San Diego Comic Con is in full swing. Join us tonight as some the greatest writers and artists in the business talk about their work!

5:30-6:30 Vertigo: On the Edge

Find out what compelling tales comics’ edgiest imprint has in store for you in the months to come! Led by Senior VP—Executive Editor Karen Berger, with an all-star lineup of talent that includes Rafael Albuquerque (American Vampire), Gabriel Bá (Daytripper), Cliff Chiang (Neil Young’s Greendale), Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), Joshua Dysart (Neil Young’s Greendale, Unknown Soldier), Peter Gross (The Unwritten), Matt Kindt (Revolver), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Fabio Moon (Daytripper), Chris Roberson (iZombie), Scott Snyder (American Vampire), Matthew Sturges (Jack of Fables), Jill Thompson (Little Endless), Bill Willingham (Fables) and others. Room 6DE

Day 5

The writing is done and the art is turned in. But there’s still work to do. I think the design and presentation of books—not just graphic novels—gets overlooked. To me, the way the information is delivered is as important to and a key part of the content itself. Again, much like with color, if it’s not adding to the story and the narrative then it’s wasted space.

The cover is tricky because it needs to do a few things. The first thing it needs to do is just sell the book or at least get a reader to pick it up. On top of that, it has to be true to what’s in the book and also just look cool.

But the cover isn’t the only thing to consider. Endpapers, and page numbering have to be considered. For Revolver I did have a lot of extra back story and subplots that just didn’t fit the main narrative. But how to get that extra stuff into a book that is already so tightly plotted and layed out that there isn’t an extra square inch of space?

I think I’d turned in all of the art and Joan was editing it when I had the idea for page numbers and text scrolls. I think I’d been watching the news one afternoon and thinking about how distracting the text scroll was at the bottom of the newscast. It was driving me a little crazy to split my attention between what was being said and what I was reading. I loved the idea of splitting the readers attention not unlike what was happening to Sam in the actual narrative of the book. You get one story up here in the pages and art and another story below in the page numbering news ticker text.

That said, it took a crazy amount of extra work after I thought I was done to get the text to fit, also include the page number, and on top of all of that still be somewhat relevant to the action happening above it. But it was worth it. I got to include a subplot involving a militia group called the “76ers” that up until then only lurked in the background of the main story.

Another element I’d been playing with while drawing the book was chapter title pages. Originally I was going to do a sequence of 20 small panels detailing the life of each main character. I abandoned that idea because it just seemed like too much and broke up the flow of the main narrative.

Then I had an idea to design each title page as a page from a catalog which would detail the material possessions of each character and give an extra insight into them. But even that seemed to break it up too much.

Eventually I settled on what’s in the book now—small icons which each contain a subliminal chapter number hidden in them and all perfectly circular to fit the theme of the book.

When I design a cover I again start with thumbnails much like the story pages. I sent these in to get feedback and find out which concepts everyone at Vertigo liked the best. The trick here that I learned (as a graphic designer) is never show a cover option that you wouldn’t be happy with. So I was pretty happy with all of these and actually developed a few into semi-finished designs to see how they’d work. The funny thing is--the final thumbnail for the approved cover was done…on a paper towel…by my wife. She’s a talented designer in her own right and will often swoop in at the last minute with a great idea or suggestion.

Finally we got one that everyone liked and the book was finally done! These images show some of the early thumbnails for covers and some of the more finished mock-ups.

That’s it! Kind of like seeing sausage made—it tastes good but not always fun to see how it’s made. Except…I actually think it’s pretty fun. Not the sausage making…the comics part.

Day 3

Thumbnails. This, to me, is where all of the real writing happens. Up until now everything has been about building the plot and the characters—the framework. But in the thumbnails, this is where it turns into “comics.” I don’t type out a script, I draw the script. This is where all the pacing is determined and how the actual story is going to be told. A series of small panels? Large widescreen shots? Splash pages? All of that happens now. At this point, the characters start talking in my head and I will make notes to the side of the thumbnails with dialogue ideas. These bits of dialogue and narration will constantly change up until the lettering stage as I write and re-write and re-think everything.

