Write Now 20 Online

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2009 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved.
The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
FOCUS ON
FRANK MILLER
F
I S I NA
SU L
E!
695
In the USA
#20
Spring
2009
WILL EISNER
MICHAEL USLAN
COLLEEN DORAN
[ 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by
Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]
M AG A Z I N E
Issue #20
SPRING 2009
Read Now!
Message from the Editor-in-Chief .....................................................page 2
THE SPIRIT SECTION begins on page 3
He Dared Evil on a Dark Knight
Interview with Frank Miller ................................................................page 4
Keeping the Faith
Interview with Michael Uslan ............................................................page 6
THE SPIRIT NUTS & BOLTS

Thumbnails to Pencils to Script to Finished Comic:
WILL EISNERS THE SPIRIT #24
Pages from Veterans Benefits, by Sergio Aragons,
Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin and Wayne Faucher..............page 18
Conceived by
DANNY FINGEROTH
Editor-In-Chief
Producing Results
Interview with F.J. DeSanto ..............................................................page 25
Managing Editor
ROBERT
GREENBERGER
Odd Lot Perspective

Interview with Deborah Del Prete ................................................page 30
Consulting Editor
ERIC FEIN
Not-So-Secret Agent
Interview with Denis Kitchen ..........................................................page 32
Proofreading
ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON
Will Eisner and the Art of Adaptation

N.C. Christopher Couch looks at a pair of Spirit stories........page 36
The Spirit of Comics!
Interview with Will Eisner
(re-presented from Write Now! #5)..............................................page 43
On the Creators Life:
Interview with Colleen Doran..........................................................page 51
Being Discovered Again and Again and Again
Alex Grecian on breaking into comicsseveral times ............page 65
Nuts & Bolts Department

Script to Thumbnails to Pencils to Finished Comic: AMAZING
SPIDER-MAN #574
Pages from Flashbacks, by Marc Guggenheim, Barry Kitson
and Mark Farmer ................................................................................page 60
But What Does Danny Think?
Danny Fingeroth sums up seven years of Write Now! ..........page 69
Feedback
Letters from Write Now!s Readers ................................................page 71
Designer
DAVID
GREENAWALT
Transcriber
STEVEN TICE
Circulation Director
BOB BRODSKY,
COOKIESOUP
PRODUCTIONS
Publisher
JOHN MORROW
Special Thanks To:

ALISON BLAIRE
TOM BREVOORT
KIA CROSS
DEBORAH DEL PRETE
F.J. DeSANTO
WILL EISNER
MARK EVANIER
DAVID GREENAWALT
KATE HUBIN
STEVE KANE
DAVID HYDE
ADAM KERSCH
DENIS KITCHEN
JACKIE KNOX
JIM McCANN
FRANK MILLER
ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON
CHRIS POWELL
BEN REILLY
ALEX SEGURA
VARDA STEINHARDT
STEVEN TICE
MICHAEL USLAN
STEVE WACKER
Danny Fingeroths 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 2009 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
As you may have heard, this is the last issue of this
magazine that so modestly bears my name in its logo.
It makes me think of the joking observation that was old
when Woody Allens Alvy Singer character makes it in 1977s
Annie Hall. He compares romantic relationshipsand lifeto
a restaurant of which a complaining patron says: The food
here is terribleand such small portions, too!
So while getting out each issue of WN was always way
more work than Id anticipated, I was almost always proud of
the finished results. And now that the magazines seven-year
run is over, it seems like it went by in a flash. Such small
portions, indeed.
Sure, WN will continue to be available in digital form and
as print back issues from the TwoMorrows website. And Ill
still be hawking issues at conventions. There may even be
some kind of continuing web presence with new material.
But WN as weve known it is no longer to be.
But, hey, theres still this issue. Let me tell you about it
The recent Spirit movie has put everybody in a Will Eisner
state of mind. Not that anybody doing comics doesnt
always have Will looking over their shoulder just a little bit,
but especially now, when the winter days are short, and
ragged newspapers blow through the dark, cold city streets,
and people shiver from the pelting force of the precipitation
known as Eisenshpritz
Where was I? Ah, carried away by the atmosphere that
comes along with many a Spirit story
Anyway, this issue of Write Now! focuses on the Spirit: the
character, the comic, and the movie. (And theres some
extremely cool non-Spirit stuff, too.)
We lead off with interviews with movie folks: writer/director Frank Miler, producer Michael Uslan, co-producer F.J.
DeSanto, and producer Deborah Del Prete. The interviews
each add important insights on how Eisners unique comics
vision was translated into (especially of interest to Write
Now! readers) a screenplay and then, of course, a movie. The
saga of how The Spirit got made is an incredible story all by
itself.
Then, we speak to Eisners longtime friend and publisher
Denis Kitchen. Denis tells us how he came to work with
Will, and what he learned from the relationship.
We also have an article by Eisnerscholar N.C. Christopher
Couch about a little-discussed aspect of Wills Spirit stories:
those that were adaptations of classic short stories. Eisner
has spoken about how certain short-fiction authors were
great influences, and here, Mr. Couch shows us how Will
homaged them via The Spirit.
2 | READ NOW
Back in 2003, two years before his

passing at age 87, I had the honor of
interviewing Will for issue #5 of this
magazine. I knew him casually, but had
never before had the chance to speak
to him at such length about his art and
craft. Theres a lot to be learned from
what he has to say in the interview, and I thought it was the
perfect thing to have in an issue dedicated to his work.
Weve also got an excellent Nuts & Bolts section featuring
script and pencil pages from a recent issue of DCs Will
Eisners The Spirit by Sergio Aragons, Mark Evanier, Chad
Hardin, and Wayne Faucher. These guys beautifully bring
the Spirits comics adventures into modern terms.
As for the excellent not-Spirit material, weve got an inspirational interview with writer-artist Colleen Doran, who tells
us how she creates work like A Distant Soiland how she
deals with the realities of the art and the business aspects of
comics.
Then, Alex Grecian talks about how his writing career got
going and how his and artist Riley Rossmos Image series
Proof came to be.
And in another nifty Nuts & Bolts section, weve got some
exciting script and pencil art by Marc Guggenheim and Barry
Kitson from Amazing Spider-Man #574!
Hope thats enough. If it isnt, what are you going to do
stop buying the mag?
But seriously thanks to everybody whos been there for
Write Now! these past seven years. But before we start blubberin, why dont you enjoy this Spirit-centric issue of Write
Now!and then join me in the last few pages where I get to
look back on WNs history and thank all sorts of people and
try to figure out some profound words to exit on.
Write Away!
Danny Fingeroth
Editor-in-Chief
LAST MINUTE SHAMELESS HYPE:

Did I ever tell you about my books Superman on the
Couch; Disguised as Clark Kent; and The Rough
Guide to Graphic Novels? Oh, I did? Well, no need to
mention them again, I suppose
DF
While the impetus for focusing on the Spirit in this issue of Write
Now! was the recent Frank Miller-directed movie, I never need much
of an excuse to spread the word about Will Eisner and his creation.
The things Eisner discovered, invented, interpreted and demonstrated
over his long career are every bit as relevant to established and
aspiring comics writers and artists today as they ever were.
In the pages that follow, we hear from some of the key people
behind the movie (Eisner-fanatics all); from a few of the creators on
the current run of Spirit comics; from Wills longtime publisher and
friend; from a critic who has given eye-opening attention to Eisners
work; and, finally, from the Master himself, via an interview I was
fortunate enough to be able to do with Will in 2003.
Eisner called the comics supplement he supplied to newspapers
The Spirit Section, and that seemed an appropriate title for this series
of features that follows. I hope you enjoy Write Now!s own Spirit
Section.
Danny Fingeroth
THE SPIRIT SECTION | 3
THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION
He Dared Evil on a Dark Night:
THE FRANK MILLER INTERVIEW
Conducted via e-mail

by Danny Fingeroth
December 4, 2008
RANK MILLER
changed the way
comics are done,
starting with Daredevil,
moving on to re-vision
Barman in The Dark
Knight Returns. Other triumphs for the writerartist included Martha
Washington, 300, and, of
course, Sin City, which
was turned into a sleeper-hit movie which he codirected. A longtime
friend and colleague of
[ 2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.]
Will Eisner, Miller was the
natural choice to bring The
Spirit to life as its writer-director.
Frank took a few minutes to give us talk to us

about the character and the film
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first discover
The Spirit, Frank? Which characters and strips
appealed to you?
FRANK MILLER: I first discovered The Spirit when I
was on a bicycle when I was 14 years old picking
up comic books and discovering the works of Will
Eisner who I thought was a new guy who was
blowing everybody else out of the water. Then I
discovered it was all written and drawn before I
was born. So yeah, thats how I discovered The
Spirit. My favorite characters were the Spirit himself, Commissioner Dolan and Sand Saref.
The first The Spirit movie poster. Art by Frank Miller.

