Issuu

INSIDE: SECRETS OF

THE DARK KNIGHT MOVIE!

695

In the USA

Fall 2008

MILLAR & HITCH’SS FANTASTIC FOUR MAX ALLAN COLLINS

82658 27765

DENNIS O’NEIL

ALL ALL ABOUT ABOUT DC’S DC’S

ZUDA COMICS

BENDIS & YU’S SECRET INVASION

DINI & NGUYEN’S BATMAN R.I.P.

M AG A Z I N E Fall 2008

Issue #19

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief .....................................................page 2 Writing The Dark Knight Reflections by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer ................................................page 3 The Denster Returns Interview with Dennis O’Neil ............................................................page 8 The Essential Batman Encyclopedia Robert Greenberger tells how he compiled the Dark Knight’s data........................................................................page 14 Man of Mystery Interview with Max Allan Collins ..................................................page 24 Spotlight on Zuda Writers of DC’s online imprint tell how and why they chose to go digital............................................................page 41 Amazing True Stories Jim Ottaviani on how he writes non-fiction comics ..............page 56

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief Managing Editor ROBERT GREENBERGER Consulting Editor ERIC FEIN

Writing about Comics Evander Lomke explores the world of writing books about comics ............................................................page 67

Proofreading ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON

Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers (including a cartoon by Marc Bilgrey) ........................................page 71

Designer DAVID GREENAWALT

Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: DETECTIVE COMICS #849 Pages from “Batman R.I.P.: Heart of Hush,” by Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs ..................page 10 Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: SECRET INVASION #6 Pages by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu ........page 19 Script to Pencils: FANTASTIC FOUR #560 Pages from “The Death of the Invisible Woman,” part 3, by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch ..................................page 37 Script to Sketch to Pencils to Finished Webcomic: STREET CODE Pages from “Awful George,” by Dean Haspiel ........................page 54 Script to Thumbnails to Sketches to Finished Comic: BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS, AND THUNDER LIZARDS Pages by Jim Ottaviani and Big Time Attic ..............................page 65

Transcriber STEVEN TICE Circulation Director BOB BRODSKY, COOKIESOUP PRODUCTIONS

Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: MARC BILGREY ALISON BLAIRE TOM BREVOORT MAX ALLAN COLLINS KIA CROSS F.J. DeSANTO DAVID GREENAWALT DEAN HASPIEL DAVID HYDE JACKIE KNOX PAUL LEVITZ MIKE MARTS JIM McCANN JEFF NEWELT ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON CHRIS POWELL ELLA ROBINSON ALEX SEGURA VARDA STEINHARDT AUSTIN TRUNICK MICHAEL USLAN STEVEN TICE

Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! is published 4 times a year by TwoMorrows 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: WriteNowDF@aol.com. Single issues: $9 Postpaid in the US ($11 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $26 US ($44 Canada, $60 elsewhere). Order online at: www.twomorrows.com or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com All characters are TM & © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorial package is ©2008 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a shared trademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

WRITE NOW | 1

READ Now ! Message from Danny Fingeroth, Editor-in-Chief Welcome to another eclectic issue of Write Now!

• Incredible Nuts & Bolts, featuring script and pencil art from Brian Bendis and Leinil Yu’s Secret Invasion #6, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s Fantastic Four #560, Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen’s Detective Comics #849, and Dean Haspiel’s Zuda series, Street Code! • Writing legend Max Allan Collins (whose prose and comics credits include Dick Tracy, Ms. Tree and The Road to Perdition) is interviewed by WN! managing editor Robert Greenberger.

• Bob Greenberger (him again) tells us how he wrote—and wrote and wrote—The Essential Batman Encyclopedia. And book editor Evander Lomke—he edited my own Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent—tells you about writing for the world of books about pop culture. SHAMELESS HYPE DEPARTMENT: My ROUGH GUIDE TO GRAPHIC NOVELS, from Penguin, is out. The emphasis of the book is on the fascinating world of the literary graphic novel, works such as Maus, The Quitter, Alice in Sunderland, and many others. Plus, there’s a cool graphic novella inside the book, written by me and drawn by Roger Langridge! Now, enjoy the kaleidoscope of comics culture that is this issue!

