Posted: 03 December 2022 at 3:19am | IP Logged | 1
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I'm reading two books right now--Will Eisner's SHOP TALK (the Jack Kirby chapter at the moment) and the new TPB reprint of Jack Kirby's KAMANDI.
Just like with Kirby's memories of working with Stan Lee (which I don't want to relitigate right now), Kirby remembers doing all the writing when he worked with Joe Simon. (Contrary to the Stan Lee recollection, Kirby has nothing but good things to say about Simon here.) I thought the two were a bit more equal partners, but this would reduce Simon to Kirby's inker (and maybe the business guy).
It seems to me (okay, I'll mention it, but I don't want to argue about it) that Kirby thought PLOTTING a comic story was writing it, but I gather that Stan Lee thought that SCRIPTING it was the writing! (In fact, the writer's test for working at Marvel was scripting an already-drawn scene.)
With Ditko and Kirby's non-Marvel work, it seems the scripting (Kirby doing his own scripting and people like Denny O'Neil scripting Ditko's) did its job but didn't add much. (I get the impression that perhaps Kirby didn't understand why his solo work was not as popular or successful as when he was teamed with an entertaining scripter.)
On the other hand, I can totally see Stan Lee thinking that his entertaining dialogue and captions were very important--because they were! I always got an extra enjoyment out of Stan Lee's dialogue and I really appreciated just the choice of words used by him, Doug Moench, and Steve Gerber (and perhaps a few others, but those are who come to mind right now). I would read their stuff no matter who drew it.
As someone who has dabbled in self-publishing (and similar non-industry work), I find that I can plot a story very quickly, but scripting the words (dialogue and captions) takes a lot longer and is in many ways harder work. UNLESS the plot isn't quite working, then I can take hours (days, months!) finetuning the plot, and then the scripting becomes the easier part simply by contrast.
It was easier to separate the plot and the script in the heyday of "Marvel style," but now (I believe) most comics are done full script. You don't see separating the two jobs too much anymore--maybe some of Neal Adams' Continuity comics in the 80's and Jim Lee's 90's Homage/Image comics, and maybe Adams' more recent DC mini-series would have been better received if he had left the scripting to somebody else.
So, maybe it's a moot point now, but I'm still curious what people think--is WRITING a comic story more in the PLOTTING or the SCRIPTING?
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