[ 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is
owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office.]
4 | WRITE NOW
DF: Please talk a little about your process of using

art from the Spirit comics to do storyboards. How did
you go about picking stories, scenes and characters?
How did you come up with the idea to do that in the
first place?
FM: I drew my ass off. I did not use Eisners artwork
except as inspiration for the director of photography
and for the crew and for the actors. But I did not
want to replicate his work. I think he would have felt
disgraced by that. I came up with something new
using his material that respected the boyish vigor of
the original creation.
DF: Did you ever find yourself imagining conversations
with Will while you were working on the movie? If so,
how did they go?
FM: I imagined those conversations only every
g*dd*mn day. How did they go? Thats between Will
and meand hes dead.
DF: Would you ever want to write and/or direct movie
versions of any of Wills later, non-Spirit, work
A Contract with God, etc.?
Will Eisner and Frank Miller had discussions and

debates through the years, some of which were
captured for a Dark Horse-published book, titled,
appropriately enough, Eisner/Miller.
[ 2005 Will Eisner.]
FM: No. I would not want to do it

because The Spirit is the most romantic
work he did. And I dont believe that
Family Matter or A Contract with God
should be directed by me. It should be
directed by the types of Aronofsky who
understand naturalism better than I do.
DF: How do you reconcile the serious
and humorous sides of Eisners original
stories?
FM: Will was a full man who lived a full
lifeand he knew that life was dark and
scary, beautiful and funnyand he incorporated all of them into these little
seven-page stories. And thats what is so
magnificent about The Spirit and thats
what I tried to keep alive in the movie.
Millers splash page for 1981s Daredevil #170. The look and feel of the page
are influenced by Eisners Spirit splashes, especially where the title and credits
become part of the art. Inks are by Klaus Janson. [ 2008 Marvel Characters Inc.]
THE
END
FRANK MILLER | 5
KEEPING THE FAITH:
THE MICHAEL USLAN INTERVIEW
Conducted via phone November 6, 2009 by Danny Fingeroth

Transcribed by Steven Tice
Copy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, Bob Greenberger and Michael Uslan
ICHAEL USLAN is the producer on The Spirit,

and shepherded the project along for more
than a decade. Hes also executive producer
of all the Batman films, including 2008s box-office
phenomenon, The Dark Knight.
Michael is a writer, producer, and entertainment

lawyer, with a list of awards including an Emmy, a
Peoples Choice and an Annie. Among other achievements, Michael is also the man who brought Stan Lee
and DC Comics together for the historic Just Imagine
Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe line of graphic
novels (as recounted in detail in Write Now! #18).
His many comics writing credits include the Batman:
Detective #27 graphic novel, and an upcoming arc in
DC Comics The Spirit series.
I spoke to Michael over the phone in the period
leading up to the release of The Spirit movie. While
the main topic was the creation the movies script,
needless to say, our conversation digressed here and
there, in what I think were productive directions. His
infectious enthusiasm for the projectand for everything he works oncomes through loud and clear in
this wide-ranging interview. Enjoy!
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: Thanks for taking the time to talk
about The Spirit, Michael. Youre credited as the producer. But, like most movies, this one has other folks
who wore producers hats and I know youre eager to
give them credit.
MICHAEL USLAN: F.J. DeSantos a co-producer, Linda
McDonough is a co-producer. Producing with me is the
utterly amazing Deborah Del Prete and Gigi Pritzker.
And executive producers are my wonderful, wonderful
mentor Benjamin Melniker, and Steve Maier.
DF: I guess Ill start at the beginning. When did you
first see The Spirit comic? Was it like the rest of us, in
6 | WRITE NOW
Jules Feiffers book, The Great Comic Book Heroes?

MU: Yknow, thats been a source of debate between
me and one of my best friends, Bobby Klein. Bob, who
is now a genius at Intel, was my comic book buddy
growing up, and to this day we, from time to time, cowrite introductions for DC Archives editions. We just
did a piece for Roy Thomass TwoMorrows All-Star
Companion Volume 3, so we still dabble in it together. Bobby and I have been debating that, and there are
three possibilities. I thought it was the Feiffer book.
Bobby thinks that it was the Help! magazine reprint
that came out in 1962. And I cant tell you for sure.
Bobby does make a strong case that it was the Help!
magazine first. And then after that, the early Spirit stories I saw would be the ones in the New York Herald
Tribune, then the two Joe Simon-edited reprint issues
over at Harvey. Then there were The Spirit Bags
reprints. And then, by the time I got to high school, the
Spirit appeared on the cover of the underground
comic, Snarf, I believe, and then had the two fifty-cent
issues of his own, if memory serves me. By then I had
latched onto other Eisner stuff. Bobbys father worked
at the Fort Monmouth army base, so we were privy to
Wills PS Magazine, also, on a regular basis.
Something that we saw really early on may have predated all of thisbut it wasnt Eisner. Bobby and I used
to go to a flea market, Collingswood Auction, near our
homes, near Asbury Park, New Jersey, and every Friday
night they had a backdate magazine stand there, and
this guy would come in from New York with boxes and
boxes full of old, old comic books, and because they
were old, he sold them for a nickel apiece.
the convention inI want to say 68, but I dont have

the con booklets in front of mewhere Eisner made an
appearance. I dont know that it was the first big con
that he did, which I think came later, but at one of
those conventions when I was in high school I did
meet Will just as he was being exposed to this thing
called comic book fandom. I had a chance to hear him
speak, and to talk to him, and that, to me, was the
be-all and end-all, because as I began to go to these
conventions, thats when I began to see The Spirit.
Thats when I saw the inserts and expanded my
horizons in terms of this character, and began to
realize that what Orson Welles and Citizen Kane are
to cinema, that is what Will Eisner and The Spirit are
to comics.
DF: Who would want old comic

books?
MU: Right. And it was in that
batch, for five cents, probably
sometime around maybe 7th
grade, that I got an IW or a
Super reprint titled Daring
Adventures with the Spirit in it.
It was definitely not Eisner, but
that might have been my first, or
one of my real early, looks at the
Spirit as a character.
DF: Did you have a friendship

with him then?
MU: I just sort of met him.
We didnt really develop a
relationship until about 1994,
when I got a call from Will. He
indicated to me that Steven
Spielbergs people and some
other people in Hollywood had
contacted him about the possibility of doing The Spirit as a
movie. And, being the businessDF: The Feiffer book came out in
man that he wasand he was
65, and it was definitely my first
a great businessmanhe did a
awareness of the character.
lot of investigating, and spoke to
MU: Well, no matter which ones
a lot of people, and he said
may have been in what order, it
everywhere he spoke to people,
was certainly the Feiffer book
my name kept coming up. And
with the color insert that was
he said, I know you went
the one that had the impact.
through hell and it took you ten
years to bring a dark and serious
DF: When did you meet Will?
version of Batman to the screen
the way Bob Kane and Bill
MU: I met Will when I was a
Will
Eisner
firmly
embraced
the
independent
spirit
teenager. As you know, I was at
Finger and the gang had intend(pun intended) of the underground comix, licensing
ed him to be, as this creature of
the very, very first comic book
Denis Kitchen to reprint some Spirit stories in 1972s
convention ever held, which
the night stalking criminals from
Snarf. Eisner also provided this new, then-topical
cover to the issue. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
the shadows. And everyone tells
was in New York City, July,
me you love comics, you know
1964. Bobby Klein and I went
comics, this is your passion. Is this something you
there. My parents took us. It was at a fleabag hotel on
might be interested in? I said, Yeah! So my business
the Bowery called the Broadway Centralwhich later
partner Ben Melniker and I met with Will at the
collapsed on itself! My mother was appalled. We had
Harvard Club on 44th Street shortly thereafter, and we
to step over unconscious drunks in the hallway in
had a wonderful meeting of the minds. I think Will
order to check in. There were roaches on the wall.
realized at that point the unbridled love I had for
comics, and the passion I had for The Spirit, and my
DF: That was probably better than conscious drunks.
understanding of Wills work on The Spirit. And slowly,
MU: [laughs] Sure. That was the first convention, there
over a period of time, he and Ben worked out the
were 200 of us there. A few years later, I think it was
MICHAEL USLAN | 7
terms of the dealwhich was always interesting to sit
in on, because, from time to time, the two of them
would start speaking Yiddish to each other, and I
would be sitting there picking out a word here, and a
word there, and wondering what was going on. But
Ben and Will had a very, very good understanding.
They were roughly the same age.
DF: Is Ben still active?
MU: Yeah. Ben is 95, and the other day, when it was
nice out, he was playing 13 holes of golf. Ben is a legend in the motion picture business.
time to time, and to some of my buddies who were

comic book historians to make sure I was on the right
track. Its funny how life works, but there are many
interesting ways that, either directly or tangentially, Will
Eisners path and mine crossed.
DF: So you were telling me how you got involved with
Ben Melniker.
MU: At the time, I was reading about Ben every day in
the front page of Variety. He was setting motion picture history back then. First of all, as a backdrop: Ben
ran MGM for 30 years. He started with them in 1940,
and was with them until about 72. Ben put together
the deals for Ben Hur, Dr. Zhivago, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, Gigi, and all their
musicals of the 50s and 60s. It
was Ben who had the dealings
with Stanley Kubrick and David
Lean, and was in charge of all
the David O. Selznick pictures
for them. He negotiated Grace
Kellys contract with her dad. He
negotiated Elvis Presleys contract with Colonel Tom Parker.
And it goes on and on and on.
DF: How did you become involved with Ben to begin