• Dennis O’Neil tells us what it was like to write the novelization of The Dark Knight screenplay.

Write Away!

• Jim Ottaviani, writer of science-history graphic novels such as Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder

Danny Fingeroth

NEXT ISSUE: SPECIAL THE SPIRIT MOVIE ISSUE!

SPECIAL

695

In the USA

#20 Winter 2008

Eisner.

And, as always, we’ve got an amazing array of features and interviews designed to fill you with info about the writing life:

• A lengthy section focuses on DC’s ZUDA online comics imprint, featuring interviews with Zuda honcho Ron Perazza and top talents creating comics for this new medium, including Dean Haspiel and David Gallaher.

This time out, we’re hearing from the trio that wrote the film phenomenon, The Dark Knight: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer. While we’d hoped to have an interview with one or more of them, our paths and theirs never quite crossed. So we became our own Darkknight Detectives, scouring interviews and press conferences Nolan, Nolan, and Goyer had given, then excerpting wisdom they had to share about writing TDK. The informative results await you.

Lizards, reveals a ton of his secrets and techniques!

and character TM

Inside FRANK MILLER’s adaptation of the classic series!

2 | READ NOW

• A close look at WILL EISNER’s writing on his creation! • An interview with A Distant Soil’s COLLEEN DORAN! • Script and art from DAN SLOTT and STEVE McNIVEN’s SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY! • And much more!

The Spirit name

Plus:

HOW

WILL EISNER'S CLASSIC BEC AME FRANK MILLER'S

MOVIE SCR IPT!

MOVIE ISSUE!

WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT:

NOLAN, NOLAN, AND GOYER SPEAK!

by Danny Fingeroth

alk about Darkknight Detective work!

When we were unable to get exclusive interviews about the writing of The Dark Knight movie (busy jet-setting Hollywood folks and all that), we did the next best thing: scouring the web for nuggets in press conferences and interviews where the writers of the TDK script revealed precious tidbits about important aspects of writing movies in general, and of writing The Dark Knight in particular. Think of us as crusty old miners panning the media rivers for the best and brightest nuggets of information and advice from screenwriters Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer. —DF

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN is the director, cowriter, and producer of The Dark Knight. He co-wrote and directed the groundbreaking 2005 Batman Begins, as well as Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige. JONATHAN NOLAN is the co-writer of TDK’s screenplay, and was the story writer of the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for Memento, as well as the mystery thriller, The Prestige.

DAVID GOYER is co-writer of the story for TDK, and was the co-writer of Batman Begins. He was the screenwriter of Blade and Blade II, and wrote, produced, and directed Blade: Trinity. He was also cowriter of DC’s Justice Society comic series.

ABOUT THE MECHANICS OF WRITING THE SCRIPT: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: I think the big challenge in doing a sequel is to build on what you’ve done in the first film, but not abandon the characters, the logic, the

WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT | 3

tone of the world that you created for the first film. So there are elements the audience will expect you to bring back that you need to bring back. You also have to balance that with the need to see something new and to see something different and that’s been the challenge through the whole of making the film… I think that what makes a good sequel is a film that feels inevitable and that when you go back and see the first film you completely understand that the story had to continue with a second film. … The pitfalls are simply repeating yourself but on a bigger scale. And that’s something we’re not doing at all. We’re really very much creating a second half to the story…. JONATHAN NOLAN: David and Chris went off and butted heads for a while and came up with this story, a really great story…. They handed it over to me and let me take a crack at the first draft. Chris is always going to take the last pass on his scripts going in.

