point of adaptingspecific stories to comics form in thecontext of a Spirit tale. Here, comicsscholar N.C. Christopher Couch exam-ines those cases, and along the wayshows us how Eisner used his literaryinfluences to inform The Spirit ingeneral. It’s a great insight into Eisner, and into the artand craft of comics writing in general. Enjoy!

—DF

When Will Eisner was offered the opportunity to createhis own weekly comic book as a newspaper supplementin 1939, he jumped at the chance. He would suddenlyhave the same kind of autonomy that many newspaperstrip artists enjoyed—the comic would be circulated by asyndicate, and overseen by comics publisher Everett“Busy” Arnold, but effectively Eisner would be his owneditor and publisher. The proof would be in the pud-ding—if the supplement was successful, if enough news-papers bought and kept it to make a nice profit for allconcerned, then it was a success. But it would all be inEisner’s hands. He would create the lead feature—TheSpirit, of course—and oversee the backup stories thatwould fill out the book.

Before starting The Spirit, Eisner sold his interest inthe Eisner & Iger Studio to his partner, Jerry Iger, andeffectively abandoned the business of creating original

content for newsstand comic books. Thestudio had been very successful, produc-

ing lots of memorable properties andmaking Eisner remarkably financiallysuccessful for one so young; he start-ed in comics at age 18, and wasonly 25 in 1939, when he left thestudio to create The Spirit. Ofcourse, he couldn’t turn out athree-feature weekly comic book byhimself, especially since he was alsomanaging the enterprise. He essen-tially organized a new studio, and he

and Iger worked out an amicableagreement about which artists might

follow him, and which would stay withhis former partner. If The Spirit somehow

failed, then Eisner would be in an excellentposition to return to packaging contentfor comic books. In fact, as it turnedout, “The Spirit,” “Lady Luck” and other

features created for the comic book supplement werelater reprinted in a variety of Quality comic books. AfterEisner returned from service in World War II, his Spiritstudio was used more and more to produce licensedcomics, including P*S Magazine for the Army. EventuallyEisner dropped The Spirit altogether to concentrate onthis kind of contract work, which was much more prof-itable in the booming postwar American economy (andpost-Wertham comics industry) of the 1950s, the periodthat Henry Luce called “The American Century.”

If Eisner was doing so well in creating original materialfor comic books, why did he move on to doing a comicbook newspaper supplement? There was no hint in 1939or 1940 that comic book sales were going to do any-thing but grow. (Later in his career, Eisner would say,“I’ve seen this industry die three times!”, but there wasno hint of that then.) The explanation Eisner has offeredmost often is that he wanted to create comic books forreaders who were more intellectually adult than thoseattracted to comic books. But why did he expect to findsuch readers among the consumers of newspapercomics? Weren’t these also read by children? The stereo-

36 | WRITE NOW

by N.C. Christopher Couch

L

WILL EISNERAND THE ART OF ADAPTATION

N.C. Christopher Couch by James Barry.[© 2009 James Barry]


type is that the Sunday papergets split up among the fami-ly, Dad reads the front page,business and sports, Momreads the “ladies’” sections,and the kids go for thecomics. Didn’t MayorLaGuardia read the comics tothe kids over the radio duringthe New York newspaperstrike? Where were the adultreaders Eisner was looking for?

They were there; the Sundayfunnies offered a variety ofstrips, aimed at a variety ofdemographics. Bringing UpFather and Gasoline Alley, withtheir humorous but also movingand realistic depictions of familylife, attracted male and female,adult and child readers. LittleOrphan Annie captured theattention of the nation, and itspolitical content attracted thecommentary from newspapers aswell as huge gouts of mail. Andthe adventure strips, from MiltonCaniff’s atmospheric Terry and thePirates to the lush and sensualFlash Gordon of Alex Raymond, could appeal to anyonewho went to a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. movie, which waseveryone. So the adult readers were there, if Eisner couldonly reach them, if he could just get them to pick up the“Comic Book Supplement,” as The Spirit sections wereoften labeled in a box at the top left.

His first answer to this problem—attracting the read-ers—is well known. He created the amazing splash pagesthat the feature is famous for. (These engaging splashpages, which Eisner said were designed to get readers tostart reading as soon as they saw the supplement, werelimited to The Spirit and never appeared in any of theback-up features like Klaus Nordling’s Lady Luck.) Ofcourse, once he had the readers hooked, Eisner had togive them something that they would read, and comeback to read again the next week. And if he was lookingfor adult readers, as he has so often said, he had to givethem something they wanted, something familiar butnew at the same time. And Eisner had an answer forthat: he gave them short stories, and not just crime andmystery stories, although there were plenty of those, butshort stories in a variety of genres, told in a variety ofvoices, running the gamut from comedies to ghost sto-ries to parables.