with?
MU: When I initially began to
negotiate with DC for the rights
to Batman in early 79, I knew I
could not do it on my own. Yes,
I was now an experienced
motion picture production attorney having worked for threeand-a-half years at the only
major studio at the time based
in New York City, which was
United Artists in its heyday. But I
was too emotionally involved. I
DF: Sounds like an amazing
needed somebody who could
guy. Now, to bring things back
get in there and negotiate the
to The Spirit Eisner called
deal without just saying yes to
you, which is fascinating. That
everything in order to get it
must have been an incredible
done. And I needed somebody
experience and a tribute to
who knew how to mount a prowhat you had accomplished.
duction, because I had been
MU: It was a really, really cool
learning how you produce and
thing that happened, and it was
finance films, working at UA,
because of the success of the
where I was in charge of legal
first Batman movie, and
and business affairs over a numbecause of the people that he
Eisners cover to 1940s Eisner & Iger Studios-proknew in the comic book indusber of really great picturesthat duced Jumbo Comics #15, featuring his creation,
gave me my training, including
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The Spirit debuted in try, in particular, who pointed
the same year. [ 2009 the respective copyright holders.]
him in my direction, that said,
early Rocky pictures, Black
Stallion, Raging Bull,
This is the guy who has undergone a human endurance contest for the ten years it took
Apocalypse Now, which was a crisis every day of
to bring Batman to life as a dark and serious movie.
work. Interestingly, because they all knew at UA I was
So we met, we hit it off, we had an understanding.
a comic book buff, anything that was comics-oriented
Then it took some time for Will and Ben to work out
wound up on my desk, and for a long time we had
the details. And we knew. And I told Will that this was
Sheena, Queen of the Junglea character Will creatgoing to be a challenge, a long-term thing, because the
edin development over there, and it was left to me
Spirit is a guy in a fedora and tie, without superpowto attempt to untangle the copyright morass and the
ers, without all the toys and gadgets and vehicles, who
lost history of Sheena. I spent an awful lot of time
has heart and soul, who has the human interest eledoing that, dealing extensively with Wills former busiments of Frank Capra, the film noir elements of Orson
ness partner Jerry Iger, also with Thurman Scott, who
Welles, the suspense elements of Alfred Hitchcock, all
used to own Fiction House, and I talked to Will from
8 | WRITE NOW
Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men out of the mix
for a moment. What had been the most successful franchises? And up to that time it was Men in
Black, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The
Mask. So I was able to specifically point to these
properties that had originated in lesser-known
comic books, to give executives examples they
could latch onto and understand that its okay if
its not a locomotive of a title. But if the storys
great, and the characters are great
From the 1987 ABC
Telefilm version of The
Spirit: Above, Sam J.
Jones as Denny Colts
alter ego. Left, Jones with
a pre-Deep Space Nine
Nana Visitor as Ellen
Dolan. [ 2009 the
copyright holders.]
kind of wound up in one. I said, This is not going to

be an easy sell. We are in this for the long haul. My
God, if I knew it would be thirteen-and-a-half years till
this movie would come out, I might have jumped out
a window. But I never do things the easy way, and I
never do anything the short way. Constantine took
about nine years; National Treasure was, like, ten
years. Everything seems to take a long, long time to
get done. When the good things happen, after ten
years to get a Batman, for example, or all the years to
get a Dark Knight and a Batman Begins, you turn
around and you look and you say, It was worth the
wait.
DF: The Spirit, in a way, must have been the opposite
challenge of Batman. I mean, Batman is one of those
characters everybody knows the name, and Im sure
everybody you took it to thought they were an expert
on it in some way. But the Spirit is much more of a
niche property.
MU: Oh, it definitely is. Ive now been in trenches 33
years in Hollywood doing this, day in and day out.
Finally, we had a breakthrough. Hollywood people
finally are getting this now. Its not about having a
property that everybody in the world knows, or having
a property thats 60 years old, 30 years old, or 20 years
old. Thats not what its about. Some of the greatest
franchises to be built based on comic books have been
done on the basis of titles that have never sold more
than 5,000 copies per issue. Its truly about the stories
and the character. I said, Look. Take Superman,
And I had a really good pitch for The Spirit. I

love pitching. Its my favorite part of the whole
producing process. I would passionately pitch this
thing and get them intrigued by the story. Now,
unfortunatelyand the reason it took so many
yearsis that the production execs would always
say, Okay. Love the story, love the character. But,
of course, weve got to get him out of the fedora
and tie and get him into some kind of spandex
and a cape. Goodbye, was my response, and
Ben and I would turn around and leave. This is a
great story, we love your pitch, but in this day and age,
youve really got to have superpowers, and he really
doesnt have superpowers, so we should make him a
real ghost who comes back and Goodbye. And I
would up and leave and later send them later a copy
of The Spectre or Deadman to take a look at if they
were interested in doing something like that.
Thats the kind of stuff that we continually ran into,

because there have been far too many execs who didnt get it, who didnt get comic books, who didnt grow
up in our era, who grew up in an era where comics
were considered lurid, cheap entertainment for children, and these people did not have the respect for
the creators, the artists and the writers, did not have
respect for the integrity of the characters. Another
argument that weve won, finally, generally speaking,
after 33 years in the trenches, is proving to producers
that comic books are not synonymous with superheroes, that if you walk into a Barnes & Noble, or a
Borders, or a Virgin Megastore, any genres you see on
their bookracks, I can bring you in comic books. And
they finally get that now. Graphic novels have been a
big help, there. Thats why youre now seeing Road to
Perdition and 300 and A History of Violence, and
Constantine, The Spirit, Sin City, getting done.
Because that door has finally been opened, and they
finally get that there are other comics-based things
besides costumed superheroes.
DF: One of the challenges of the Spirit has to have
MICHAEL USLAN | 9
been that the stories are often not about him. And his
personality is somehow a bit nebulous. To me, it was
always about the feel of the strip itself, and the guest
stars, the femmes fatales and the villains. But the
Spirit himself seemed almost a blank slate.
MU: Because he was you, he was me. He was
Everyman. Hes the guy that we were all identifying
with that was normal. He was the guy who was in
the midst of a comic book-like world, but was human,
was a real person, trying to live this existence, with,
next to Batman, the greatest rogues gallery of
villainswell, lets call them villainesses, with the
exception of the Octopus, the Worm, and a few others.
He was us. He was not a Marvel superhero out to save
the world from an alien invasion. He was not the
Justice League of America out to save America from
being taken over by a mad scientist. He was a guy
from the hood who was looking to make his neighborhood, his precinct, his slice of Central City a safer,
better place for all the neighbors and friends that he
grew up with, to live and work. And that meant dealing with some bad cops, corrupt politicians, racketeers,
gangsters, and the occasional Octopus and femme
fatale. So The Spirit in the comics is a Frank Capra
movie in terms of its heart and soul. Its Meet John
Doe. The Spirit is known as the first, and perhaps only,
middle-class superhero, as the guy who cant afford a
SpiritMobile to get around the city, who has to rely on
public transportation, or Dolan to give him a ride.
Thats the charm and the beauty, and thats what sets
the character apart.
DF: Originally the idea was that he died, but was in
suspended animation, and then he decided to wear
the mask to work outside the law, right?
MU: Yeah. To me, the way I always read it was Denny
Colt was a guy who was probably bounced out of
police academy, couldnt stand the red tape and
bureaucracy, not a guy for following all the rules, and
when the death incident occurred, it gave him an
opportunity. He is maybe the first hero patently aware
of the absurdity of his own situation, because, as he
crawls out of his own grave, and is sitting there in
Wildwood Cemetery gasping for air and thinking,
Whoa. Maybe this dying is not the worst thing that
could have happened to me. Maybe this is a chance
for me to do something good, something special, that I
couldnt otherwise do. Maybe if I can convince the bad
guys Im the spirit of Denny Colt, the spirit of justice
back to track them down, maybe I can be a comic
The young James Garner, an actor Eisner
had thought would be perfect to play the
Spirit. [ 2009 the copyright holders.]
10 | WRITE NOW
book superhero come to life and be really effective.