It takes a long time to bring one page of art from thumbnails to pencils to inks to color. In that time I end up thinking about each page and each bit of dialogue for hours. It’s one of the great side-effects of writing and drawing a book – you end up spending so much more time with the characters and the ideas than either a writer or artist. So at the end of that book you have had the time to think absolutely everything through to the point of being sick of it (that usually goes away once the book hits the stores).

The beauty of working in thumbnails like this is that it becomes so easy to add a page or rewrite a sequence of pages. It’s all visual so I can tell immediately if it’s going to work or if there are too many small panels bunched together in a chapter or if there needs to be a break or a splash page with a large moment. All of that is really easy to work out at this stage as the story becomes soft and mold-able.

I always feel like once the thumbnails for the entire book are done, then the book is finished in my mind. Everything that comes after: pencils, inks, color, letters…it’s all production work. There’s art to it all of course but the physical mark-making is sort of the visceral acting out of something that is already set in stone. It’s fun (for a while) but the thrill of creating sort of ends here.

At the end of this stage is one more step that, up until now, I’d completely avoided. A full script. It ended up coming down to the money and the contract. In the contract Vertigo pays for a script. But the way I normally work I don’t ever produce a full script. But since I was being paid to produce one I felt obligated to turn it in. So after I completed my normal writing process, I went back through and did a full script to accompany the thumbnails. It was an interesting exercise and actually helped the book I think as it added one more re-write into my process and helped my editors get a better picture of what the final product was going to look like.

Even after all that you can still see some of my hand-written notes at the top of the page for additional story ideas to incorporate into the book. Nothing is ever really finished.

Day 1

First off, thanks to everyone at Vertigo for supporting my new book and letting me have this extra venue to talk about it. Over the next few days I’ll try to go into as much of the interesting details of my creative process as I can.

My process has subtly changed over the years and one of the biggest changes is how a book is born. For my early books I had to write a complete script and pencil the book before I could even think of getting it published. But with a few books under my belt it’s become a little easier. Now I work out a pitch outlining the basic plot and characters of the book and once I get the “greenlight” I start scripting and laying it out.

Below is my original pitch along with the two sketches I’d done to give an idea of the look and feel. When you get to the end of the pitch you’ll notice I don’t reveal the ending, and in truth, usually when I’m writing the pitch I’m not completely sure of the ending. When I wrote this I knew that Sam would have to make a choice at the end and initially I thought it would be the opposite of what he really ends up doing. But by the time I started scripting and laying it out I knew what he had to do. That’s part of the fun of writing—figuring out what happens but also letting things happen. And at the end of the day, as corny as it sounds, the character--Sam made up his mind—not me.

Stay tuned the next few days and I’ll walk you through the rest of the process.

Here the original pitch:

Sam watches the clock. He’s been trying to get to bed before midnight this week. He just can’t take the late nights like he used to. Almost thirty. He remembers his parents being thirty. He clicks off the TV and shuffles to his bedroom.
The next morning he wakes up and catches the bus into the city. Half way there, he realizes he forgot his camera at home. Then his migraine kicks in. He’s never going to get off the “Fun Around Town” photo beat for the paper. Not at this rate. He’s one step above intern.
This will be the best part of Sam’s day.
On the radio he hears that the stock market has crashed. All the computer safeguards failed and panic spread like a gasoline fire to the rest of the world markets.
As if that wasn’t enough, an epidemic of bird flu has erupted in Asia which pushes the news of “radioactive-material-gone-missing-in- Russia” to the background. Sam can feel his migraine start to kick in. He thinks about riding the bus the full loop and getting back off at his apartment and pretend this day hadn’t started. Sam plods forward however. One more Monday morning in a lifetime of Mondays.
By the time Sam’s bus stops in front of his office building, a confluence of disasters has taken place across the globe rendering his job not only moot but actually dangerous to return to. There is an explosion in the building next to his and a cloud of smoke and bodies come raining down in front of him in a shower of violence and gore.
Sam runs up into his building to see if Maria has made it in yet. She’s the one worker (a style editor) at the paper that he likes. She’s also is fiance. When he reaches the 9th floor, he sees his office in complete mayhem. People are rushing to leave. His co-worker, Paul, is running toward the elevators with two computers under his arms and panic in his eyes. Looting. Did Sam really wake up this morning? The world has gone crazy – turned on its head.
Sam can’t find Maria and will frantically call her for the next week trying to find her. In the meantime, Sam runs into his supervisor’s (Jan’s) office. Jan is frazzled and on the verge of breaking down. He helps her out of the office and down to the parking garage. It’s clear that any sense of order is lost and everyone is just trying to get home. Sam’s family is on the east coast so he’s got nowhere to go for the moment.
As they enter the parking lot, they are attacked by a man in a suit. He punches Jan in the face, breaking her nose. Then he
1jumps onto Sam – attempting to take their car? Sam isn’t sure as he struggles -- engaged in the first fight he’s ever been in. There’s something desperate about the man and Sam senses that he is truly fighting for his life. It’s desperate and ugly and in the end, Sam is just a little younger and a little stronger than the older man. Bloody and seething with adrenaline and rage, Sam punches the man in the face and his head into the concrete garage floor until his hands are covered in a spongy sticky mess.
Sam and Jan get into her car and drive in the crammed and chaotic city streets. The world is literally falling apart around them. They end up abandoning their car on the clogged streets and making their way by foot to Jan’s penthouse apartment. From their windows above the city they watch the sun set on a disintegrating city. Sam holds Jan next to him on the couch and they fall asleep to the sound of the TV news anchor talking about the “missing Russian radioactive material” exploding in Seattle.
Sam wakes up in his small studio apartment confused. It’s as if he woke up from a bad dream. He gets a shower and stares at his knuckles. The knuckles that had beat a man’s face to pulp. No scratches or bruises. Nothing. On the bus ride to work he listens to the radio. The world is fine. So far. He gets to work and talks to Jan in her office. Her nose isn’t broken from the punch to her face and she treats him as condescending as always. Maria pokes her head into his cubicle and asks him where he wants to go to lunch.
He sits in his cubicle and starts adding up his receipts from last week. As the “Fun Around Town” photographer his only expenses are usually gas and batteries for his camera. He hooks his camera up to the computer and starts downloading last weekends photos – shot after shot of beautiful young things partying and drinking and dancing and all happy for the chance at getting their drunk face in the paper.
Sam looks at his knuckles again, expecting the ache from the fight. He can still feel the man’s face caving in and his hands start to tremble.
Sam will eventually realize that he is living each day twice. Once in the world as he has always known it and once in a world where everything has crumbled – governments, cities and societies. He is aware of this split but is powerless to do anything but live in each world. His old world is wearing him down with the drudgery and inanity of his work. It’s crushing his soul with materialism and boredom. The other world is becoming increasingly dangerous with terrorists and natural disasters wreaking havoc. Sam is hating his boss in one world and teaming with her in the other to create a resistance movement. The Resistance will ultimately uncover evidence that many of the earth shattering events were actually part or a larger orchestrated plan. A plan they will end up fighting against.
Sam will battle with this dichotomy as his two lives wildly diverge and he remains the same person. He will take his extreme experiences from a world in chaos back to a world that is still oblivious. His “normal” world will become a jungle of personal drama as he struggles to maintain a relationship with a girlfriend that is alive in one world and either dead or missing in the other. Other complications will arise as he develops a relationship with his supervisor in the fallen world while in his normal world, his supervisor remains cold and distant.
Sam will struggle to realize what and who is truly important to him and ultimately have to choose which world he wants to live in. While on the surface the answer seems easy, which will he choose? A world of danger that is desperately in need of his help or a world of relative comfort but filled with friends and a lover that are sleepwalking through their lives?