This was something readers weren’t getting in the

Sunday funnies, either. In the 1930s,the great adventure strips had conti-nuities that ran for two months ormore. Even the family strips, likeBringing Up Father or The Gumpsmight have stories that continuedover weeks and months. GasolineAlley famously featured characterswho grew, changed and aged atthe same pace as the calendartime in which the strip ran (andcontinues to run). Most humorousstrips, however, confined theirstories to each daily or Sundaystrip. There really was nothingequivalent to a short story in thenewspaper funnies. The stripswith longer continuities werenovels, or perhaps novellas,while the single-strip storieswere more like jokes or vaude-ville routines or, perhaps whenthey were at their best, poems.

But short stories were every-where in comic books. Theyweren’t usually very differentfrom each other. Otto Binderand C.C. Beck brought humor ofa delightful, self-deprecating sort

to the adventures of Captain Marvel, and Dada playletsas good as those of Ring Lardner appeared in the PlasticMan stories of Jack Cole. But mostly the short storieswere crime stories, where a mystery would be solved,and the costumed hero would right the wrong and bringthe criminal to justice. They were often inventive, as writ-ers like Batman’s Bill Finger came up with a hundred dif-ferent and colorful story settings, and equally clever vil-lains to defeat. But the stories simply didn’t have therange and resonance of the kind of fiction that Eisner, aswell as Finger and other voracious readers among theearly comics creators, like Jerry Robinson and Jack Kirby,were finding in the collected works of a Poe or a Bierceor an O. Henry.

In 1948, Eisner actually chose to adapt two stories byAmerican masters into The Spirit. A close look at how hedid this can help illuminate his working methods, andalso help highlight some of the reasons the stories inThe Spirit were so inventive and influential.

When, in the summer of 1948, Eisner adapted thesetwo short stories, he presented them as the Spirit’schoices, selected “from his vast library of mystery andintrigue, the works of classic masters in the field.” Eachadaptation begins with a dramatic splash page showingthe Spirit preparing to read the story to Ebony. The first,

In P.S. Magazine, Eisner used appealing illustrationand commonplace situations to help train soldierson how to handle preventative maintenance oneverything from engines to sun block. Here’s hiscover to 1956’s issue #44. [© 2008 copyright info.]

WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 37


EISNER | 43

The Spirit of Comics!

DANNY FINGEROTH: I want to thank you for taking the timeto do this interview, Will. What are you working on right now?I know you’re in the middle of a project.WILL EISNER: I just completed a book that Doubleday is pub-lishing called Fagin the Jew. It will be published inSeptember, I believe. I just sent off the final art the day beforeyesterday.DF: That’s not part of the DC Library?WE: DC lost the bid on it. They wanted it, but Doubledaymade me an offer I couldn’t refuse. DC always gets “first look”at any graphic novel I do.DF: And are you starting something new now?WE: Well, I always have... I have a file here that says “do menow.” [laughter] I’m just starting another book now.DF: My understanding is that you don’t like to talk about proj-ects you’re working on.WE: I generally don’t, and the reason for it is it dilutes itself ifI talk about it, because while I’m working on it, I’m developingideas and so forth. It just dilutes itself in my mind.DF: At this point, how many hours a week do you devote towork?WE: I work pretty steadily. When I’m not traveling, I work fromnine to five.DF: Wow.WE: Every day, five days a week.DF: What, you take the weekends off? How dare you? [laughs]

rom the dust jacket of the hardcover The SpiritArchives, currently being published by DC Comics:

“Will Eisner’s career spans the entire history ofcomic books, from his formative days in the 1930s throughthe 1940s, when he revolutionized narrative sequential artwith his internationally famed series, The Spirit, to the 1970s,when he created the contemporary graphic novel form. Inaddition to his award-winning graphic novels, he is the authorof the influential study Comics and Sequential Art.”

Or, as Dennis O’Neil says in his introduction to DC’s upcom-ing The Will Eisner Companion by Chris Couch and StephenWeiner:

“Will Eisner is an Artist.

“He has a vision ofthe human conditionand the means to com-municate that vision tous. It is essentially atragic vision, though nota morose one, and thatmay be why he nolonger does melodrama;in the world that Willhas been presenting forthe last quarter-century,problems are not solvedby violent action and big, fluffy endings are impossible. This isour world, focused and purified and magnified, displayed forour amusement…

“There aren’t many analogies, either inside or outside car-tooning, for what Will does. We’re not discussing caricaturehere—rather, something like caricature’s smarter older brother,a graphic strategy that not only exaggerates the exterior butuses exaggeration to suggest the interior.”

To which allow me to add: Will is one of the few titansabout whom it can truly be said that, without him, therewould be no comics artform and no comics industry.

It was one of my life’s honors to conduct this phone inter-view with him.

—DF

Writer’s Block in a Spirit splash from 1950. Story and art by Will Eisner.[©2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

THE WILL EISNER INTERVIEWConducted via telephone March 26, 2003 by Danny FingerothTranscribed by Steven Tice / Copy-edited by Will Eisner

This interview first ran in WN! #5. It seemed appropriate to representit in this Eisner-centric issue. It stands up to—and actually gets evenbetter with—repeated readings. Enjoy!