Its got that kind of absurdity and the Spirit keeps his
tongue firmly planted in his cheek, but he gives the
hero thing a shot. But once hes out there, and is
doing it, he gets the crap beaten out of him left and
right, and realizes its not quite always the way it
seems in the comics. Theres a little bit of that to it, as
far as I was always concerned.
DF: Ive always understood it was Eisners satire on
superheroes, really, that he knew he was doing stories
for an older audience in the newspapers.
MU: True. And if you want to follow that line, its the
same thing Stan Lee did when he created Spider-Man.
Stan created Spider-Man as a parody of Superman, not
as another superhero. It hasnt quite played out that
way, but I think there was some of that in what Will
was doing with the Spirit, albeit, yes, for an older audience.
DF: In the 15 years since you first spoke to Will about
doing a Spirit movie, are there many versions of the
story that you pitched?
MU: From the beginning, I said the heart and soul of
this has got to be Sand Saref. Theyre tied together as
kids, their origins are tied together; theres a beautiful
structure to it. Then, with Ellen, you have a love triangle to play off of. I said to Will, Wherever we go with
this movie, this thing has
got to start with Sand
Saref. And the Octopus
was always in from the
beginning. His tentacles
reach everywhere to
crime in Central City, and
he has to be a pervasive
presence.
going to be speaking at
the memorial, and I ran
into Frank Miller there. I
hadnt seen Frank in a
number of years, so I
went over and congratulated him on Sin City. I
said, You know, Frank,
theyre going to be
teaching what you guys
DF: Did you have a
did there for years in film
writer attached to the
schools. Its really breakearly pitches?
through. For all these
MU: No. Periodically,
years, Ive been trying to
over the years, we talked
make comic books into
to a number of different
movies, and you just
people about possibly
made a movie into a
writing it. As you might
comic book. I then said,
normally do, you read
Frank, Ive got The
things, you have some
Spirit. Truly, you are the
ideas, you meet some
only person, really, who
people. At one point in
could write and direct
time, late in the game,
this movie. You and Will
we had Jeph Loeb come
had a very, very special
in and do a treatment.
relationship. You totally
But, ultimately, everyunderstand this man.
thing changed for me
You totally understand
when I saw Sin City. I
his work. You totally
The cover to Jules Feiffers 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes. It
said, We can now do The was this book that introduced a new generation of comics fans to
understand the Spirit.
Spirit movie. Now I see it. the original superheroes of the 1930s and 40s, including The Spirit. You need to do this
The technology is finally
The book was edited by novelist E.L. Doctorow. The Superman figure movie. And he said,
here. And one of the rea- is likely by Joe Shuster. [Book copyright 1965 by The Dial Press. Superman
Me? Touch the work of
2009 DC Comics.]
sons that I think were in a
the master? Bring the
Golden Age of comic book moviemaking now is
work of Will Eisner, the Spirit, and translate it onto the
because of the things I mentioned before. First, the
screen? How can I possibly touch that? How could I do
fact that the studios, the powers-that-be, the talent
that? I cant possibly. And afterwards I go and I sit
pool, they all kind of get it now that comics are not
down, its just before the memorials starting. Ten minsynonymous with superheroes. Number two, they get
utes later he taps me on my shoulder. I turn around,
and he whispers into my ear, I cant let anyone else
that you dont need a high-profile title to make it work,
that you can just rely on properties that are great stotouch this.
ries and great characters. Number three, the technology has caught up, so now its feasible on a certain kind
So, Danny, I have to just ask the one question.
Whats ten minutes in a persons life? [laughter]
of budget where you can do a Green Lantern or a
Because that ten minutes changed everything. I went
Silver Surfer without it looking cheesy. When I saw Sin
rushing back to my producing partners, who were the
City, I realizedin terms of the whole noir look, the
wonderful Deborah Del Prete, with whom I had my
whole highly stylized look of the city created by Will
day-to-day producing relationship with, and Gigi
Eisner, the rain, the gutters, every aspect of it, the
logosthat we now had the technology that could con- Pritzker, and Ben, and F.J., and Linda McDonough. And
I said to Deborah, Weve got an opportunity here. She
vey that, and make it work, and make it look right and
says, This would be phenomenal. Weve got to pursue
work great.
this. So all of us were on board to try to make this
happen. After all the exasperating and frustrating expeCoincidentally, it wasnt long after I saw it that I was
riences trying to set The Spirit up over the years, my
at Wills memorial in downtown New York. I was
MICHAEL USLAN | 11
THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION T
luck changed. One of my very good friends in L.A. is a
wonderful actor named Dan Lauria. Dan played the
dad on The Wonder Years. And Dan, every Monday
night in L.A., had a theater group that he had put
together to encourage writers in Hollywood to write
plays, and then they would do readings of the plays.
He had top stars who would come out for free on a
Monday night, and they would get up there on the
stage and read the plays written by screenwriters who
were, many of them, Emmy Award-winning television
writers, and movie writers, out in L.A., who didnt have
a lot of opportunity to write for the stage. So many
great actors had been a part of Dans group. The readings took place in the Coronet Theater, which was
owned by Gigi and Deborah and their company, Odd
Lot. And it was Dan who introduced me to Deb and
Gigi.
So, when I met Deb at the Coronet and we were
talking, she says, Michael, we do smaller movies, but
we would love to do something bigger. If you come
across something thats really special, please bring it to
us. We would love to do something with you. I said,
All right, great. Some years went by, and I finally
decided, Well, let me take The Spirit over to Deborah
and Gigi and see if maybe they might understand what
this is, especially since they come out of independent
filmmaking as opposed to studio filmmaking. So the
day came, I went into Deborahs office, and she said,
So, Michael, what did you bring me today? I said,
Deb, Ive brought you the greatest individual creative
work ever to come out of the comic book industry in
the last 70 years. And she looked at me and said,
Dont tell me you have the rights to The Spirit. And I
looked up into the sky and said, Momma, Im home!
[laughter] Those were my exact words. I said,
Deborah, how do you know about The Spirit? She
says, Well, dont tell anybody, but Im a comic book
collector. Im a Legion of Super-Heroes completist.
Well, that was it. And its been a wonderful journey
with the a great group of people.
DF: Have all the producers been involved in the story
and the screenplay?
MU: In the story process, its primarily been Deborah
besides Frank, of course. But F.J. has been essential, as
has Linda.
DF: Did Frank come in with a story, or did you hand
off an idea to him?
MU: We left it to Frank to come up with what he wanted to come up with. But I think everybody kind of
knew going in that it was going to be Sand Saref; we
12 | WRITE NOW
Cover (which also served as the splash page) to the Spirit story
that first appeared on October 6, 1946, Meet PGell. What little
boy could resist the femme fatales warning?
[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
knew it was going to be the Octopus. Beyond that, it

was Frank who came up with using Silken Floss, and
making sure Plaster was in there, and Lorelei. Its all
Frank. And as it moved into the actual filming of the
thing, it was Deborah on the set every day, Deborah
working hand-in-hand with Frank.
DF: Now, in The Spirit comics, there are at least two
distinct eras, the prewar and the postwar, and probably within those therere even subdivisions. How did
you, collectively, figure out which era the movie would
be visually, and in terms of the amount of satire and
humor?
MU: Its a combination. And when you have a director,
and especially a writer-director, who has a vision, who
you know understands the material and just gets it,
and respects the creator, respects the characters,
respects the material, its important to step back and
give him the creative field to take that vision and execute it, and be as supportive as possible with that
vision and give him the creative room that he needs.
If I had to categorize it, theres a portion thats early
Spirit, when he was still a little darker, when it wasnt
as comical or whimsical. But then, in the spirit of
Gerhard Schnobble, Rat-A-Tat the machine gun, and
the mysterious lady who, as it turned out in Eisners
story, did come from Mars, its absolutely filled with
the Eisner humor and irony, and the over-the-top
action of the Spirit, and the larger-than-life villains. All
of that is what you might think is representative of the
postwar era. Its a wonderful blending that I think succeeds well, and I think it reflects both periods of Eisner
and both tones Eisner was capable of delivering in
Spirit tales.
DF: I remember Eisner was famous for, the name of
almost every character was some kind of pun, or
Yiddish reference, or a topical reference, Slim Mozzle
and Awesome Bells, and Ward Healey. Are those
kinds of things in the movie, as well?
MU: Oh, absolutely. And comic book fans, comic book
historians, comic book insiders are going to find lots of
winks to them throughout this movie, and all I would
say is pay attention to everything from street signs and
truck signs and characters names, and take the ride
with Frank.
DF: All right, so youve got the movie, and Frank basically went off to write it. How many drafts did he go
through?
MU: He wrote a couple of drafts, and everybody had a
lot to say initially, as we were getting going, and then,
boom, off he went. And you just stand back. It was a
great thing to watch him just go to town. Deborah
closely collaborated with him creatively, and they
bonded beautifully.
DF: Was a lot of it rewritten by the actors as they were
filming?
MU: No. Frank was in control of the whole situation,
from start to finish. One of the things that I was most
impressed by with Frank everybody knows hes one
of the great graphic artists of our generation, if not of
all time. And his storyboards were just awesome, just
amazing, so we knew, visually, this was going to be
stunning. And with visual effects by the phenomenally
talented artists from The Orphanage, we knew this film
would literally become a comic book on the screen. I
had been dealing with The Orphanage and introduced
them to Deborah and Linda, who went as crazy for
their work as F.J. and I had. Frank had this wonderful
palette with which to work, creatively. The most interesting thing was how great he was with the actors.
Thered be a take, and then Frank would go in and
hed be talking to the actors, and then you would see
the next take in the dailies, and you would see a performance that just jumped a whole level. And then
they would have another conversation, and then you
In The Spirit comics, readers only ever saw partial views of
the villainous Octopus, usually his distinctively-gloved hands,
as seen in the comic art. In the movie, Samuel L. Jackson
plays the character, and is fully seen from the get-go.
[Comic art 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] [Photo: 2009 Spirit Films,
LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner
Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]
MICHAEL USLAN | 13
had the next take, and
it would just jump
another level. The give
and take, and his relationship with the
actors, was just wonderful.
DF: One of the big
things for Spirit fans is
that Eisner never
showed the Octopus,
but obviously youve
got Sam Jackson playing him. What made
Frank decide to actually show the guy?
MU: Well, its one
thing when youre
dealing with six or
eight pages of story in
a comic book, even if
its a serialized comic
book, where you can
Eisner by Eisner. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
easily not show the
and drawing The Spirit, it was contemporary for the
villain. But Frank had clear creative choices to make
times. What do you mean, a period piece? It was kind
regarding that on film. It was a daring choice, because
of funny to me when we announced our going forward
this is a two-hour spectacle, and he wanted a very,
with
The Spirit movie, and the first thing I see on the
very strong villain in there.
Internet is people going, Well, of course this has to be
a 1940s period piece. Thats what Will would have
DF: Was there any input from Denis Kitchen or Ann
wanted.
Eisner, anybody like that?
MU: We have been in close contact with Denis from
the beginning, and with Carl Gropper, who is running
the Eisner business. We talked to Ann from time to
time. Denis has been very active and is very helpful.
And weve all had an attitude of, Were in this together as one big family, and we want to do right by Will.
And Ill tell you, one of the great things, Danny, is I had
a chance to deal with Will, to talk to Will, for, like, ten
years before he passed away, on this project, and luckily Deborah and Odd Lot came on in the nick of time,
and I was able to introduce them all to Will, and we
were able to arrange to spend some time together at
Wills last San Diego convention. So they had also an
opportunity to talk to him, and hear him, and go over
the questions. There are so many things that I talked to
him about that I know his feelings about. It started
with a question that when I asked it, I thought he was
going to slap me in the head. This was really early on. I
said, Do you see this as a 1940s period piece? He
yelped, A period piece? I never, ever, wrote stuff as a
period piece on The Spirit. Whenever I was writing
14 | WRITE NOW
DF: In terms of all the stuff that Will would put in the
comics, I think fans are going to be curious about, say,
the Spirit logos being different every issue and being
part of the background. Is there a cinematic equivalent
in the movie?
MU: Frank has just done an incredible job in making
use of the state of the art of this green screen technology. The movie has its own look. One of the great
things for me is it captures the spirit of The Spirit. Its
a wonderful blend, a hybrid of Frank Miller and Will
Eisner. And people ask, Well, is that a conflict? It
doesnt have to be a conflict, but a hybrid between
two of the greatest graphic storytellers at work.
Somebody asked me recently, The Spirits outfit in the
movie is black instead of dark blue, so therefore its
Franks Spirit. And I said, Did you see The Dark
Knight? And they said, Yeah. I said, Did you like it?
Loved it. I said, Did you feel that it was respectful to
the integrity of Batman? He said, Absolutely. I said,
So, in the comic books, do you see a gray-and-blue
cloth costume, or do you see a black, armored suit?
And then there was this pause. I said, Because what
you have to keep in mind, when youre watching The
Dark Knight, youre not watching the work of Bob
Kane and Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson and company,
period, end of story, up there. You are watching the
work of Bob Kane and Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson
and company through the sensibilities of director
Christopher Nolan, who brings a contemporary feel to
it. What you have in The Spirit movie is the work of
Will Eisner as presented through the sensibilities of
director Frank Miller.
As a result, a 13-year-old kid, a 19-year-old kid, a 29year-old adult, a 40-year-old adult, who has never read
a Spirit comic book, who doesnt know a thing about
the Spirit, will be able to go into a movie theater and
sit down and say, This is cool. And thats really, really
important. The Spirit may have a fresh coat of paint on
him, but the movie is so much the spirit of The Spirit.
DF: Ive read theres going to be a Titan book, The
Making of The Spirit. That sounds like it should be
great.
MU: Its magnificent. I just got the first copies of it. Its
probably the highest quality of any making of a movie
book Ive ever seen. Its written by Mark Cotta Vaz. And
I just got The Spirit pop-up book. Thats another thing
Will would love. There are such high quality products