DAVID GOYER: It became apparent as we were talking fairly early on that Harvey was actually the protagonist of the movie. The Joker doesn’t change and Batman doesn’t really change. But Harvey is the one that changes as a result of his interaction between the Joker and Batman. Obviously, he changes in a tragic way and that means the movie has to be a tragedy. JONATHAN NOLAN: The arc of the film is the tragedy of Harvey Dent, which is, in a sense, the origin of the villain Two-Face. Which, I think, we’ve told [as] a more complete story. DAVID GOYER: The jumping off point [for the story] was the last scene in Batman Begins. We knew we were going to tell a story about escalation, and we knew we were going to tell a story about The Joker…

Christopher Nolan, his brother Jonathan, and David S. Goyer all freely acknowledge Batman Begins and The Dark Knight owe a lot to the tone and sensibilities established in Batman’s comics, especially The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: The Killing Joke. [© 2008 DC Comics.] 4 | WRITE NOW

stantial outline. They really figured the story out, so for me it was a pretty straight-ahead job of just taking it and building it out into the world. Chris always takes the last pass of the scripts before he goes into production… The script is always an evolutionary process to it. Chris has a confidence where he can play around with things a little bit as he gets into the production, but for the most part he wants to have it nailed away before they start to film… It felt like a very easy job—one of the easiest I’ve had because these guys [Goyer and Chris Nolan] nailed it right out of the gate with this incredible story…

ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF BATMAN: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: I think he is a more complete version of himself as it were. I think he is, he has moved on, and he is less tortured by his distant past, so we get to torture him more with fresh [problems]. He’s never entirely free from torture one might say…

The TDK movie poster image of Batman (Christian Bale) set against a building with a burning bat symbol indicates to audiences that this film is as much about Batman’s legacy in Gotham City as it is about the Joker’s campaign of chaos and murder. [Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. TM & © 2008 DC Comics]

I think that there are elements from The Dark Knight [comics series], elements from The Long Halloween, elements from The Killing Joke. But it’s not like we were specifically adapting one specific comic book or comic book arc. I worked with Chris for about a month, and Chris and I wrote a treatment together with the beats of the story. Then we gave that to Jonathan and he did, I don’t know how many drafts you did.

He can’t mope, he can’t have a selfindulgent angst. He has to be substantial. We tried to tell a story in the first film whereby he did confront and overcome various aspects of what drives him, of the angst, and let others hang. So in this film we try to have Christian Bale’s character start from the point of he’s not sitting around moping over that his parents were killed etc., etc. We dealt with that in the first film. But he’s nevertheless a very dark character. JONATHAN NOLAN: A lot of the stuff that in the film feels contemporary, Batman wrestling with the questions of how far is too far in trying to catch someone? They are as old as stone in the books. They have been there since the very beginning. That question of Batman as a vigilante and what’s appropriate, what’s legal, what’s not legal, what does he do? CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: Batman definitely much more easily in this story assumes more of a detective role. There was something that was important to get in the first film, we got it in in a small way, but in dealing with the origin and in dealing with all larger aspects of the character it became very difficult to get that in.

JONATHAN NOLAN: These guys gave me a really subWRITING THE DARK KNIGHT | 5

THE DENSTER RETURNS: DENNIS O’NEIL TALKS ABOUT WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT NOVELIZATION D

Interview conducted via e-mail September 16, 2008 by Danny Fingeroth ennis O’Neil is the writer of the novelization of The Dark Knight (published by Del Ray). But that’s just one of his many accomplishments. Denny is one of the most highly acclaimed writers and editors in the comic book industry. For more than 40 years, he has crafted groundbreaking stories for both Marvel and DC Comics. At DC Comics, he had some of his greatest successes. He wrote the groundbreaking Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, illustrated by Neal Adams. Also with Adams and editor Julie Schwartz, Denny helped to bring Batman back to his essence as a “Dark Knight detective” and creature of the night. Denny was for many years Group Editor of DC’s Batman comics line. He also wrote the novelizations of the epic comics storyline Batman: Knightfall and of the first Christopher Nolan-helmed Batman movie, Batman Begins. He’s the author of the original DC novel Green Lantern: Hero’s Quest. I caught up with Denny to see what he had to say about adapting the Nolan, Nolan & Goyer screenplay to prose form. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: Dennis, Can you speak about the differences between a film script, a comics script and a novel manuscript in broad terms. What needs to be emphasized in each, and what is lost (and/or gained) when you translate a story from one medium to another? DENNIS O’NEIL: The first, and most obvious thing, is that the essential visual information in the movie has to be translated into verbal information. This entails a process of selection—do we really need to know what the third thug looks like? That’s going from movie script to novel. Much the same process is involved in going from movie to comic, but in reverse: comics are a very compressed storytelling form and, back in real life, there’s usually about twice as much story in a movie as in a comic, which means the writer has to 8 | WRITE NOW