—DF

F


44 | WRITE NOW

WE: My wife says Saturday and Sunday are her days.DF: Well, that seems to work for you. I’m going to ask you abunch of questions that range from the pretentious to thepicayune. So if there’s anything that you think is too stupid toanswer—WE: I’ll give you stupid answers.DF: Thank you. [laughs] Well, okay. You’ve been doing comicsand graphic storytelling for an amazingly long time and yourstuff is still wonderfully fresh, innovative and exciting. Wouldyou say there is an overall theme or purpose or direction inyour work, from the beginning to now? Or has it changedover the years?WE: Well, the direction has always been to explore areas thathaven’t been explored before. I guess that’s the way to put it.I believe that this medium is a literary form and that it has notbeen used as fully as it could. So all of my experience, all thethings I’ve been involved in since 1950, certainly, have beenan effort to employ this medium whose language is sequen-tial art—that’s the medium that we’re talking about—in areasthat it had not tried before. For example, when I was in themilitary between 1942 and 1946, I realized that the mediumis usable as a teaching tool, very effective as a tool. So I soldthe military on the use of that. It was very successful. I went

back to doing The Spirit, by 1950 I realized I had done all Iwanted to do on The Spirit, and the opportunity to expandinto teaching material with sequential art presented itself. So Istarted a company producing instructional material in sequen-tial art, or comics, as you might call it. It lasted for about 25years, and then in 1972, ‘73, I stumbled into Phil Seuling’sconventions and discovered that the underground artists—I’mtalking about Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman and SpainRodriguez and Denis Kitchen and a couple of others—werereally using comics as a pure, literary form, in that they wereaddressing the establishment mores and morals of the time,and that encouraged me to go back to the area where I want-ed to spend my life, which was producing comics or sequen-tial art for adult readers, with grown-up subject matter.DF: Now, the stuff you’d been doing in the interim twentyyears was in comics format but in an educational milieu?WE: Yes, what you might call the comics format. Actually, itwas the sequential art format. It is the arrangement of imagesin a sequence to tell a story, and whether you do them onthree tiers or two tiers, with nine or six panels to a page, isirrelevant. It’s how you arrange the images in an intelligentand readable sequence to convey an idea or tell a story that isreally the heart of the definition, if you will, of what I want todo. And in 1975—or ’76, I guess, somewhere in there—I begandoing what I believed was a novel form addressed to adultreaders. And out of that came A Contract with God.DF: You’d always aimed at adult readers, even with The Spirit.WE: Yes. Writing for young readers was one of the problemsthat I had during the Eisner and Iger Studio years, and one ofthe reasons I went in for The Spirit—which was quite a gam-ble at the time, for various reasons. I wanted to talk to anadult audience. A newspaper readership would give me that. Iwas always very impatient talking to the very young readers. Ididn’t really know what to say to them. [laughs]DF: You mean talk to them beyond just the basics of super-hero action/adventure?WE: Well, candidly, superheroes are one-dimensional charac-ters. You can’t do very much with them. And life experiencesare filled with story material. Everybody’s concerned with sur-vival and the life experience is concerned with that and howto deal with it. So it’s a wide-open area, there.DF: Now, in different hands, these can be very bleak subjects,but you certainly seem to do them joyously.WE: Well... that’s an interesting point you just made, callingthem “bleak.” Every once in a while people do say to me,“Your stories are bleak” or “there’s a noir quality to them.”That’s French, you know. [laughter] I don’t see it that way. Firstof all, I’m not a moralist. I’m not really writing books to definehuman morals. I consider myself doing reportage, reporting tomy fellow man the things I see. I see a man lying in the street,nobody paying attention to him is something I want to turn tomy fellow man and say, “Hey, look at that, look at that. He’slying there, nobody’s paying attention.” The other thing is, Ithink it’s necessary to explore the purpose of life. That’s whatdrives us in living. In one of the books I did, there’s a storycalled “The Big Hit.” At the end of the story, I have this oneguy saying to the other fellow, “Living is a risky business.”Really, the whole business of living and survival is very much apart of how we think as human beings, so if you can talkabout that, it has resonance, it means something. It’s useful.What I want to be is useful, obviously.DF: Do you think that focus, that direction, comes from theDepression era and World War II era experiences?

Pencils for a page from Will Eisner’s graphic novel A Contract With God.This art is among the unpublished pieces to be printed in Dark Horse’s upcominghardcover volume The Will Eisner Sketchbook. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTIONT

WE: Living through the Depression has made me sensi-tive—as it did with all the people who also lived throughthe Great Depression—sensitive to the human strugglefor survival. This is really the heart of all living.Everybody’s concerned with survival. Anytime you dis-cuss it, it is of importance to an adult reader. Now, oneof the problems with writing to young readers is that Icannot discuss heartbreak with a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kid, because to him, heartbreak is if his fatherdidn’t give him the keys to the car or something like that. Ormaybe his girlfriend decided he was a nerd.DF: That’s heartbreak for that kid.WE: That’s heartbreak, true. Youngsters are not concernedwith survival.DF: But, it’s different.WE: It’s a different kind of heartbreak. But in one of mybooks—I think it was A Life Force, where this man is trying todecide what life it all about—I discuss the meaning of living,what is it, what it’s all about. He compares himself to a cock-roach. It gave me a chance, again, to expand the capacity ofthe medium.DF: It seems that certain subject matter that, say, in TheSpirit, you may have been addressing in a more metaphori-cal way, you’ve been getting with more directly, or at leastwith a different sort of metaphor system, since A Contractwith God. In other words, it seems that you did have some ofthose same concerns when you were doing The Spirit, butyour way of dealing with them changed when you “cameback”—what it seemed to the public was coming back—with A