coming out in association with this, from the books,
and the publications, and the comics, to the statues
and other items, really high quality products. And they
have carefully been monitored and selected over the
time, and Im very happy with that program, as well.
DF: Is there anything about the script or the writing of
the movie that I forgot to ask, or that you want me to
make sure people know about adapting movies?
MU: Well, number one, Frank Miller deserves all the
credit for this script, and for the way he executed the
script. But I want to give a special tip of the hat to that
lovely lady producing partner of mine with whom I still
get to talk about Adventure #247 when we have
lunch, who sat there every day on the set, and through
post-production, and creatively has been so important
to the whole process. Deborah Del Prete is just one of
the nicest people Ive ever had the opportunity of
working with, and shes just been a beacon throughout
this, creatively, and deserves so much credit, in support
of Frank, for the picture.
DF: And you were very enthusiastic about F.J.
DeSantos involvement, also.
MU: F.J.s wonderful. Thats insufficient. There is no one
else I know in this business who knows so much
about comic books and about film-making. Hes
Triptych poster for the Miller Spirit movie. [ 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is
registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]
MICHAEL USLAN | 15
become a master of two
industries and not only is
creative, but grasps the
business side of show
business. Hes also an
expert in Japanese cinema, manga, and anime.
When youre working
with somebody who
starts out as a kid who
loves this stuff, you find
you not only have a coproducer but a playmate. We still meet
Wednesdays at our
comic book store. Hes
been working with me
for over 15 years, and I
had the chance to introduce him to Will, to
introduce him to many
creators from the Golden
Age and Silver Age of
comic books in situations
where he could spend
time with them. And F.J.s
gotten deeper and deeper into the comic book
industry as a writer while
hes also been producing.
DF: You guys are writing
a story arc for The Spirit
comic, arent you?
MU: Doing that is
absolutely frickin
awesome! Talk about a
daunting, challenging
task. We were scared to
Eisners classic Plaster of Paris splash page, from the Spirit story that first appeared
death when we got the
November 7, 1948 [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
assignment. But I would
hope that Will would like
DF: Did any of the stuff from any of the modern
what we are doing with it. Its edgy, but has his humor
comics that Darwyn Cooke and the other folks do end
and the kind of themes that Will dealt with. It brings
up influencing the movie at all?
back a lot of the classic villains, and has something to
MU:
No. That was really Frank, and the specific Eisner
say about our society, but something to say with a
comics
that he picked out that were special to him. He
sense of humor and a sense of irony. Make sure you
was
very
much a Silken Floss fanthat was pure Frank.
tell all your readers to try us out and pick up The Spirit
There
wasnt
much of a backstory for Silken, so he and
#26, 27, and 28. Artists extraordinaire, Justiniano and
Scarlett
Johansson
had to sit down together and figure
Walden Wong, do a brilliant job evoking Eisner and are
out
how
she
would
be this character, what her backcontemporary and highly cinematic. If you like the artstory might have been. I am happy to say that, in the
work of Darwyn Cooke, check these guys out. I have
pages
of the DC comics that F.J. and I have written,
seen the future of comic books, and its name is
youll
be
learning a whole heck of a lot more about
Justiniano.
the backstory of Silken Floss, who and what she is.
16 | WRITE NOW
And were using some of the other femmes fatales of
The Spirit movie. In fact, our first three Spirit stories in
the comics have not only the Octopus, but Silken Floss,
Lorelei, and Plaster of Paris.
DF: Whos doing the art on those covers?
MU: The covers are by the legendary Brian Bolland.
How lucky are we? Stunning stuff! They are eye-grabbing and represent a shout to the fans that a new era
of Spirit begins here.
MU: Yeah, he did look like Dolan. But what you need
are professional actors. You cant just go for a look.
Youve got to go with someone who can deliver. And
Gabriel Macht is unbelievable. Gabe, to me, is James
Garner 50, 60 years ago, around the time he was
doing Maverick.
DF: Well, isnt that who Eisner always used to say he
thought should play the SpiritJames Garner?
MU: It is. He and I totally agreed, from the first meeting, about that. We all knew that thats what we were
looking for in an actor, and everybody agreed, when
we saw all of the auditions, that Gabe was the guy.
DF: The movie has just about all the Eisner femmes
fatales. Aside from just having a lot of beautiful
women on screen, was there a thematic reason to have so many of
DF: Do you want to talk about anythem all in one place?
thing else upcoming? I know you
MU: Because it fits into the story.
have Shazam and The Shadow in
One of the most amazing things I
the works.
loved watching as we were filming it
MU: Were doing The Shadow with
was the Plaster of Paris sequence.
Sam Raimi and Josh Donen. F.J.s
Eisners Plaster of Paris story splash
working with me on that. We have
is almost like a strip tease, in a
that project over at Sony. Its being
sense, the way she reveals herself.
written by Siavash Farahani. I knew
And its in the movie! It comes to life
Walter Gibson, The Shadows driving
in front of your eyes, with the beaucreative force, having done some
tiful, sexy, exotic Paz Vega. And its
work with him, which makes this very
incredible to see that stuff come
special to me. Plus, the way I broke
right out of Eisners page, through
into the comic book industry was via
the eyes of Frank. The same thing
my first writing job, The Shadow for
with his Ellen Dolan and
Denny ONeil. I did The Shadow #9
Commissioner Dolan. Now, a postand #11, the latter of which is the
script to all of this: I told you Dan
Shadow meets the Avenger issue. So
Among Michaels earliest comics writLauria had introduced me to
my intense passion for the Shadow
ing credits is The Shadow #9. The
Deborah and Gigi, and, of course,
goes back to those days.
series was heavily inspired by both
there was no way were making
the characters radio series and pulp
this movie without Dan Lauria, who
Billy Batson & the Secret of
magazine stories. Cover art is by Joe
Kubert. [ 2009 Conde Nast.]
is probably, in a sense, the godfaShazam is at Warners with director
ther of it all. And Dan does the
Pete Segal and producer Michael
most magnificent job playing Commissioner Dolan. His
Ewing. A writer will be coming aboard shortly. Doc
relationship with Ellenplayed by Sarah Paulson, wonSavage we wont even be announcing until one of the
derfully, as a contemporary womantheir relationship
big upcoming Comic-Cons, but it will be a spectacular
is so real, their chemistry is so great, they are the
ride! Its already attracting top talent who are fans of
anchors for the audience watching this movie. Every
The Man of Bronze. On the writing side, F.J. DeSanto
time things get a little bit crazy and fantastical, with the and I are writing a three-issue story arc for DCs The
Octopus and these women and the way the violence
Spirit comics starting with issue #26. We are greatly
unfolds between the Spirit and the Octopus, there
excited about it and are desperately working with
youve got, suddenly, Commissioner Dolan and his
artists Justiniano and Wong to evoke Eisner, utilize cindaughter absolutely anchoring the picture, bringing us
ematic storytelling, and give it a contemporary feel. We
right back to reality. And thats a wonderful thing that
think fans of Eisner and Darwyn Cooke might want to
theyre able to do.
give The Spirit #s 26-28 a look-see.
DF: It would have been great to see Will as Dolan. He
always used to joke that when he was young he
looked like Denny Colt, and then, when he got older,
he looked like Dolan. He really did look like Dolan.
DF: I look forward to hearing how those projects

progress. Thanks, Michael. This was great fun.
MU: Thank you, Danny. I enjoyed it.
THE
END
MICHAEL USLAN | 17
DC Comics is currently producing a

much-praised run of new Spirit stories by
top creators. Here, we see the cover to
Will Eisners The Spirit #20. Its penciled
and inked by Paul Smith, of Leave it to
Chance fame.
Heres the first page of Sergio Aragons

thumbnail drawings to the issues story. Sergios
famous self-caricature makes the page more than
just information. Its a welcome to co-creators
Mark Evanier and Chad Hardin. But the page also
contains important information as to where penciler Chad will find reference for the art that
starting on the next pageSergio has sketched in.
18 | WRITE NOW
Sergio and Mark are longtime collaborators (on Groo and many other projects).
Heres how Mark describes their working
process for this particular story:
Sergio made up a storyline and wrote
it out in his way. Sometimes, when we
work together, we discuss the plot in
advance and sometimes, we don't. The
Spirit has generally been one of the
don't cases. Ive had almost no input into
any of the stories before they're drawn.
Sergios version was sent to the editor, Joey