choose, carefully, which movie scenes are essential to the plot and even which lines within the scenes move the story along. Going from movie to novel, the writer has to add, rather than subtract material, because a two-hour film doesn’t have enough pure plot to make a 75,000-word prose piece. But you can’t just add scenes at random. They’ve got to be an integral part of the story being told, somehow. For me, that often means adding backstory to characters. DF: What would you say the differences between adapting Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to prose were? Was there any difference in your approach to this script from the previous one? DO: It seems that every time I do a book, I’m faced with new problems. But the process in doing the two adaptations was about the same: add the things that novels are good at, like background and interior monologues and, since film does action so much better than prose, see if some action scenes might work as dialogue scenes. And flesh out the character’s back-

ground. The exception was The Joker. The movie guys insisted that I not give him a backstory and I could not possibly agree more. He works best when there’s no rationale for what he does. DF: Did you feel a need to provide bridging material to bring the reader up to speed since the events of the first film? DO: Just a little. Minimum exposition, on my usual assumption that not everyone who reads this piece will be familiar with earlier pieces. DF: The animated DVD Gotham Knight is designed as a bridge between the two films, did you need/want to take any of those events into account? DO: No. I didn’t see Gotham Knight until the book was finished. DF: Does the casting affect how you write the characters? DO: Not that I’m aware of. DF: So much has been made of Heath Ledger’s unique performance as The Joker, is there any way to capture that in prose? DO: I didn’t see the movie until it opened at a theater near me and so I couldn’t know how good Ledger was. And that was damn good. DF: Does your familiarity with the characters’ back-stories cause you to reconsider how the script handles the characters? DO: I add things now and then, but my job is to be true to the filmmaker’s vision, not my own. DF: Did you have much input from your editor and/or from the movie people on TDK novelization? Can you describe the working process? DO: The editor, Chris Cerasi, and I talked briefly about the project and then off I went to do the book. When I had a first draft, the movie guys gave me some notes and I did a bit of rewriting, e-mailed the revised manuscript to Chris and waited for the movie to open. DF: There were two blockbuster hits with characters you’re closely identified with (Iron Man and TDK) in theaters this past summer. How did you feel about that, including the treatment of any ideas or characters you were involved in creating or modifying? Did you ever think you’d see comics-based material so widely accepted? DO: Absolutely not. Comics were considered subliterate and the audience for them mouth-breathing semi-

literates. As for my characters… it’s gratifying to realize one has not labored in vain, so to speak. It would be swell to see my name on a screen sometime, or Gerry Conway’s name, or any of the other unsung comics guys’ names. But life does not exist to please me, darn it. DF: Any plans to do more novels, either adaptations or originals, in the future? DO: No plans for adaptations. I’d certainly accept the call of anyone who wants to offer me a gig. I may have another novel or so in me, though. DF: Any other observations on, or thoughts about, adapting The Dark Knight? DO: Terrific movie! Nice to be associated with it.