Contract with God and so on.WE: Well, one thing we don’t realize is that the artists andwriters, like everybody else, grow. They grow up. [laughter]

That’s a very interesting point, however, because one of thereasons I never really wanted to do a daily strip was, I discov-ered that daily strips would not allow the artist to experimentand grow, necessarily. He remained pretty much the way hewas when he first started. If you look at the daily strips overthe years, the ones that have survived for 50 years, they’repretty much the same as they were when they started, andthere’s no room for experimentation. The joy, for me... thetruth of the matter is, you’ve got to love what you’re doing,you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing in order to do it well. Ifyou don’t like what you’re doing, you don’t do it well. Nothinggood is ever done without enthusiasm, really. And for me, theopportunity to cut new paths is to try new things. The realexcitement for me is to do something that nobody has everdone before, if I can do it. Unfortunately, it’s very hard toinvent the wheel, because somebody has already done that,but... [laughs]DF: There’s steel-belted radials, though.WE: [laughs] Okay. But the point I’m trying to make is that theexcitement in any medium is to explore new territory, with allthe risk that’s involved. And it’s a great risk, because you couldspend a whole year working on something only to discoverthat it’s a bomb. [laughter]DF: To me, looking at your work over the years, one signifi-cant change is that you yourself describe as going from a cin-ematic style to almost more of a theatrical awareness, wherepeople are more “on stage.”WE: That’s an interesting point, very perceptive of you,because I have always been influenced largely by live theater.And the reason for that is that live theater is closest to reality,and all the work I do is pressing for reality. All my work startsout by saying, “Now, believe me…” Even The Spirit was anattempt to create a believable hero, even though he wore amask, which was kind of an idiot thing. [Danny laughs] I triedto make him believable. Now, the cinematic stuff I did earlyon was really a practical approach, because while you’re writ-ing, in this medium anyway, you’ve got to be aware of the factthat reading patterns are influenced by other media, and inthe ’30s, movies came along and began to influence readingpatterns. They added to the reader’s understanding a wholenew visual language, influenced graphic literacy, if you will.Movies began using the camera as the reader, so to speak. Orthe audience became the camera, and the camera would lookthrough somebody’s armpit, or look down from the ceiling.You had bird’s-eye-views, you had worm’s-eye-views, and soforth. Those are part of the language they were introducing.Speed versus Art in a page from Eisner’s semi-autobiographical look back at the

Golden Age of comics, The Dreamer. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Discussing the meaning of life with a cockroach in A Life Force.[© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

EISNER | 45


ob Greenberger says:

“Colleen Doran has been a writer, artist, illustrator,teacher, mentor and activist since breaking into the

comics field as teen. Today, she is also an influentialblogger and a general straight shooter. I first metColleen at the beginning of her career and we’veremained friends ever since but this was our first realchance to explore many of her influences and feelingsabout the business.”

To which I’ll add that I’ve had the pleasure of moder-ating convention panels on which Colleen has been aparticipant, and her contributions to them alwaysimpressed me with her hard-thought opinions and herability to defend them clearly and passionately. I’mextremely pleased she agreed to sit down and talk toBob for Write Now!

—DF

BOB GREENBERGER: Hi Colleen. Thanks for taking thetime to chat. It’s pretty amazing we’ve known eachother over 20 years. You’ve certainly come a far way.Your interest has always been more fantasy than sci-ence fiction or superheroes, was it that way from child-hood?COLLEEN DORAN: I’m sorry, but that’s just not true.The first comics I ever read were superhero comics, andI developed a love for comics because I had a big crushon Aquaman! Aquaman comics were the first I everbought, and when I made my first money, I got sub-scriptions to Justice League and Adventure Comics,starring Aquaman. My intention was to draw superherocomics eventually. I was in fan clubs and doing APAzines for superhero comics. I always liked them.

BG: Well, I stand corrected. How did you discover comicbooks?CD: Well, when I was very little, we lived in a fairly poorcity neighborhood, and I found some comics under thebleachers at school. I held on to them for dear life. AndI would pick bottles out of the trash to redeem themfor money to buy comics. But when I was really young,we moved out to a small town where there were no

stores and certainly no comics. And I think my parentsthrew my comics out, including my carefully savedSunday Prince Valiant strips clipped out of the news-paper. So, I went for years with no comics, and kind offorgot about them.

Then when I was 12, I got very sick with pneumonia,and a family friend brought me a big box of comics,and I was deliriously happy. I was hooked and neverlooked back! Almost all of them were Marvel superherocomics, but there were some DC Comics in there aswell. I read them until they fell apart.