Cavalieri, who sent it to the artist, Chad Hardin,
and I got a copy either from Joey or Sergio.
Chad penciled it his way, then turned it in to
Joey, who sent the art off to the inker and a
Xerox of the pencil art to me. Once I got it, I
hauled out my copy of Sergios breakdown and
used it as a guide to help as I composed copy
to fit what the artist had drawn. I think I had to
phone him once or twice to ask about certain
story points.
THE SPIRIT #24 NUTS & BOLTS | 19
Mark continues:
When I was done with the
dialogue, I uploaded it via
e-mail to Joey and FedExed
him a copy of the pencil art
with balloon placements
indicated.
After the lettering was done, the letterer e-mailed

me a PDF and I did some proofreading and I think I
rewrote a couple of things at that stage. I sent my
changes to Joey, he sent me a check and thats
about it.
So Sergios thumbnails are the equivalent of a

written plot. Penciler Chad has freedom to vary camera
angle and so on as he proceeds through the story.
20 | WRITE NOW
Just as Will Eisner always found a clever

way to work in the strips logo in his Spirit
stories, Sergio and Chad make the twisted
vines in the foreground treetop spell out
the logo. The monkey hanging from the letters is another clever touch, as is making
the story title into dog-tags, resonating the
military context of the story, and adding a
three-dimensionality to the words.
Note how what Mark has submitted is the dialogue for

the story. This is similar to what youd see in a story done
Marvel style (plot first). But in this case, the story was
actually sketched panel-by-panel by Sergio, so there was no
need for Mark to describe any of the action.
22 | WRITE NOW
Chad takes advantage of a flashback to play with the layouts, setting

the past-sequences apart from the
present time story. The close-ups
add impact, and the panel borders
became wavy to cue the reader that
the top tier is set in different time
than the rest of the page.
A subtle device that carries the story

along is the way the Spirits third thought
balloon leads us into the flashback. (We
also learn that the Spirit doesnt sleep with
his mask on.)
Chad subtly alters the pacing by

changing the camera angles from
those in the thumbnails. Of course,
Sergios sketches are hilariously funny,
sort of an inside joke between the creators (and now us). But the tone of
the actual drawn page has to be converted to a dramatic one for the content of the storyalthough the portrayal of the grieving widow is clearly
supposed to be humorous, and Mark
and Chad play it that way.
Note that there are two word balloons indicated with the number 4. Mark or Joey changed the
placement at some point. The final page has balloon four connected to balloon three. Imagine it
done the other way. Its one of countless choices
that have to be made to produce a comics story.
THE
END
24 | WRITE NOW
PRODUCING RESULTS:
THE
F.J. D E SANTO
INTERVIEW
Conducted October 27, 2008, in person, by Danny Fingeroth

Transcribed by Steven Tice
Copy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, F.J. DeSanto, and Bob Greenberger
.J. DeSANTO is co-producer of The Spirit movie. He

has a number of motion pictures currently in development including The Shadow (Columbia Pictures)
which he is co-producing with Michael Uslan, Sam Raimi
and Josh Donen, Shazam (Warner Bros) with Peter Segal
directing, Doc Savage (Branded Entertainment), Sabotage
(iNDELIBLE Entertainment), and Loony (iNDELIBLE
Entertainment). Also, he co-produced the animated directto-home DVD Turok: Son of Stone (Classic Media) which
was distributed by the Weinstein Company. In 2005, he
served as an assistant to the producers of Constantine
(Warner Bros).
He has been responsible for acquiring, developing and
maintaining a large slate of projects based on comic
books, graphic novels, manga and anime while also overseeing deals with writers, agents, comic book companies,
creators and movie studios. Before joining iNDELIBLE
Entertainment in 2008, he was the Senior Vice President
of Production and Development and Producer for Comic
Book Movies Inc., and spent nine years as Vice President
of Development for Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker
(Executive Producers of the Batman franchise).
F.J. is also a comic book and manga writer. He has written an original manga based on Star Trek: The Next
Generation for TokyoPop, for release in 2009, and is a cowriter (with Michael Uslan) on an arc of The Spirit for DC
Comics. He is currently developing several graphic novel
projects for 2009.
I spoke with F.J. in his iNDELIBLE Entertainment office in
October, where we talked about the creation The Spirit
movie, as well as many other topics.
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: You have an interesting overall take
on The Spirit movie, F.J. Please share it with the Write
Now! readers.
F.J. DeSANTO: The movie, to me, feels like, if Frank Miller
were to do a Spirit graphic novel, this would be it. Its filtering Eisner through his eyes and penyoull see frames
of it that look exactly like something Frank drew, and thats
exciting.
DF: Tell me a little bit about the origins of the movie.

FJD: Michael Uslan can give you the better details, but
when I started working with Michael, which was at the
end of 94 or the beginning of 95, he had just gotten the
rights from Will. Because of the success of Batman, Will
understood that Michael had the proper love and understanding of The Spirit. As a kid, Id always see the character at conventions and stuff, but never knew much about
him. But then, obviously, being in an office with Michael,
there were comics, and I spent a good portion of my first
couple months there just reading everything, starting with
The Spirit Casebook, and then the Warren Spirit reprints
Those were my education. The Spirit Casebook is huge.
This is the Kitchen Sink book, and thats what Michael
would use a lot of, because the story Ten Minutes was in
it, and a lot of the other main Spirit stories. From that
point on, I watched Michael for years trying to set this
movie up, from the time I started as his assistant, and
then eventually his head of development, and then the
head of production. When I was pitching it myself to
places, I was amazed at the complete lack of understanding people would have of the character. But we pitched it
actively for a long time. And, believe me, people made
offers. There was a prime-time animated series offered by
F.J. DESANTO | 25
a big studio. But again, there were
all these little caveats like, Youve
got to make him a ghost, or,
Youve got to put him in spandex,
and it was just literally, Nope, and
wed just walk away. And this had
been going on for ten, twelve
years.
DF: What else has Odd Lot done?

FJD: They did a great movie called
Green Street Hooligans with Elijah
Wood. There was a Jennifer Lopez
movie, The Wedding Planner and
some other movies.
DF: How did Frank become attached
to the movie, and then did he throw
out everything you had and come
up with his own story, or did he
work with what you guys had been
working on?
FJD: We had always been under the
impression that Frank was going to
go do Sin City 2, but suddenly he
was available. And then Michael had
the first conversation with him, and
it just sort of snowballed. It happened very quickly.
DF: Did you guys have an elevator pitch, a short summary of the
concept you could give people?
FJD: Michael did it best by telling
them the story of Ten Minutes,
because it embodied the tone and
feel of Eisner. And there was a
Sand Saref story. We xeroxed certain stories together, like Sand
Saref, to show the best of The
Spirit. But the pitch was very simple: the greatest work in the history of comics, the Citizen Kane of
DF: Did Will have any input on early
comics. It was just always presentversions of the story?
ed that way, always presented as a
FJD: Will had passed away before
Green Street Hooligans was an Odd Lot proguy who has no superpowers, who duction that featured a post-Lord of the Rings
Frank came onboard, but we had
is a middle-class superhero, possibly Elijah Wood. [ 2009 the copyright holders.]
spoken with him about the film. He
the first Jewish superhero. That was
was very much like, Ah, do whatevhow we pitched it, the average guy protecting his neigher you want. But at his last San Diego Comic-Con, in July
borhood.
2004, myself, Michael, Deborah Del Prete, and Linda
McDonough, whos the other co-producer, along with me,
DF: Had many of the producers you pitched to heard of
on itwe sat with Will, because we had just finished our
the Spirit or Eisner?
deal with Odd Lot, and started talking to him. We were
FJD: Its interesting. Michael would call this era the
just announcing the project. Jeph Loeb was originally
Golden Age of comic book movies, and it is. But I would
involved, but then he went through that horrible tragedy
say, in my 15 years with Michael, the first five years was
with his sons death, and he had to back out. So we sat
convincing studio people that the comic book was an
down with Will, and the only thing he was really adamant
acceptable form of source material. And then you had Xabout was, Dont make it a period piece. That was the
Men and Spider-Man. People went, Oh, these comic
only time he sort of got agitated, and he specifically said,
books are great. Everybody wanted a comic book properWhenever I wrote and drew anything with the Spirit, it
ty, but it had to be a superhero. So that was the next five
was of its time. If you go back and look at it, it was always
years. And the last five years is when it sort of blew wide
contemporary. That was the one thing he was really firm
up. People became open to stuff like Road to Perdition.
about. What else, Will? Do whatever you want.
Hey, theres comics-based stuff thats not superheroes.
So to the studios now, a comic book is a piece of source
material thats no different than a novel, a play, or a newspaper article. And now you have guys my agemid-thirtiesguys who are now execs, and who now have that
understanding about comics, who look at Eisner and the
source material as something to be revered.
DF: So obviously, a Spirit movie this was in the works long
before Frank was involved.
FJD: We went down the road with a bunch of writers. We
went down many different avenues. But just, look, this
business is silly. A lot of its fate, a lot of luck, a lot of its
putting the pieces together. It really took off once we partnered with Odd Lot, because it gave us the freedom of an
independent company getting behind it and putting it
together, as opposed to just, were going to set it up at a
studio.
26 | WRITE NOW
DF: So the story as it appears on screen, where did that