THE END DENNY O’NEIL | 9

THE ESSENTIAL BATMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA:

WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT CAME TO BE

by Robert Greenberger

atman’s adventures have been in ongoing publication in countless comics for 70 years. There have been so many Batman stories, you’d need an encyclopedia to keep track of the Dark Knight’s continuity. By an amazing stroke of luck, such a book exists, and Write Now!’s own managing editor, Bob Greenberger, is the author of that book—the recently published Essential Batman Encyclopedia. Here, Bob tells us how such a mammoth undertaking came about, and what it was like researching and writing such a tome, while keeping it entertaining as well as informative. —DF

Back in the 1970s, comics fans were entirely reliant on fanzines and the occasional letter column for any sort of background information on characters not regularly published. Heck, even information about older stories was scant unless the particular tale had been reprinted. As a result, the arrival, in 1976, of Michael L. Fleisher’s Batman Encyclopedia was an amazing achievement. Suddenly, there was at least some information on every single Batman story from Batman, Detective Comics, and World’s Finest Comics between 1939 and roughly 1968. Yes, by the time it saw print it was already many years out of date and it ignored the Dark Knight’s appearances in The Brave and the Bold and Justice League of America, but it remained a significant achievement. Paul Levitz, when he was editing the Bat-titles, once commented to me that the book could help him come up with story material for years and years.

Since then, we’ve had the various Who’s Whos that explicate the DC Universe and its characters, but at the same time, we’ve also had an explosion of Batappearances throughout the DC Universe along with revisionist and contradictory information about char-

acters and events. The coming and going of the multiple universes and revisions to the timeline only served to muddy the waters of the “official” Batcanon. Online writers have tried to assemble it all and make it make sense, but (needless to say—it’s the Internet!) they aren’t entirely in agreement. With that background, it was inevitable that DC itself would one day want to set the record straight. So it’s not surprising that DC decided to—with Random House’s DelRey imprint—publish entirely new encyclopedias on DC’s bestknown heroes: Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In September 2006, I was invited to write the Batman book that would kick off the three-year publishing event, with the first volume timed to come out in time for The Dark Knight movie. Interestingly, a number of decisions about how to approach the book were left up to me, largely thanks to my experience not only a writer on Who’s Who, but also as having been one of the writers on DK’s 2004 DC Comics Encyclopedia.

Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, were killed by Joe Chill on Gotham’s Park Row, known to most as “Crime Alley.” A smaller handful knows that occurred on June 26 at 10:47 p.m. However, the twopage origin in 1939’s Detective Comics #33 identified none of those elements. The wealthy, unnamed parents were gunned down by an anonymous criminal at night, leaving young Bruce, age unknown, an instant orphan. Other details of the origin story were added or modified over the decades. Approaching the material this way meant that future writers, editors, (and fans) could see for themselves how and when elements were introduced, so, should creators feel a need to retell or modify stories, they would know the sources of the original details. In too many instances, contradictions have crept up in stories because writers and editors missed details by looking at an incomplete run of a title or just one retelling of events.

The writers on the other books in the series—Phil Jimenez on 2009’s Wonder Woman and Martin Pasko on 2010’s Superman—had differI tried to imagine how to ent reactions to the editorial make this vital to readers who format I provided. Phil was could just as easily look up the Cover to Detective Comics #33. where Batman’s enthusiastic, while Marty origin first appeared—six issues after the character’s (although agreeing in principle information on a fan site or debut! Art is by Bob Kane. [© 2008 DC Comics.] Wikipedia. Of course, one key with my approach) was underdifference would be that, havstandably ready to hang me for ing the data in a DC-produced publication, would forcing him to try and put the Man of Steel’s evenmake it “official.” Beyond that, one of the first things more-convoluted-than-Batman’s mythos into a format settled in my mind was that it needed to put every a mass audience could comprehend and enjoy. incarnation of Batman into context, fully addressing Fortunately for me, DC agreed with my approach, and the “multiple Earths” concept. For each character for Marty has forgiven me (I think) for coming up with it. whom there were versions on more than one Earth, I Doing the research was fascinating, since I had the would begin with their chronological incarnation, Fleisher book for starters, but opening up the entire most often that of Earth-2, which chronicled the pubDC Universe so as to include any appearance of lished exploits of the heroes from 1938 forward. Batman characters anywhere meant thousands more Along the way I’d have to begin paragraphs with “In comics needed to be researched. Now, my memory the world after the Crisis on Infinite Earths….” and then included entries on the necessary cosmic events. for the broad strokes of most DC material is pretty darn good, but an encyclopedia demands citing actual issues and facts. Enter: John Wells. John is an ace Second, it needed to identify the elements of the researcher and has maintained meticulous character Batman mythos as they were added or modified lists. He has proven to be the go-to guy for more than through the years. This way, people could get a sense a handful of creators, from Mark Waid to Brad of the world-building that occurred, and of the many Meltzer. John and I have been online pals for years, hands who contributed to the initial work of Bob and he graciously made his lists available to me. That Kane and Bill Finger. After all, today we know Bruce THE ESSENTIAL BATMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA | 15