BG: What led you to pursue a career as a writer/artist?CD: I won an art contest sponsored by Disney when Iwas five. I thought I would go to work for Disney. Andmy mother had been a classically trained artist. Shewas very supportive and used to give me books aboutart, and she gave me drawing paper. My father used to

COLLEEN DORAN | 51

Conducted via e-mailby Robert GreenbergerNovember 2008

B

ON THE CREATOR!S LIFE:

THE COLLEEN DORAN INTERVI EW

give me all his old papers from college to draw on.Almost all of my early drawings are on the back of uni-versity exams. I wasn’t entirely certain it was the sort ofthing people did for a living. I entertained thoughts ofbecoming a doctor or an astronaut along the way.

BG: If I recall correctly, you’re largely a self-taughtartist. Was there ever any formal training?CD: Yes, but not until after I had already become a pro.Of course, I had some college, but a couple of yearsago, I took some time off to take art classes at an artschool—mostly digital classes. I really didn’t get muchfrom the classes themselves, but from the time I got todevote to doing work just as a training exercise. I hadnot had time to simply study in years.

BG: How did you make that essential first sale? Whatlessons can others learn from that experience?CD: I went to a science fiction convention and saw theyhad an art show. I was 15. I thought I could do somework as good as what I saw in that show. So, I wenthome that night, and my mom cut some mats for mydrawings and we put them in the show. And I soldsome pieces. Also, a lady named Linda Wesley had asmall advertising agency, and she saw my work in thatshow and gave me a job.

I guess the lesson is, just get out there and put yourwork in front of people. No one will find you if you aresitting in a corner being insecure about whether or notyou are any good.

BG: A Distant Soil was conceived when you were 12.Is it the same story today?CD: No, of course not! If it were everyone who read itwould run screaming from the comic shop. Maybe theystill do, but they are too polite to let me know.

BG: You broke in in the early 1980s when there werevery few women illustrators. What was harder, being ateen or a woman?

CD: Well, I’d say being a teen, because 15-year-olds arenot women, they are children. Nothing is harder thanhaving to face abuse and discrimination when youdon’t have the faculties to understand it, or to handle it.I think I would have handled everything I experiencedwith a lot more savvy had I been ten years older. As amatter of fact, almost all of the serious problems I everhad in the business occurred before I was 21 years old.Bullies are abusive to people who can’t fight back, andwhen you’ve got some middle-aged editor or publisherabusing you, it’s a very intimidating thing for a kid. Noone pulls that kind of nonsense on me anymore.

I still have occasional problems with this or thatclient, but an adult knows what their rights are, and Ican just pick up the phone and ring my attorney now. Achild does not even know they’ve been taken advan-tage of sometimes, or blames themselves for theirproblems.

Perhaps getting into the business so early was anadvantage in one way, because I do meet some clue-less 30-year-olds who can’t seem to stand up for them-selves, or are incapable of reading a contract. Maybe Igot my school of hard knocks out of the way early, butit’s not an experience I would wish on a kid.

I only regret not confiding in my parents more aboutsome of my problems. I was trying to protect them,because I was concerned about lawsuits and stuff. I hadone publisher threaten to sue my family if I left thecompany, because my family was acting as my manage-ment. That was very intimidating to me as a kid.

Now I know that publisher was full of crap, and I dideventually leave them. I just didn’t know what my rightswere, and tended to blame myself when things wentwrong.

BG: You avoided DC and Marvel and managed toland A Distant Soil with WaRP. Was this your dream

project?CD: I didn’t avoid DC or Marvel at all. As amatter of fact, I was offered a chance to try fora Legion of Super-Heroes gig by Keith Giffenwhen I was a teen fan of the Legion andworking on an APA zine devoted to the comic.I was in several fan clubs, and often went tocomic conventions with superhero art in myportfolio.

However, I had signed a letter of intent for ADistant Soil with a small press, and had to

52 | WRITE NOW

Hal Foster’s classic Prince Valiant strip wasinspirational to the young Colleen Doran.[© 2009 King Features Syndicate.]

stick to my word to go forward with the project, eventhough it didn’t come out for a couple of years. I wouldgladly have worked for DC and Marvel, and began get-ting overtures from both companies in 1983. I begandoing freelance work for DC in 1984, and for Marvel in1986. I’ve been working for them both off and on eversince. If I was avoiding them, I wasn’t doing a very goodjob.

I was quite skeptical about doing A Distant Soil inthe small press, and told my friends not to buy it whenit first came out, because I was not happy with the orig-inal version of the book. I had done some work using ADistant Soil characters for several small press gigs,mostly just pinups and stuff, but nothing was veryimpressive, I thought. I was not at all happy with myearly publishers. They were small press, and not at allprofessional level.

It’s always a dream to work on your childhood projectand see it in print, but it’s better to be published welland to have confidence in the work you are doing. Iwasn’t happy with the result or the publishing circum-stances. A short time later, when I decided to startagain, I chucked everything and started over fromscratch, rewriting and redrawing it all! I am so glad Idid that!