originate?
FJD: Its a culmination of Frank knowing what he wanted
to do, and then we all discussed it. Everything previous to
Frank coming on board was out the door. It was all from
scratch. Frank very much knew from the start it was going
to be about Denny Colt and Sand Saref. Michael and I had
a lunch with Frank in midtown when we first started talking about the movie, and he had all these ideas. And I
remember another lunch with Frankit was me, Deborah,
and Linda. They were in New York doing a film, and we
met at a restaurant in Madison Square Park, and Frank
came, and he had stacks of photocopies of Wills comics.
He started shaping the story by going through the Will
stuff. Later, Id get calls from Franks officebecause I was
the only producer who lived in ManhattanI was a subway stop away, so I would occasionally get a call, he cant
find, for instance, the Plaster of Paris story, but he has to
have a certain edition because he remembers the painted
cover. It was the Warren issue with Plaster. I would say,
Okay, Ill bring it over. So I would drop stuff off, and
wed get into conversations for an hour about the
Octopus, or the Legion of Super-Heroes, or samurai
movies. But the movieit was all in Franks head. He knew
he wanted to take a bunch of different Spirit elements and
put them into one film. The original idea was not to do
the origin, and then it eventually evolved to where the origin was going to be in there, only because the emotional
depth of the characters in the story, especially when its
focused on Sand as the main female character, is that
backstory is very important. The whole Sand and Denny
backstory, which is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
DF: Most people, including me, usually divide the Eisner
Spirits into the pre-war and the post-war eras, where it
was more dead-on serious before the war, and then later
on, in the 40s and 50s, there was more humor in the stories, and more satire. Does the movie fall on either side of
that divide?
FJD: To me its a mixture of both. Theres serious stuff, but
its also very light in places. Its very tongue-in-cheek.
DF: Just having a character named Sand Sarefwhich is
a type styleis pretty funny to begin with.
FJD: But its treated seriously. The movie has an edge to it,
but its got that tongue-in-cheek quality, too, which I really
like about it. Like I said, its a big
comic book on screen.
DF: I got the impression that you
were more involved with The
Spirit than any of the other things
youve worked on with Michael.
What was your role, and how was
it different from what youve done
on the other movies?
FJD: This was my first movie as a
producer in any way, shape, or
form, so a lot of it was really being
involved in its development. Once
they go into actually making it, it
becomes a different thing. Then
you have the director, you have the
crew, etc. But getting the starting
line is where I was involved the
most.
DF: Were you giving notes on the
script? Were you sitting and plotting with Frank?
FJD: By the time Frank relocated to
L.A. for the movie, he had basically
set up shop in the Odd Lot offices,
working with Deb and company there. He had a drawing

table and would storyboard everything out. Id be out in
L.A a lot, and wed get together whenever I was there,
usually about once a month for a week. One night out of
that week we would just sit at the back of the W hotel and
riff about things, just socially, and that was really exciting.
He was remarkably collaborative in terms of, if you had a
suggestion, hed definitely listen to it and take it into
account. With each draft, Linda and I would combine
everyones notes into one document, and I remember sitting down ready to hand these notes to Frank and being
absolutely scared out of my mind. Ive got to give this guy
script notes. Michaels used to it, but I didnt know Frank
that well yet, and I hoped he wouldnt launch across the
table and slap me. But he was remarkably collaborative.
He will listen to you, and if he thinks theres a good idea
in there, hell figure out a way to blossom it out into
something even cooler.
DF: Is there a moment you can point to in the movie and
go, Thats based on something I came up with?
FJD: No, its actually more of a team effort. Like, when you
look at the notes and you go, Oh, good thing we thought
of that. I can sit there and go, Man, I remember when
that came up, I remember when we talked about that
scene. If theres one thing I remember, its when we did
our first cast reading. We had Sarah Paulson, who wed
just cast the day before as Ellen Dolan, and the one thing
I remember sitting with Linda, and saying, Wow, Sarahs
so good. I hope they can expand the script to give her
more to do. I guess a lot of people thought so too, cause
Deb and Frank put their heads
together, and then Frank wrote this
beautiful scene between Ellen and
Commissioner Dolan that justifies
both their motivations, why theyre
involved with the Spirit, etc. Its one
of the more touching scenes in the
movie.
F.J. has begun doing more producing on his

own, including on the Turok direct-to-video
animated film. [ 2009 Classic Media, Inc.]
DF: So there was a version of the

script, then you cast the movie, and
then Frank rewrote for the cast?
FJD: In the movies theyre constantly
revising and rewriting, so after the
point we were in Albuquerque,
shooting the movie, Frank and
Deborah worked very closely together to whip the script into shape as it
kept going. But when you have your
actors, the movie starts to become
more of a reality, and it changes.
Some movies go into shooting without even a finished script. The Spirit
had a finished script that evolved as
we kept going.
DF: You had basically whats called
F.J. DESANTO | 27
the shooting script, what you start shooting with, correct?
FJD: The shooting script is what you go in with. And, look,
you cant stop somebody like Frank, whose brain is always
working, from coming up during shooting with cooler stuff
than whats in the script.
DF: Did the actors improvise stuff that was then added in?
FJD: Thats more of a Frank question. I think he gave them
freedom. Just in the time I was there on the set, he
seemed very happy working with the actors. Watching him
with Gabriel, with Eva, was exciting, because you could
see his excitement. And I think people really enjoyed
working with him because he brings an enthusiasm to it.
On a completely separate note, I remember going out to
dinner one night in Albuquerque with a costume designer
and my friend Todd Holland, who was the assistant art
director, and they said, This is one of the best shoots Ive
ever been on. Why? Because we rarely get to work with
a director whos an actual hands-on artist, who can speak
that same language. Not just, Hey, make this more blue.
He could sit there and shape a visual concept, and tone it,
and speak in the artist-speak that they could understand,
and I think thats why, visually, the movie is so stunning.
Frank knew how to convey what he was after to the artists
that were working on the movie. I think he liked that. The
props in particular are crazy in this movie, and I think people liked his enthusiasm.
DF: Is there anything that you
remember about the writing
process, or some important lessons
you learned that maybe somebody
could learn by hearing you mention
it?
FJD: What did I learn? I think it was
just fun to see it all come together.
Watching Frank and his enthusiasm
for working with people is really
exciting. I can remember sitting at
the condo he was staying at in
Albuquerque, and he had these storyboards that were just gorgeous. It
was just great to see him draw
these pictures that match the things
that hes writing on the page. A significant chunk of that is thanks to
Deborah, who gave him the freedom to work that way, as opposed
to if we had done this for a movie
studio that probably would have
put a tighter leash on the whole
process in terms of creativity.
One thing Frank did, which I felt
was great, was he xeroxed all his
favorite Spirit stories. So there was,
at the production office in New
Mexico, a table with a bunch of
binders with those stories that if
28 | WRITE NOW
anybody involved with production wanted to know more

about the characters and the story, Frank picked those
specific stories. Watching how Frank worked with Gabriel,
in particular, was amazing. Frank was guiding him, giving
him the right stories to read and all that, and really getting
him in the mindset of who this character is and why he
exists. And that was cool to watch. The main lesson I took
away from the Spirit experience is be collaborative. Now
that Michael and I are doing an arc of The Spirit comic
book, having been the guy doing the notes for a lot of
years, to now be on the other side, writing comics and
getting notes from an editor is a change. But one editor
said to me, Youre very easy to deal with, for a movie
guy. And I went, Well, you know what? I know the position youre in.
But back to the movie, Frank busted his hump on the
script, especially as it got closer to shooting. He was just
living it. He and Deborah in particular were shoulder-toshoulder as it evolved in its final steps toward the shoot
and beyond. Hes such a great writer. You can hear the
words on the paper, the way he describes things. He doesnt have to say much, but he conveys it perfectly, and
thats what was really exciting. As I was reading the script,
I could see it in my head, and the movie is actually much
cooler than anything I ever imagined.
DF: Were there many script drafts?
Or were there just little changes?
FJD: Thered be changes here and
there. There was always. Thats
what filmmaking is about. Frank
coming up with something cooler,
or you realize, Hey, the storys
better if we do it this way. The
one element that went through it
from the beginning was Sand. It
was always going to be Sand Saref
story.
DF: Now, switching gears, youre

writing, with Michael, some issues
of The Spirit comics. And not only
do you have to live up to the
Eisner legacy, but you have also
Darwyn Cooke, and Mark Evanier
and Sergio Aragons versions,
too.
FJD: Its very daunting. You can
count on two hands the number
of people who have touched the
Spirit, besides Wills original stuA poster that was part of the build-up ad
dio
guys. So when Michael came
campaign to The Spirit movie premier. It
to
me
and said, Were going to
homages Eisners use of The Spirit logo as part of
his stories splash designs. Here, one of the
write Spirit comics, I went, Cool!
movies slogans gets the Eisner-style-treatment.
Okay. And then it sort of hit me,
[ 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit tradelike, Oh sh*t. Youre going to
mark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered
write this character. I think the
in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]
N THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION
Spirits one case
where anybody
who loves
comics can find
something
theyd like;
whether its the
whimsical stuff,
the serious stuff,
the romantic
stuff, etc. And
thats what I like
about The Spirit
movie. It gets
very romantic.
At its core, its
about a guy
who loves his
city, he loves
Ellen. But he
has a higher
calling. He was
brought back for
a reason. So
with the comics,
F.J. gave Michael Uslan notes (comments) on his
I think Darwyns
script for the Detective #27 graphic novel (which
run on it is perMichael discussed in WN! #6). [ 2009 DC Comics.]
fect, and you
can rarely say that in comics. Theres not a bum issue in
his run. So the first thing we did was get those 12 issues,
because I dont even think the other stuff had come out
yet. So we went to Joey Cavalieri, the editor at DC, and
Michael pretty much knew the kind of story he wanted to
tell, And Joey said, Okay. The ideas started flowing right
then and there and we came out knowing the stories
would involve Lorelei, Plaster, and Silken Floss.
DF: On a nuts-and-bolts level, how do you share the writing duties?
FJD: Its funny, because were doing another comic project,
and its completely opposite. But on The Spirit, we sort of
talk the story through, and then Michael goes and writes
maybe a page or two, and sends it to me. I do a pass on
it. And then I send it back, and it goes back and forth like
that.
When Michael wrote his Batman graphic novel,
Detective #27, a couple of years ago, I watched that
unfold. Hed give me pages: Give me notes on this. So
that was my first real exposure to comic book writing. But
its funny, a lot of comic artists are going into film. Im a
film guy that goes into the comics. I went to NYU film
school, so I was in film and TV, so there was a lot of writing. I wrote screenplays and stuff. And then, when I broke
into the film business, I was doing so much writing and
reading for work that I never entertained the idea of writing comics.
But, about ten years ago, when Michael came up with

