My first JB-written story was MTIO#50, and I liked the way it didn't read quite like standard pre-digested Marvel fare.

BEN(To Reed): "You already know more about my insides than I do!"

REED: "Yes, but..."

     This would be an interesting discussion for me.  While I was never very keen on Chris Claremont's "wordiness", there is a certain charm to having some dialogue going on certain panels so long as they're not going into a word-for-word description of the action happening.  Wordy comics have their place, depending on the scene and what's going on in it.  It's a balancing act.

     I can accept a fairly wordy page, for instance, if the character or narrator is explaining something that might need a little exposition.  For instance, a flashback scene, or a scene where characters are having certain situations explained to them as they enter a location.  Imagine reading a comicbook with a big splash page of a spaceship entering a station, and try to wonder just what's going on.  In a few balloons, I could have a "voiceover" by one of the characters explaining why our heroes are going to be disembarking on the station soon.

     What I could never get over were "wordy" fight panels.  I can draw on two examples here.  One was in post-JB pages of Alpha Flight where Northstar is having a conversation about being gay while landing punches on a costumed "Mountie" character!  The other was in the "Phalanx Covenant" issue of Uncanny X-Men drawn by Rogerio Cruz, wherein one of the villains attacking Sabretooth is going into a whole litany of "Could, Should've, Would've" while in mid-lunge!

     Clearly, some thought ought to be given as to where you want to put your speech/thought/narration balloons...

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As I have mentioned before, the two elements of Chris' scripting that bugged me most when working with him were polar opposites.

The first was when he would ignore the pictures, and write what he "felt at the time", and the other was when he would write to the art in such a way that anyone -- and this would be most readers -- unfamiliar with the "Marvel Method" would assume whatever I had drawn was something he'd TOLD me to draw.

I've often said, I am convinced a major contributor to my rep for having an out-of-control ego sprang from all the times at cons when some fan at my table would sing Chris' praises for some scene or visual "bit", and I would say "I did that." The cumulative effect certainly gave the impression I was trying to hog all the credit -- except, of course, I was only trying to hang onto the credit that was rightfully mine. Back in those days when the money was minimal, credit where credit is due became one of my major concerns -- and, indeed, continues to be one to this day.

Bottom line, if there is something happening on the page that can only be understood if you read the words, it was more than likely Chris' "bit". If you can follow it without the words, it was more than likely mine!

(A notable exception, recently posted in another thread, was when Proteus zapped Phoenix and made her feel as she would feel -- if she could feel -- after having been dead for two years. That bit was mine, and Chris, surprising, scripted it exactly as I asked!!)

 the other was when he would write to the art in such a way that anyone -- and this would be most readers -- unfamiliar with the "Marvel Method" would assume whatever I had drawn was something he'd TOLD me to draw.

This would be Jack Kirby Syndrome, circa the 1960s.

I really, really enjoy DC Comics from the 1960s/1970s much more these days, because there is a lot of writing going on. David V. Reed as he was known is a writer I love these days, since he provided a comic book which takes the average reader 20-30 min to read. And with neat information packed in there, research material that is truly interesting. Even with his crazy plotting, I get more out of a single David V. Reed story than all the comics I buy new in any given month.

Readers today (and maybe even in the day) snark at writers like Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, J.M. DeMatteis, and yeah they could get full of themselves sometimes, but they were good. They had distinct ways of writing which sometimes worked brilliantly with the art, sometimes not. But always interesting, always worth taking the time to read. I like writers, and I like the idea of writers who write comics. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, maybe writers just get in the way of the artists, but it can work. I've seen it work.

Maybe some writers did describe what was happening right before the readers' eyes, but sometimes the words enforced the illustration, made it more memorable. Anyone who says they didn't never read a Tarzan comic or that Spider-Man comic where he's pinned under the machinery in the sewer. Or

Those two panels alone take more time to read than a 90 percent of comics today. Plus the art is 99 percent better (100 percent if you don't count guys like Darwyn Cooke), and the wordsmithing 100 percent better than anything Johns or Morrison will ever come up with in their entire careers.

QUOTE: Those two panels alone take more time to read than a 90 percent of comics today. Plus the art is 99 percent better (100 percent if you don't count guys like Darwyn Cooke), and the wordsmithing 100 percent better than anything Johns or Morrison will ever come up with in their entire careers.

Along these same lines, I heard someone the other day mention that Astonishing X-Men (the Joss Whedon X-Men book) was like a Chris Claremont book written above the 8th grade level. Now, I know that Claremont isn't the most popular writer on this board but I'm still having trouble figuring out how his old X-Men books were on a lower reading level than a Joss Whedon comic that's mostly dialogue that takes 5 minutes to read.

Well said, Chad.