BG: ADS has endured for two decades and multiplepublishers. What speaks to you about the story andcharacters?CD: It’s a labor of love, obviously. It has a great deal ofpersonal meaning for me, not only because it is some-thing I have been working on since I was a kid, butbecause I am very much in love with my characters!They’ve been with me so long that it would be veryhard for me to just walk away from them. The story isfinite, so this is inevitable, but I go slower as I get closerto the end. I am afraid this is separation anxiety! I’veput a lot of myself and my personal experiences into

the tale, and it is a metaphorical exploration of some ofmy feelings and experiences in the science fiction com-munity and growing up in fandom, surrounded by sucha strange group of people, some of whom were verynurturing, and others who were extremely exploitativeand unethical. I think I just expanded on a lot of thatweirdness and let it go in the story. I’ve tried to avoidthe Mary Sue aspect of it, and I don’t really think any ofthe characters resemble me much, but some of my lifeis in there.

BG: Talk to me a little about craft. How do you struc-ture a story? Do you ever have to deal with ideas notflowing—or having too many ideas? Do you write ascript for yourself and then draw or do you plot anddraw as you go?CD: Well, that depends. When I was working for someearly publishers, I had to write everything out, andoften did full script. But later, I decided this was simplyan inorganic and inefficient way of working that wassolely for the publisher’s benefit and did nothing forme.

What I tend to do now is a synthesis of sketches andcopy. I often write free association copy. I almost alwaysdid that in longhand on legal pads, but lately I write onthe computer. After I’ve written my breakdowns, I startdoing thumbnails and script simultaneously. I may evenwrite copy directly in the margins of the original art,and will make changes as I go. I reserve the option ofdoing a complete rewrite directly on the original art.

Being able to write and draw the pages simultane-ously means I tend to avoid those problems you get ina lot of comics where script doesn’t necessarily matchthe facial expressions and body language.

I am pretty happy with the vast majority of the series.I found some bits of dialogue I would like to change inthe final collection, if I ever get around to doing a mas-

COLLEEN DORAN | 53

While still a teen, Colleen saw her creation, A Distant Soil, first published by of WaRP Graphics. She has since gone back to redrawthese initial chapters. Here, her original covers to the first four WaRP issues. [© 2009 Colleen Doran.]

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 2 OF 40

PAGE ONE (6 PANELS)

PANEL 1

Establishing shot of the LANDSTUHL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER

(see Appendix for reference).

LEGEND1

LANDSTUHL, GERMANY.

PANEL 2

Inside now. A wing of the hospital. Wide shot of the wing

with a variety of SOLDIERS in various conditions lying on

beds (see Appendix).

LEGENDDECEMBER.

PANEL 3

CLOSE ON the LRMC SEAL (see Appendix) on a nearby wall.

LEGENDIRAQ WAR, DAY 2026.

PANEL 4

New angle. We’re on the side of one of the hospital beds.

Close enough to the FLOOR to see the crumpled and discarded

HOLIDAY WRAPPING PAPER lying on the floor near the bedside.

Under the bed itself, we might glimpse of pair of ARMY

BOOTS.

SINGING (OFF-PANEL)

It’s evening in the desert...

PANEL 5

CLOSE ON a THE BEDSIDE TABLE next to one of the beds.

There’s a CHRISTMAS CARD standing open on it.

SINGING (OFF-PANEL)

I’m tired and I’m cold...

1 For this issue, could we deviate from our standard Brand New Day font for the

legends and go with either Courier or Times New Roman (or the like)?

PANEL 6

New angle. The “camera” has moved around so that we can

now peek inside the card. The text of the card reads:

Merry Christmas! Hope you don’t have

an iPod. I put a song on it for you.

Seemed appropriate.

You’re missed here. Come back home

soon.

And come back safe, alright?

Your pal,Peter

And the off-panel singing continues...

SINGING (OFF-PANEL)

But I am just a soldier, I do what I

am told...

END OF PAGE ONE

60 | WRITE NOW

[©20

09M

arve

lCha

ract

ers,

Inc.

]

In Amazing Spider-Man #574,writer Marc Guggenheim tells a storythat shows readers what hadbecome of supporting characterFlash Thompson. Flash was servingin Iraq, and his war experiences arejuxtaposed against his memories ofSpider-Man’s unique brand of hero-ism.

Penciler Barry Kitson was challenged to integrate thestory’s two separate aspects, one rooted in real life, theother in superhero fantasy. Here’s Kitson’s cover to theissue. Inks are by Mark Farmer.

The story is written full-script, allowing Kitsonto know how much space to leave for dialogueand sound effects. This splash page, for example,is described, but Kitson added the spider webbackground, linking present-time and flashbacks.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 NUTS & BOLTS | 61

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 4 OF 40

PAGE TWO (5 PANELS)

PANEL 1

New angle. On the bed now. A pair of BRUISED HANDS cradle

an iPOD TOUCH. On the display, we see the graphic for the

song that’s playing:

From the top of the iPod a HEADPHONE CORD snakes up towards

the top of panel.