MAN OF MYSTERY:

THE

MAX ALLAN COLLINS INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail June-August, 2008 by Robert Greenberger

ou can hardly pass a bookstore without seeing Max Allan Collins’ name on some detective thriller or cross-media novelization. Longtime comics fans also fondly recall his work with Terry Beatty on Ms. Tree, the trendsetting female private eye series. Since he’s written comic books (including Batman), movies, novels, novelizations and more, we figured it was high time to find out how he does it all. Bob Greenberger got the info. —DF ROBERT GREENBERGER: Hey, Al, so good of you to be available. Let’s go into the Way Back machine and see how you sold that first novel in 1976. What got you interested in writing? MAX ALLAN COLLINS: I was always interested in storytelling. My mom read to me at night, and my earliest memories are her reading me the Tarzan books published by Whitman in the 1950s. I think a key thing is that, at an early age, I got hip to movies and TV shows coming from novels and comics. Like a lot of kids, I saw George Reeves as Superman on TV and went out and read the comics accordingly. But I also went another step–I don’t think every kid who saw the Topper TV show went out and found the original novel by Thorne Smith! RG: What led you to publishing your first novel in 1976? MAC: We have to go way-er back than that–I actually sold the first book in 1971. It and a sequel were published together in January 1973 by Curtis Books, Bait Money and Blood Money. I was at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, that famed citadel of creative writing (as opposed to uncreative writing, I guess), first as an undergrad from 1968 through 1970, then as a grad from ’70 through ’72. RG: Wait a minute. Tell me about the Iowa program. MAC: I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa, just about 35 miles from Iowa City–still live in Muscatine, by the way–and I 24 | WRITE NOW

knew Kurt Vonnegut was teaching up there, and other big-time writers. I was under the sway of crime fiction– Hammett, Chandler, James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane– but also the so-called “Black Comedy” writers like Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. So I got in, but Vonnegut had just left–he did come back and do a seminar, and read to us from his next as yet unpublished novel… little something called Slaughterhouse-Five. But I ran into lots of resistance at the Workshop, since the teachers and students saw themselves as artists where I was obviously “just” a mystery writer, an entertainer. As it happened, a major literary writer, Richard Yates, was teaching the one section of undergrad study

