| ARTICLE “Comic Books - Doing It The Hard Way”
Copyright 2007 Glenn Walker You think it’s hard breaking into mainstream publishing as a writer? I can take it up to eleven for you – try the comics field. Comic books are one of the great and true American artforms, along with baseball, television and jazz. They have been around since the mid-thirties
and today are a multi-million dollar industry, both in print and as source material for Hollywood. Superheroes are today’s mythology. Who wouldn’t want to write for such a fun genre? First you have to get in. Like mainstream publishing, luck has a lot to do with it. Know somebody, be in the right place at the right time, etc. – that’s how you do it. But keep in mind, the competition is brutal. You ever go to a dinner party and mention that you’re a writer? You will always get someone who says they always wanted to do that. It’s about one in ten odds that you run into a wannabee or potential writer. Ten percent of readers want to be writers. The comics field, one that attracts a majority of both creative and passionate people, has a scarily different ratio. Everybody
wants to work in comics. Like its bastard cousin the soap opera, comics are serial fiction, in which the readers get to know the same characters and watch them grow and evolve throughout the years like old friends. Who wouldn’t want the chance to guide the destiny or the adventures of their favorite character? That’s right, we all would. Other than the competition, there’s also the skill set to worry about. An aspiring artist will always have a portfolio of his work to show a prospective editor, not an easy stunt for a writer. “I have some words I’d like you to look at.” I joke, but I’m also serious. Comics are a visual medium, the editors are looking for that first and foremost. The art pulls in a consumer, but the story keeps them. Anyone seeking a writing
job in the comics field should hone their screenwriting skills. Comics are usually done in script form with dialogue and heavy description for an artist to follow. This is why recently so many TV writers like Brian K. Vaughn of “Lost” and Allan Heinberg of “Gray’s Anatomy” have so easily slipped into doing comics – it’s the same structure. And as with mainstream writing, the mechanics of the business are intact – query, proposal, synopsis, rejection, it’s all there. You just have to persevere and tough it out. Or if you really wanted to do it the hard way… you could become a novelist first like Brad Meltzer or Jodi Picoult before tackling your favorite superhero gig. Of course as mentioned in this month’s Poets & Writers magazine (July/August 2007), you could just skip
comics altogether and write a novel about superheroes. Word is this is the new hot trend. They’re calling ‘hyper-reality.’ Well, whatever floats your boat, I call it superhero fiction or just plain adventure. But then again we live in a culture that created the term ‘graphic novel’ to get comics into bookstores, and then Hollywood grabbed it so folks wouldn’t think their movies were based on comics. Keep writing, and keep trying to break whatever market or genre you’re shooting for – and if you’re good, and tough, you’ll make it. BIO: Glenn Walker writes about comics media at his website Comic Widows http://www.comicwidows.com and also reviews individual titles and interviews industry professionals at Avengers
Forever http://www.avengersforever.org and Silver Bullet Comics http://www.silverbulletcomics.com Rumor has it he also moderates the bi-monthly chats with Hope Clark of FundsforWriters http://www.fundsforwriters.com at The Writers Chatroom. | 