SINGING (OFF-PANEL)

And I just got your letter...

(cont’d)And this is what I read: You said,

“I’m fading from your memory...

PANEL 2

Reveal the patient: FLASH THOMPSON. The headphone buds in

his ears. He’s singing along. Some bruises on his face.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For the duration of this issue, whenever

we see Flash in his hospital bed, we never see below his

knees.

FLASH(singing)

“...so I’m just as good as dead.”

GENERAL FAZEKAS (OFF-PANEL)

Corporal Thompson?

PANEL 3

Flash is taking out one of the earbuds.

FLASHYeah?

PANEL 4

Two-shot of General Fazekas and Flash. The General is

standing over Flash’s bed.

GENERAL FAZEKAS

General Fazekas. You got a minute or

ten for me?

FLASHSure. I don’t get a lot of visitors.

‘Specially not ones with four stars.

PANEL 5

We can now see that Fazekas is holding a THICK FILE as he

takes a seat next to Flash’s bed. Flash has a thin smile

on his face.

GENERAL FAZEKAS

You mind if I sit down?

FLASHOnly if you don’t mind if I don’t

stand up.

END OF PAGE TWO

[©2009

MarvelCharacters,Inc.]

Kitson does detailed, high-contrast (to show the inkerwhere shadows should be)thumbnail drawings to designeach page. He then transfersthe final design to a penciledpage of artwork, inked, in thiscase, by Mark Farmer.

Note the fact that Guggenheim calls for Flash to be lis-tening to and watching an iPod. Aside from free publicityfor Apple (both in the comic and in WN!), the deviceplaces the hospital scenes in the story firmly in the present.

Also, Guggenheim’s note specifies how Flash is to beshown for all the present-time scenes in the issue. Thisrelates to the surprise ending of the story.

riter Alex Grecian and artist Riley Rossmo arethe co-creators of the Proof series, publishedby Image. (Issue #17 should be out in late

February.) Here’s how Alex describes the inspiration forProof:

“One evening, as my wife and I were having dinnerwith friends, somebody said he knew why Bigfoot had-n’t been captured yet: he works for the government.Everybody laughed and picked up their forks. I pickedup a pen and began writing. The scene I wrote on mynapkin eventually became the opening section of thefirst issue.

“I e-mailed the idea to Riley that night and he lovedit.

“If Bigfoot were real, what would he want? Whywould he work for the government? What would theyhave to offer him? The more I thought about it, themore fully-developed John ‘Proof’ Prufrock became.”

But how Alex got Proof published—what in hiscareer led to that moment—is what I wanted to knowabout. Like everyone else who earns all or part of hisor her living making comics, Alex has his story of whenthat “magic moment” (or series of them) happened,where he went from being an “outsider” to being an“insider” of some kind. He tells that story here.

As with all first-person accounts in Write Now!, theidea behind printing such an article is not so a readercan do exactly what Alex or any other writer did(although attempting to do so would make an inter-esting premise for a story), but to inspire you to lookat your own life, skills, contacts, etc. and see how youmight be able to use them, as Alex used his.

So read and learn (and it wouldn’t kill you to buy anissue of Proof—you might just like it)…

—DF

My goal, for as long as I can remember, was always

to create comics. But I’m pretty sure I took the mostcircuitous route possible to get there.

I can’t point to a single moment and say “that’swhen I was discovered.” But most of the progress I’vemade in my writing career has come about becausethe right person saw my work at the right time. Thecatch, of course, is that I’ve done an awful lot of workthat reached the wrong person at the wrong time. Ordidn’t reach anyone at all. And much of the work I’vedone, work which has fed directly into my writing

BEING DISCOVERED ... AGAIN | 65

by Alex Grecian

W

BEING DISCOVERED…AGAIN…AND AGAIN…AND AGAIN…

Cover to Proof #1, by Riley Rossmo and Tyler Jenkins.[© 2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]

career, seemed at the time to have nothing to do withwriting.

Growing up, I didn’t know anybody else my age wholiked comic books. When I reached that magic point atwhich future pros often begin to specialize, there wasno one else around to specialize along with me. So Idid everything myself. I created my own characters and“revamped” existing characters, wrote stories aboutthem, drew them, practiced lettering... The only thing Ididn’t bother with was coloring. After all, some of myfavorite comics were black-and-white.

I grew up in an environment where creativity wasvalued. My father was (and is) a professional writer, sothat always seemed to me to be an achievable careergoal. I wanted to write the Great American Novel. And,in my spare time, I wanted to draw comic books. So,during college, while I busied myself writing prose, Iput together a portfolio and went about breaking intothe comics industry as an artist. For some reason, itnever occurred to me to combine my two career goals

and concentrate on writing comics. If it had, I mightnot have poured so much energy into drawing them,since that was always the weaker of my creative skillsets.

