Great article, Karen (he write as if that were the exception, though of course it's not.) The "authorship question" can indeed be complex; there's no one way to answer it.
One standard in "mainstream" comics, of course, is that the writer writes a full script, then the artist translated that script into its visual/comics form. (I cannot bring myself to write "illustrate," as this translation does far more than simply illustrate the script. Do the director, cinematographer, set designers, actors, etc. just "illustrate" a film script? A better word than "translate" [which I've grown to dislike while writing those last three sentences] might be "complete.")
In the 50s/60s, at least at DC, often the editor would dream up a plot idea, or writer and editor would hone ideas together, then the writer would write the script, then the artist would "complete" it. Sometimes the prompt was simply a cover image - the writer would need to write a script that managed to incorporate that cover-depicted situation. ("OK, instead of showing Superman *fighting* a super-gorilla, on this cover Superman has *become* a super gorilla! Now make that work!")
Sometimes those scripts are very bare-bones, indicating perhaps a number of panels per page, but not layout. Others are shall we say more descriptive (although not necessarily more directive). Take Alan Moore's scripts, which are famously uber-detailed. Steve Bissette is currently discussing Alan Moore's first SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING script (for issue #20, reprinted for the first time in DC's newest SWAMP THING reprint series), as well as how the artists interpreted it. (Damn, there's another term!) Bissette, like Moore, is not undetailed when it comes to writing [litotes]; his three installments so far reveal a great detail of collaboration, not subservience, between writer and artists - a real "give-and-take" which a reader of the scripts alone might not believe possible. See http://srbissette.com/?tag=saga-of-the-swamp-thing-20
There's also the mainstream "Marvel Method," where the writer gives the artist just a plot, anywhere from a scene-by-scene breakdown to a simple paragraph. The artist then is responsible for breaking down that plot, creating the focus and pacing, supplying visual details - even sub-plots, or even all the important plot points" - and then the writer/scripter gets the boards (or the computer files) and then adds words to the pages. (Hence the vociferous debates like "Did Kirby or Lee really 'write' Fantastic Four?" which continue to be waged by fans and scholars). I'm not positive, but I believe this approach is much, much less common today than it was in the 60s-70s-80s.
There's at least one book on creating comics in which a number of artists are given the same script and asked to illustrate/translate/complete/interpret/draw it. The results vary wildly. Each artist discusses their artistic approach, what to emphasize, how to pace the narrative, how to determine what things should look like, etc. I want to say this book is PANEL DISCUSSIONS, published by TwoMorrows, but that book is buried somewhere in my office and I can't check it right now.
And of course there's the auteur method, with one cartoonist both writing and drawing. I've read countless interviews with various cartoonists about their process: some write a script first, some do visual breakdowns first, some can't even answer the question because their process is utterly organic.
...um, what was my point again? Oh yeah: You're absolutely right about the SKIM situation; even if the script was Moore-ian in its detail, the artist brings as much to the table as the writer, and certainly should be a co-nominee.
WOW. That is one comprehensive comment, Gene--thanks!
It's true that the question of authorship is...fraught. I was tempted to bring in a whole mess o' Derrida theory about the nature of the author, but then I realized I'd have to READ a whole mess o' Derrida to do that, so I changed my mind.
I like the sound of PANEL DISCUSSIONS (if that is, in fact, the title); I'm going to have to buy a copy for the library!
I'm not as prolix as Moore or Bissette, but sometimes I come close :-)
OK, PANEL DISCUSSIONS isn't it, I don't think:
http://www.comicsresearch.org/entries/talon-pd.html
Wow, that page is really out of date...
Ahhhh, here we go:
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=95_72&products_id=545
Working Methods: Comic Creators Detail Their Storytelling And Artistic Processes, by John LOWE
PD is good tho, too :-) More about writing than art.
One more thing to add: I sent an email to Jillian Tamaki with a link to this column, and she was kind enough to let me know I could post some of her reply. Not only does she set straight my misremembering about the nature of her collaborative process with Mariko, but she sheds an even brighter light on the nature of her contribution to the SKIM narrative, which makes the Governor General's awards look even more clueless.
"Mariko is a playwright and hence wrote the script for Skim like a play. So it contained all dialogue, but little else. There were occasional indications here and there of location (the caf, the ravine, the frozen field behind the school) and occasional visual cues (Skim doesn't look at Ms. Archer while she's being served tea, Skim being whisked out by herd of ballerinas). But other than that, everything was left up to me, which of course made the project so fun and truly collaborative. Mariko deserves huge credit for essentially handing over her baby to be extrapolated in every which way. I say that often, and it's not lip service. As a true control freak myself, it astounds me someone can do that.
Also of note: there was no back and forth. She wrote the script. I did the art. That was pretty much it... we were left to our own devices."
Great Column, Karen. Thanks for the props too. In the midst of writing a brief essay on my process for a show some of my work is in, and struggling with that chicken/egg question of whether words or pictures came first. For me as i painfully unarticulately stated above, it's a dance between the two, each sort of acting like a scaffold to build more of the comic upwards. I have of late, just to get in the practice of it, been writing myself a full detailed, panel by panel script - although after that dance has been going on for some time. But even then, things continue to emerge from the interaction of words and pictures. Loved Gene's detailed comments and looking forward to checking out Bissette's words. Glad too, to get the full nature of the Skim process. Very cool. thanks for your efforts Karen. - Nick
It's always so sad when people try to do the right thing (give prestigious awards to graphic novels, for instance) and still get it wrong (have no frigging idea how the medium works). Disappointing for the Tamakis and frustrating for the rest of us...but at least it gave us another superb Green column. As ever, you make your points with erudite and unpretentious liveliness.
Gene, above, is right that the "Marvel Method" is much less common than it was. When I wrote for Marvel in the '90s it was basically required; the DC "full script" method was disdained and stodgy and biased against dynamic art. But now I'm told by younger writers at Marvel that the full script is the norm even there. But even the full script, from my experience, is a very collaborative form. If I knew the writer and had some chemistry with him, we'd nearly always exchange notes beforehand. And even if I wrote a script not knowing who the artist was going to be, there would always be some unexpected departures from my script in the art that would require the text to be adjusted. So, apart from the more cerebral arguments that the art is part of the text, it's safe to assume that the artist brought literal changes to the plot that sent the words in a different direction. Even in the fullest full script, it's never just the writer's story.
And by the same token, the visuals are never entirely just the artist's. Writers call for specific visuals, suggest visual motifs, set pace and tone. Sometimes an artist would seize upon one image and change the pacing so it became a full-page splash, a la Kirby; but very often I was the one who thought a splash would be the right rhythmic note right there. (I remember some writers grumbling about this when the original-art market exploded in the late '80s and artists were suddenly making hundreds of dollars a page on top of what the comic itself made them. There were the pictures we had described, from the stories we had conceived, with our words all over them, but only the penciller and inker made a cent. Artists learned quickly, though, that they could shut us up pretty effectively with a couple of free pages and an affectionate inscription.)
So once again a great column. But I gotta ask you: who wrote that Nation review of Catcher? Because (call me a Philistine if you will), it kinda sums up my feelings about the thing....
