David, Peter. Writing for Comics with Peter David. Cincinnati, OH: Impact, 2006.
Peter David brings his more than two decades of experience as a comics writer, including a well known stint as a writer of The Incredible Hulk, to bear on the subject of writing for comics. David’s book is mainly a guide to writers who want to break into comics, but it’s also written to appeal to comics fans who want a better understanding of their favorite medium.
To some degree, good writing is good writing, so much of the advice David provides could be useful to fiction writers in general. Conflict, character, setting, plot and pacing are things all fiction writers must handle. David draws on examples from other media, especially movies, to illustrate his points.
Even so, comics have there own conventions, traditions and techniques. David deals with some of the unique elements of comics directly such as script style, speech balloons, continuity and writing instructions for artists. Mostly, relevant techniques are dealt with as they arise in discussing writing for comics.
The main audience of the book is writers, so it deals with art, editing and other elements of comics from the standpoint of the writer’s place. All writers need to understand the craft of writing; comics writers also need to understand the craft of making comics since he not only writes a story, but also a script that gives shape to the final product, often page-by-page and frame-by-frame.
David’s advice can be taken more as guidelines as rules. One of his repeated points is to do what works. Even in his own writing, he adapts his script style and level of detail according to the story he is telling, the artist he is working with and the expectations of his editor.
Even though David doesn’t lay out one way, he does show the better ways and the danger zones. Someone wanting to write for comics will find a lot to help him do it well and possibly break into the tight market (including advice from a Marvel editor on pitching a story and detailed script guidelines from Dark Horse).
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Peter David. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Peter David. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran
When a book is entitled Amazing
Fantastic Incredible, Stan Lee must
be involved. That is the title of Lee’s graphic
novel memoir,
co-written with Peter David
with art
by Colleen
Doran, about his long career in comic
books.
Lee has a career in comic books going back the Golden Age.
He started working in comics soon after they became a popular medium. Few
people have had a career in comic books as long as Lee’s, partly because he is
still working. No one has been the public face of comic books, or a spokesman
and promotor for the medium, as much as Lee.
Because Lee’s career in comics is well known, at least among fans, some
of the more interesting parts of the memoir deal with other aspects of his
life. He depicts himself as being crazy in love with his wife, Joan, even after
decades of marriage.
He recalls himself as a lonely kid during the Great Depression,
who took refuge in books and the world of his own imagination. He retelling of
his army service during World War II,
mostly serving as a writer stateside, is mostly humorous.
I suspect Lee’s humor has a lot to do with his popularity. He comes
across as self-aggrandizing with a self-deprecating wink.
Even so, Lee’s status as a comics celebrity has sparked criticism in
some circles. He was the face of Marvel Comics,
and so has taken the heat for the way the publisher treated the artist who
worked for him (comics publishers treated artists shabbily for decades). Maybe
he could have done more for the artists who worked for him, and maybe he would
have been unemployed if he tried. Lee doesn’t get into this matter much, but
when he does he shifts the blame to publisher Martin
Goodman.
Lee addresses some of his most famous characters and the artists who
co-created them. Some might see his recognition of co-creators as a defense
against detractors who say he has claimed too much credit. I think the book
presents the situation the way Lee would like to remember, and the way he would
like others to remember it. I think he genuinely liked and admired many of the
people he worked with. Throughout the book, Jack Kirby is
depicted as handsome, powerful and dynamic, almost like a superhero, even when
there was a rift if their personal and professional relationship.
This is a memoir, not an autobiography.
Lee and his collaborators do not attempt to independently confirm memories,
though they straightforward about some memories being fuzzy. A few scenes a
clearly constructed to present information in a manner more interesting than
direct exposition, though they may have had some root in an actual event. Lee’s
conversations with his boyhood self are plainly fictional; I thought they
tended to be the weakest parts of the book, though they were functional.
Fans of Lee will probably enjoy the book. Someone who wants a brief and
easy history
of comics, and isn’t too concerned about the lopsidedness that would naturally
come with Lee’s perspective, might also like it. Lee would know, he was there.
Stan Lee also wrote Spider-Man with Steve Ditko. Peter
David also wrote Writing for Comics with Peter David.
If you’re interested in this
book, you may also be interested in
Lee, Stan, Peter David & Colleen Doran. Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir. New York: Touchstone, 2015.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
300 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews
I’ve
posted reviews of 300 books on this blog. It’s hard to believe. Here are links to the 50 most recent posts.
Further down are links to more reviews.
First
Time Reviews
Additional
and Expanded Reviews
Continuation
of list of 250 books reviewed
Saturday, February 18, 2017
400 Books Reviewed on Keenan's Book Reviews
I’ve
posted reviews of 400 books on this blog. It’s hard to believe. Here are links to the 50 most recent posts.
Further down are links to more reviews.
First
Time Reviews
The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology
by Maxwell Maltz
Continuation
of list of 400 books reviewed
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe
Marvel
Comics has a long history in comic
books, especially superhero
comics. It’s first superheroes, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, debuted in
1939 and the
company is currently unrolling popular series of films based on a The Avengers,
a superhero team that first appeared in comics in 1963.
The extended, interconnected, iterative melodrama of Marvel’s comics is
a complicated fictional world. The real-world company has a complicated
history, too. It started as a scion of a pulp
magazine publisher
seeking diversify and is now a part of media powerhouse Walt
Disney Company. Sean Howe
provides a detailed history
of the company in Marvel Comics: The
Untold Story.