I met Ande Parks while I was in college. He was onthe verge of breaking into the industry as an inker andhe introduced me to some of his friends. Through him,I met Phil Hester, who was doing some work forCaliber Comics and let me write and draw a two-pagebackup story for a book he was doing called Fringe.That was my first published work (if you don’t countsome uncredited inking assists I did for Ande). I drewpinups for other Caliber books and, after meetingBatton Lash at a convention, sent some pinups and aback cover to him for his series, Supernatural Law.

Batton introduced me to the writer, and soon-to-bepublisher, Nat Gertler. Before I knew it, I was drawingThe Factor for him. Our first Factor story was pub-lished in Negative Burn, another Caliber series, thisone edited by Joe Pruett. The Factor spun off into itsown anthology series through Nat’s new About Comicsline, and I drew more of it, then moved on to drawanother series for Nat. He was incredibly patient as Ibegan to slow down. Each story took me longer todraw than the previous one had and each story lookedworse than the one before it.

I was discovering I didn’t enjoy drawing other peo-ples’ stories. Nat’s a fine writer, but I didn’t want toillustrate his scripts. I wanted to be doing what he wasdoing, not what I was doing. I learned how to format ascript by looking at his and started writing scripts of myown. But I was still concentrating on the wrong end ofthe process by only writing stories I planned to draw. Istill thought of myself primarily as an artist.

Meanwhile, comics weren’t paying the rent. I tookmy portfolio around to ad agencies and print shopsand got some work doing spot illustrations. On thestrength of some brochures I’d designed, I landed aday job working for a printer/publisher, and learnedhow to get magazines ready for the press. That turnedout to be valuable knowledge when I eventually beganputting together a monthly comic book series forImage. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

While I was working in the prepress department forthat publisher, I was still freelancing as an artist andgraphic designer and got head-hunted by an ad agencyfor a full-time gig. I’d done some illustrations for themand had been invited to sit in on a handful of brain-storming sessions as they worked on new campaignsfor their clients. Brainstorming new ideas and fleshing

66 | WRITE NOW

Rossmo and Jenkins’ cover to Proof #2.[©2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]

arly issues of Write Now!contained editorials fromyours truly with the above title.

Hey, I had my name above themag’s logo, so I figured I shouldmake some attempt at providingprofound observations (or some-thing like them) for my readers.

But as the WN went on, I real-ized that I was more interested inthe opinions of the people wewere interviewing and who werewriting articles for the magazine. Ialready knew what I thought! Still,this is my last chance, in this con-text, to comment on the state ofcomics writing, although, I have tosay, I still pretty much feel thesame way:

Comics are an incredible medi-um. They can tell any kind of story, or even conveymood, feelings, and ideas without the need for con-ventional narrative. By the same token, I do feel that awriter who sets out to write genre narratives (such assuperhero stories) has an obligation to his or her read-ers to make stories clear and comprehensible. (It goeswithout saying that the more exciting, intriguing, inter-esting, novel, and colorful and all those other greatthings a story is, the better.)

Job #1 of a genre writer is making sure readersknow who the characters are and what the status quoof those characters is. Everything else takes off fromthere. I’m not advocating doing these basics in a hack-neyed or formulaic way. As legendary editor JuliusSchwartz used to say, “be original.” There are greatcomics that experiment with time and place and char-acter and convention. This is a wonderful thing. But ifyour goal is to tell genre stories to people who likegenre stories—then do just that. Learn your craft. And ifyour editors and your peers—or even your teachers—won’t teach you, read up on what the masters of thecraft have done in the past—and then adapt the princi-ples they used to a modern audience.

So those are Write Now!’s partingwords of advice:

Write well.

There. Got that out of my system.

Now, let’s get to wrapping someother points up…

I think it’s pretty cool that WriteNow! lasted 20 issues, spawned a“Best Of” volume, and a how-to bookand DVD (the latter two with Draw! ’sEIC Mike Manley). I think it’s prettycool that even people who didn’t buyWN knew of it and thought it was thebest magazine about writing comics.That it was the only magazine aboutwriting comics was besides the point.

Write Now! gave a place for peopleto come for information about writingcomics and related media. I was ableto get the best and brightest, as well

as the up-and-coming, to talk about writing and thewriting life in a way that they rarely get to do. We gotpeople to talk about their creative process, and whatthey do to deal with setbacks, and to actually show—with scripts and art—how they pull the rabbits out ofthe hat. To hear that the magazine helped people findtheir own way and their own voice makes me veryproud and happy over what we’ve accomplished.

It’s been a great ride, and there are a lot of peopleto thank. So let me start…

Who Does Danny Thank?

The list has to start with JOHN MORROW. From themoment I called him and pitched the idea for a writingmagazine, he has been nothing but supportive. Johnand the entire TwoMorrows crew—especially ERICNOLEN-WEATHINGTON—have always been nothing buta pleasure to work with. Thanks, folks!

I also have to thank MIKE MANLEY, first for not get-ting ticked (or not telling me if he was) that I got theidea for WN from seeing the great work he was doingwith his TwoMorrows art-oriented how-to magazine,

BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK | 69

E“BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK?!”

It all started here, with Mark Bagley’sincredible cover to Write Now! #1.[© 2009 Mark Bagley.]

Write Now #20

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