that the Workshop offered. Despite some initial misgivings about my mystery writer’s bent, he saw merit in my work and took me under his wing. Interestingly, even weirdly, Yates’s most famous novel, Revolutionary Road, is currently being made into a film by Sam Mendes, who directed the film of my graphic novel, Road to Perdition. I’m sure Mendes has no idea he’s adapting a book by the mentor of the guy who wrote Perdition. Anyway, I worked closely with Yates, and he helped me land my first agent, Knox Burger, a legendary, crusty character who had been the editor at Gold Medal Books, where many of my heroes like Richard Stark, John D. MacDonald, Richard S. Prather and Donald Hamilton had been published. I remember vividly that Yates wrote Burger saying that he’d discovered a new Hammett, and sent him my novel, Bait Money. Burger wrote back and said, “Well, not Hammett, but a young W.R. Burnett maybe.” And W.R. Burnett, who wrote The Asphalt Jungle and Little Caesar of course, was good enough for me. Burger took me on. Bait Money was one of three novels that comprised my thesis for my Master of Fine Arts at the Writers Workshop. The premise was that a small town in Iowa, based on my hometown Muscatine, could serve as the setting for three different kinds of crime novels–that you didn’t have to write about New York or L.A. The novels were Bait Money, No Cure for Death and Quarry (published initially as The Broker). Book series grew out of each one– Nolan, Mallory and Quarry. Bait Money reflected my strong comics interest, by the way–Nolan’s co-star, Collins’ Road to Perdition went from three-part Paradox Press miniJon, was an aspiring cartoonist and pop culture series to a big budget feature film from DreamWorks. [RTP script copyright © 1998 by Max Allan Collins, art copyright © 1998 by Richard Piers Rayner. Movie hound. poster: Pulse Advertising/David Sameth TM & © 2002 DreamWorks L.L.C. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.]

RG: That’s pretty impressive to turn college work into the beginning of a career. Now, all of your original works tend to deal with rugged individuals–Mallory, Nolan, Heller–what’s your take on them? MAC: I’m like pretty much like all mystery writers–the protagonists are idealized versions of myself, and I am hardly rugged though probably an individualist. Many of the characters appear in first-person narratives, and I think writing is similar to improvisational acting–Heller is me filtered through his background and times. Quarry, in some ways, is closest to me, and he’s a hired killer–but his nasty, cynical outlook is me at my darkest. Mallory, a small-town mystery writer, was blatantly me, and I lost interest in him quickly, not surprisingly. Nolan, who appeared in Bait Money and seven subsequent novels, appears in third-person narratives, and the secondary character, Jon, the aspiring cartoonist, was more my portal in the story. I set up Nolan as an “old” man, a tough guy at the end of his road–he was

fifty. Suddenly that doesn’t seem so old…. RG: You’ve written almost exclusively original crime fiction, what’s the appeal? MAC: Early on, I used to get what I call the Mickey Spillane Question–why did you choose to write about sex and violence? The answer is a Mickey Spillane one, too–it was easy: sex is love and violence is death, and those are the two big human topics. It’s really pretty much what we all care about, with some greed tossed in, also a common element in crime fiction. And life. I do like the tough hero, the avenger. It’s funny that I grew up on Ayn Rand and right-wing vigilantes and emerged, if not leftist, certainly left-leaning. But until I got a growth spurt going into high school, I was a bookworm kid with glasses who got picked on, and the idea of getting even, through a tough hero or anti-hero, MAX ALLAN COLLINS | 25

Pages Two and Three 1/ Cut to the population trying their best to live a life in these conditions, fashioning a new society in these appalling conditions. : “But when the end times came, it was worse than we imagined. : “Twelve billion people starved to death, half the world’s cities drowned in the seas and cancer and disease affected almost every living creature.

CAPTION CAPTION

2/ Cut to the New Defenders (six of whom we’ve already seen) as they do their bit to rescue people and try to keep things going. CAPTION

: “The rich and the powerful disappeared overnight, leaving behind a lawless mess that the world’s remaining superheroes bound together to protect.

3/ Pull back for a very long shot across a desolate horizon and we know that, despite the best efforts of everyone here, life will soon be unsustainable. CAPTION CAPTION

: “But it was HOPELESS and we KNEW it. : “Hence the reason I built the big MACHINE.”

Mark’s script calls for a two-page spread made up of only three panels, but Bryan breaks it down into six panels to allow him to execute the instruction on this and the previous page, showing the futuristic city and what people are doing to survive.

Hitch’s decision to move the details of planet-wide suffering to this spread makes for a shocking contrast with the relatively familiar shot of the Empire State Building on page one.