Howe divides the history of the Marvel into five major ages. He
discusses the early history of the company, but Marvel as we know it today
could mark its origins in the resurgence of superhero comics of the early 1960s, after a
post-World
War II slump that all but the most popular titles.
The succeeding ages roughly correspond to the decades. The 1960s marked
the birth of modern Marvel. The 1970s were a time
of artistic experimentation when comics, especially Marvel, were embraced on
college campus and in the counterculture.
In the 1980s,
kids who grew up reading Marvel became adults writing
the comics. It was also a time when corporate culture began to consume the
company—though the priority of making money, executive interference and
possibly shady business was something that went back to the days of the pulps.
This decade also marked a change in the way comics were sold, shifting from
newsstands and grocery-store spinners to specialty shops, which created
opportunities and problems for comics publishers.
The 1990s
was a period of excess. Comics creators were finally making money (at least
some of them were), but old contentions between publishers—especially
Marvel—and writers and artists
led to the rise of superstars spinning off to publish works to which they would
retain the rights. The growth in comics collecting encouraged marketing
practice, especially at Marvel, that eventually led to a bust.
Throughout this time, Marvel’s various owners had been attempting to
transition the company from a comics publisher to a media company that
leveraged its intellectual property in many ways. In the 2000s, Marvel has
done that. A criticism
often leveled against Marvel today is that the comics are driven by decisions
to make the characters marketable in other media, especially movies
and toys.
Comics have come a long way since I started reading them as a kid. For
one thing, they cost 10 times as much. Howe wraps up with the opinion that
Marvels products are better, and in some ways I agree. However, I think comics
often uses the words mature and adult when they are simply prurient, and that
the improvement in printing quality is not always accompanied by improvements
in story or art. I have mixed feelings about the multi-issues stories designed
for collection into graphic novels aimed at book retailers, but I think the
event-driven mega-crossovers that have become standard for Marvel and DC don’t move
me much—I’d rather read a good short story than an overblown novel.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Howe, S. Marvel Comics: The
Untold Story. New
York: HarperCollins,
2012.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
200 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews
First Time Reviews
365 Thank Yous by John Kralik
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Acts
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Batman created by Bob Kane
Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil
The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski
Exodus
Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall
God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson
The Gospel of John
The Gospels
Have a New You by Friday by Kevin Leman
Histories and Fallacies by Carl R. Trueman
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
How to Write & Present Technical Information by Charles H. Sides
How to Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
In the Beginning by Alister McGrath
Jonah Hex created by John Albano and Tone DeZuniga
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
King James Bible
Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnet
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson
Numbers
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
Paperboy by Henry Petroski
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel
Romans
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore
The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu
Thanks! by Robert A. Emmons
True Blood by Charlaine Harris
The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw
Vital Friends by Tom Rath
Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone
War Against the Weak by Edwin Black
Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick
Writing for Comics with Peter David
Zorro created by Johnston McCulley
Additional and Expanded Reviews
The Holy Bible
Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Tomie de Paola
Continuation of list of 200 books reviewed
First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100
Reviews 101-150
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor
Stan Lee
is the face of comic
books to many and has become a sort of celebrity in
his more than 70-year long career as a storyteller.
He began to hone his image on the college lecture circuit in the 1960s while he
created a new type of superhero,
typified by the Fantastic
Four and Spider-Man,
in collaboration with artists including Jack Kirby
and Steve
Ditko. It was a role Lee was ready for; he had been trying out ways to
promote comic books and himself since the 1940s.
Bob
Batchelor presents Lee’s life in Stan
Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Though not a long biography,
it starts with Lee’s childhood in New York City
and runs through his 95th year, when he is still producing ideas for
comics and television.
Lee was present nearly at the beginning of comic books. He started as
an assistant to Joe
Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain
America. When they moved on after contentions with Timely Comics,
a forerunner to Marvel,
Lee stepped up to become editor while still a teenager.
Lee was ready to quit comics by the time the 1960s. He craved to work
in a respectable field and was tired of chasing trends. The right combination
of opportunity and encouragement from his wife pushed Lee to write the kind of
comics he would want to read, and it became a sensation.
Though Lee will always be associated with Marvel comics, by the 1980s his focus
was shifting to television and film.
It was a rough transition for Lee, but he had some success, especially in the
production of animated
adaptions of Marvel characters that were popular in the 1990s.
Lee has stumbled some in his post-Marvel career, notably the debacle of
new media company Stan Lee
Media. He seems to have recovered somewhat with POW!
Entertainment.
Lee has detractors, which Batchelor acknowledges. Batchelor doesn’t
refute those detractors, but his take on Lee is overall very positive. Lee
appears to be someone who tries not to be tied down by his past, neither
dwelling on his failures nor being content with many successes.
Lee was a central figure in creating some of the most popular
characters and stories in the world. Well into his 90s, he is still working and
coming up with ideas that find their way into print, television and the Internet.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Batchelor, Bob. Stan Lee: The Man
behind Marvel. New York: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2017.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
250 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews
Since starting this blog, I've posted reviews of 250 books. The most recent 50 are listed below in alphabetical order and their are links at the bottom of this post for a continuation of the list of all 250 books.
First Time
Reviews
Additional and
Expanded Reviews
Continuation
of list of 250 books reviewed
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