(Mar 1983).
GUEST SPOT
Writer + Artist - Editor + Comic Book
by Marv Wolfman
Best known today for his revival of the Teen Titans, Marv Wolfman has been con tributing to comics of all kinds since 1968. After discovering comics through the Superman television series, Wolfman set about to write and edit comics as a career. After discovering that being an art teacher wasn't for him, Wolfman took an editorial post at DC and began a steady career in the industry. Since then, he has written and edited for DC, Marvel and Warren Publishing. At Marvel, he wrote the majority of their top titles and set records for his long run on Tomb of Dracula with artists Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Wolfman is just coming off staff at DC to return to fulltime writing. He currently scripts Superman, his all-time favorite superhero, in Action Comics, Night Force, again with Colan, The New Teen Titans and will soon add The Vigilante and. History of the DC Universe
Like movies and television, comic books are a collaborative medium. In almost all situations you have a number of creators working together, compromising, altering, re-writing and re-drawing. Comics are rarely a single person's vision. With few exceptions you have an editor, a writer, a penciller, letterer, inker and colorist — in that order — producing any one comic. At times one person assumes more than one of these roles, but for the most part these are different people.
Each of these persons has his own vision of what the comic should be. Each knows how the characters should react, how the plots should be paced, how the art should look and how the dialogue should read.
Ignoring lettering and coloring for the moment, we are left with an editor, writer, penciller and inker. When these people work well together, you have a comic will show their care and enthusiasm. Each person adds something to the final product. Each person has made some contribution to the comic’s success.
And when you are working with three or four people, no one person can claim that the success of their comic is solely based on their part. The success is a synergy of talents—where the whole is greater than its parts.
It should begin with an editor who assembles the talent. Some editors have been creative people themselves — Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Dick Giordano, etc. who have been major writers and artists before becoming editors. Others are solely editors— Julius Schwartz, for example, who has not written comics but can rework a script better than most anyone else.
A good comic book editor is almost like a kindergarten teacher who has to coddle the talent, guide them, put them into proper groups where they will work the best, and sometimes, most importantly, keep the creative talent from fighting with each other.
The writer and artists function as a team. Some writers work without ever knowing or meeting their artists. Others work together, plotting out the stories as a team, the-direction of the comic, working out every major detail of the story, every nuance of characterization.
And these days, where the majority of the creative talent are fans as well as professionals, you find a deeper, greater involvement with our material than was probably ever found before.
Because we are so deeply involved with what we do, we often become tunnel-visioned in our goals.
We begin arguing with our collaborators. We start feuds. We mouth off to the fan press. We begin maximizing our own importance and minimizing our fellow collaborators . We tell a sometimes agreeing fan audience at conventions that we are totally responsible for a certain comic and the idiots who work with us, well, they just held us back from making the comic even better.
The fanzines eat up this stuff. It makes for good copy and sales. I'm not putting down their need they serve a definite function, but what happens is that we begin to glorify the vilification of our fellow professionals. People we not only worked with closely but people we have probably become good friends with as well. They are people we've talked with, confided in, bled with, shared the success of a good selling comic with, appeared at conventions with.
But, we came to honestly believe that we—either the writer or artist—are the only functioning person on a team. And that simply put, is garbage.
I said comics is a collaborative visually every successful collaboration is synergistic. In most case, a writer may come up with an initial concept - Hero A fights Villain B. From that point on everything that is done is done as a partnership. If the writer talks out the plot with an artist, there is give and take on both sides. If the writer types out a complete plot, then it’s usually up to the artist to take that plot and pace the story, juggle elements about, remove extraneous material, fix up points the writer may have missed.
The writer then gets back the art and sees that the artist may have either helped the story or hurt it, and then it's the writer's turn — dialogue. Dialogue if properly handled does not refer to the pictures —it doesn’t say words what the artist has drawn — it embellishes the art, plays off the characters, and, if the artist failed to convey a story point, the dialogue has to tell what is missing. Very often—as often as a writer missing a plot point—an artist will not give a writer room for copy on an important emotional scene or a scene in which information must be conveyed. That it comes down to is that neither side is perfect and both sides help each other.
The inker then receives the lettered pages and sees that the artist may have
been rushed and he corrects some anatomy, or fixes the perspective on the
backgrounds, adds blacks, or whatever.
Again, what it comes down to, is that each person is working toward a common
goal.
Throughout comics we have seen the success of a perfect partnership. Siegel and Shuster, Simon and Kirby, Lee and
Kirby, Tho: and Smith, Claremont and Byrne, Wein and Wrightson, and, I hope,
Wolfman and Colan and Wolfman and Perez.
In most cases the talent, the creative people, improved their talents while working with their partner. In all cases, it was these people working together that made their comic succeed. It wasn't the writer alone and it wasn’t the artist alone.
In many cases, these same talents have not had the same degree of success working with other partners or even working
alone.
When I was asked to write a piece for COMICS SCENE to be read by comic fans, I decided to try something different. This really isn’t aimed at the fans. It’s aimed at my fellow professionals.
I am getting very tired of reading the petty bickering and complaints and backbiting that we have about each other.
Frankly, I don’t think the fan market is the place we should vent our spleens. It doesn’t serve the complainer well, and frankly it minimizes you as a person. You are not the only reason for a magazine's success. You may be vitally important, but you didn’t do it alone. Chances are, without the person you were working with, the book would not have worked as well. You may not even have improved as readily if you hadn't worked with someone who challenged you and tried to expand your perimeter.
I am asking you, the creative talent, to stop these public attacks on someone who was not only your collaborator but most likely your friend. Yes, problems between creators will arise, partnerships will end, friendships may wither and turn into something less than friendly, but let's keep this private, shall we?
Work not on diminishing your partner but on improving yourself.