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FANTASTIC FOUR #560 NUTS & BOLTS | 39

AMAZING TRUE STORIES:

WRITING NON-FICTION COMICS J

by Jim Ottaviani

im Ottaviani has been writing comics about true facts and real people for a long time. He has the gift of making history and science—and the history of science—come vividly alive for his readers. Some of his many works include Suspended in Language, Fallout, and BoneSharps, Cowboys, and ThunderLizards. Here, Jim tells us how he does it—and how you can, too!

—DF [Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true.—Jim Ottaviani] Write Now! EIC Danny Fingeroth has asked me to write about telling true stories (history or non-fiction if you’re a civilian, historical fiction if you’re a real life historian) in comics form, but because we’re talking about a visual medium, and because in my previous life I was an engineer, I should show rather than tell. So here’s a flowchart that shows how it’s done:

If you believe that, I can skip the research steps on my future books, since you apparently don’t need something to look like a duck (much less walk, quack, paddle, fly, and eat stale breadcrumbs) to believe it is in fact a duck. To torture the metaphor, most readers, regardless of whether they know it, do in fact require an incredibly lifelike simulation of a duck, though. So here’s what the process, or at least my process, really looks like when broken down into its component parts, beginning at the beginning: 56 | WRITE NOW

You may think I’m kidding, but after that initial idea you do have to decide to be a writer. If you don’t, you likely won’t get much further into the process, much less to the end, and the process is where the fun is. Like you, I had ideas galore before making this decision. Many came from that background I mentioned above, and that’s why I write about science. In the process of getting a bachelor’s and master’s degree in nuclear engineering and then working as a researcher and consultant to the electric power industry, I learned plenty of science in class and on the job. Outside of class and work, I enjoyed reading biographies of scientists. I also read a lot of comics. I’m pretty good at math, but pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so it took me another ten years to put one and one together and merge these two interests. Our first cliché: I’ve just described the classic “write what you know” scenario, and I recommend it. The only caution I would add to that is that if all you know is video games or comics from the big two superhero industrial complex manufacturers, you have a lot of competition in between you and your goal. Lucky for me, I wanted biographical stories about scientists in comics form by the time I decided to start writing them. If you can find your own, wide-open field like this one, you’ll also find yourself with many more options for getting published.

Jim’s book about Niels Bohr and his work, Suspended in Language, features art by award-winning artist Leland Purvis, and illustrated short pieces by Jay Hosler, Roger Langridge, Steve Leialoha, Linda Medley, and Jeff Parker. [Suspended in Language © 2004 Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis. Cover © 2004 Leland Purvis Courtesy G.T. Labs.]

you’re a genius multitasker (I’m not) only after writing down the new ones you encountered along the way.

From there on out the process gets messy, but fun, because if you do true stories, you get to do research. And because if you’ve decided to go down this path it means you have many loves: you love reading, love visiting unusual places, love writing letters to people you admire, and love doing this repeatedly. You like Wikipedia, but don’t love it. (See sidebar: “What’s Wrong With Wikipedia?”) You love your library and books and reference lists/bibliographies at the backs of books, and love following trails and paths that lead you far away from your original idea. And you love returning to that original idea you had, but unless

All of that sounds like another, though more extended, cliché, but I’ve found that for non-fiction work there is no substitute for reading stuff, digging up original sources, and whenever possible talking to the people who were there. The project I’m working on now, a book about the space race, is a case in point. When the publisher accepted the proposal, my wife immediately suggested that we watch the acclaimed HBO series From the Earth to the Moon. Tempting, but exactly the wrong thing. For one, I don’t want to unconsciously swipe imagery from someone else. For another, as good as I know this series is, accepting someone else’s condensation of such a sprawling story by passively absorbing it through TV can’t substitute for actively engaging the original material that would excite my visual and storytelling imagination. So it’s off to the library, out to Building 12 at NASA’s Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and plenty of time working with primary sources. Going straight to the source will provide you with the best possible original ideas WRITING NON-FICTION COMICS | 57

Write Now! #19