the Just Imagine idea for Stan Lee at DC, I started thinking about writing comics. I would occasionally throw an
idea by DC. No, no. Youre a film guy. But over the last
couple years Ive come very close. My all-time favorite
character is Dick Grayson, so I pitched some Nightwing
ideas, but then the editor left. Then I got the Trek gig at
TokyoPop.
Michael and I and the director of The Mask, Chuck
Russell, developed an original manga idea that Michael
and Chuck came up with. The idea was, Lets develop the
movie in the pages of the manga and then branch it out
to other media. So we did that, and I was the point guy
on it, because Im a manga freak and worked closely with
Paul Morrissey, the editor at TokyoPop on it quite a bit as
it was developing. TokyoPop was also doing Star Trek
manga based on the original series, which I loved. I said to
Paul, Man, I love those Trek mangas. Theyre the only
Star Trek comics Ive read in a long time. And he said,
You should pitch some ideas So I went and I had a conversation with the Trek editor, Luis Reyes and he tells me,
You obviously know Trek. So I pitched him five ideas. He
loved four of them. And they sent them to CBS, and they
get rejected. I ask, Whyd they reject me? Well, theres
this new Trek movie being done by J.J. Abrams, and you
cant do anything with the original series. So the Luis said,
Look, were going to switch to Next Generation. We can
touch that world. And I went, I dont know the Next
Generation nearly as well as I know the original Kirk and
Spock show. But I did research, and I watched tons of
episodes. I had one idea, and CBS went, Great. Sold.
But Id never written a comic book in my life. Luckily, Id
seen Michaels scripts, and Geoff Johns, who I go back
with almost ten years, had shown me scripts, so I knew
the format. So I took the treatment and would go through
it to divide it up for my comics script. It came out to 45
pages of comics. And then I sent it in, and the editor came
back and goes, You wrote an episode. You didnt write a
comic book, you wrote an episode. Let me show you how
to do a comics Trek story. Basically, what he did was trim
tons of fat off of my script. Do you know how many balloons this would take up? You have, like, three balloons in
this one little panel, and we can get it down to two
And I went, Oh. And then I did another draft, and as I
kept going, it got easier to do.
DF: Its definitely difficult to transition from one medium to
the other. Anyway, F.J., before we wrap up, anything else
you want to say about The Spirit movie?
FJD: I hope everyone goes and sees it.
DF: Everybody go see it. Thanks, F.J.
FJD: Thank you, Danny.
THE
END
F.J. DESANTO | 29
ODD LOT PERSPECTIVE:
THE DEBORAH

by Danny Fingeroth
December 21, 2008
DEL PRETE INTERVIEW
eborah Del Prete

is a longtime
comics fan who
has had a successful
career in Hollywood.
Shes directed (Simple
Justice, Ricochet River)
and has produced over
a dozen films, including
The Wedding Planner
and Green Street
Hooligans. Shes a
partner (with Gigi
Pritzker) in Odd Lot
Entertainment, which teamed with Michael Uslan
and co. to produce The Spirit for Lionsgate Films.
Deborah took some time to tell me how the script to
The Spirit was developed.
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: When Michael Uslan came to

you with what he called one of the greatest comics
properties ever, you knew he was talking about the
Spirit. What had been the significance of the Spirit to
you before that?
DEBORAH DEL PRETE: I was a life-long comic fan,
mostly DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Wonder
Woman, etc.) but when I started to go to San Diegos
Comic-Con when I moved to L.A. in 1992, I discovered
Will Eisner and The Spirit. I was amazed by the
mature writing and modern style that came from a
comic from the 40s.
DF: From your perspective, how did the script and
story come about?
DDP: Basically, I worked closely with Frank Miller on
the script. He wrote a first draft after I told him he had
carte blanche to use any of his favorite Spirit stories.
We agreed it would focus on the Octopus as the main
villain and the Spirits childhood sweetheart, Sand
Saref.
30 | WRITE NOW
DF: What were the biggest challenges in adapting

The Spirit to the screen in terms of overall tone
and of the characters dialogue?
DDP: Taking so much rich material (The Spirit
comics) and boiling it down to one story. Also,
making sure it had a contemporary feel.
DF: What kind of notes did you find yourself
giving on the script?
DDP: I gave the kind of notes I always do. I try to
speak for the audience so its mostly about when
I think something is unclear or if I think there is a
logic issue in the storytelling. I think my most
significant notes came after we did the table read.
At that point, I felt we needed two more scenesone
early in the film with the Octopus and Silken when
hes asking his henchmen why they havent found
Sand Saref. After I told Frank we needed that scene,
he came back with
the wacky foot thing
scene, which I loved. I
also felt we needed a
later scene with Ellen
and Dolan, and one
night Frank wrote the
father/daughter scene
that helps to give the
audience a better
understanding of the
Spirits complicated
relationships.
DF: How did Franks
unique approach to
storyboarding help
the development of
the script?
DDP: Working with
Frank is like working The Wedding Planner was a hit movie
with no other director. produced by Deborah Del Prete.
[ 2009 the copyright holders.]
First of all, he completely storyboarded the movie so it made it much
clearer to all involved exactly what hes looking for.
N THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION
work on the movie, we mostly discussed
what he didnt want. The Spirit should
never carry a gun for example and I
made sure we kept to those wishes.
As far as Frank goes, we went through
many permutations and much fine-tuning of the story, but it was always about
Sand Saref and The Octopus. One character that was barely there originally
was Silken Floss, but after Frank met
Scarlett Johansson, he expanded the
role and her interaction with the
Octopus, which gave them much more
humor.
Deborah directed Ricochet River and Simple Justice.

[ 2009 the respective copyright holders.]
DF: How did the scriptand the movieevolve from

your initial meetings with Will and with Frank, to the
finished movie?
DDP: When I met with Will before we had Frank to
DF: Would you ever want to do movie

adaptations of Wills later, more
personal work?
DDP: I think it will be unlikely because
they are basically straight dramas,
which isnt the type of films Im focusing on now.
THE
END
DEBORAH DEL PRETE | 31
NOT-SO-SECRET AGENT:
THE DENIS KITCHEN INTERVIEW

by Danny Fingeroth
December 18, 2008
enis Kitchen began his career in 1968 as a selfpublished underground cartoonist, leading to
the formation of his pioneer publishing company, Kitchen Sink Press. For thirty years he published
creators such as R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Harvey
Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Scott McCloud,
Dave McKean, Mark Schultz, Howard Cruse, Justin
Green, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and Charles
Burns. During these years Kitchen Sink won industry
awards far disproportionate to its market share, and
sometimes more than any other publisher. In 1986 he
founded and for eighteen years served as President of
the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a 501 (c) 3
non-profit organization dedicated to defending the
industrys First Amendment rights. Since the demise of
Kitchen Sink in 1999, he has diversified his activities.
He is a partner with designer John Lind in Kitchen,
Lind & Associates and with Judith Hansen in Kitchen
& Hansen Agency, literary agencies representing
prominent comic artists and writers. He has expanded
Denis Kitchen Art Agency (founded in 1990) into an
entity exclusively offering original work by Eisner,
Kurtzman, Capp and other clients.
Here, Denis takes some time to answer my questions
about his unique relationship with Will Eisner.
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first become

aware of Wills work, Denis?
DENIS KITCHEN: I was too young to have seen the
original Spirit newspaper inserts. I first became aware
of Wills work when Harvey Kurtzman featured Bring
Back Sand Saref in his Help! magazine #13 in late
1961. I was fifteen and pretty damn impressed. I dont
think I saw anything else until Harvey Comics published a two-issue Spirit experiment in 1966. By then I
certainly wanted to see more, but there was no organized fandom, no reprint programs, no way to even figure out how many Spirits there were. It was a complete vacuum except for a handful of fans doing
mimeo zines, and I wasnt in that tiny loop.
32 | WRITE NOW
DF: How did you first meet Will?

DK: I started drawing my first underground, Moms
Homemade Comics, in 1968, and successfully selfpublished. Then I started publishing others, the beginning of Krupp Comic Works (later Kitchen Sink Press).
Phil Seuling, the impresario of the earliest comic book
conventions, became aware of my small Midwest operation around 1970. Phil began distributing Krupps
titles and also hired me to do custom cartoons for his
catalogs and flyers. He invited me to be a guest at his
summer 1971 convention in New York City. It was my
first and, it turns out, Will Eisners first convention as
well. I was rummaging through back issue boxes like
any other fan when Maurice Horn, a French comics historian, saw my name tag and said Will Eisner was looking for me. I assured him he was mistaken, but he
insisted on taking me to meet Will. We met in a private
suite and, after quick formalities, Will expressed
intense curiosity about underground comix: their distribution, the freedom, the royalty system, etc.
with fans and soon Will, clearly uncomfortable, excused himself. I didnt see him
again the rest of the weekend and figured
it was the last time Id ever talk to him.
DF: When did you first work with him?
DK: I followed up the convention with a
letter and samples of other comix. I suggested he might find them more palatable,
which he did. Then I wasted no time. I
proposed reviving The Spirit. He was skeptical that my hippie market would be
responsive, especially after the Harvey
newsstand experiment had failed just a
few years earlier, but he agreed to let me
give it a try.
Eisner did a new cover for the first Kitchen Sink Enterprises-published issue of
The Spirit magazine, which picked up the numbering from the Warren
Publishing run. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
I explained what we were doing at all levels and he

said these were all the things he wished he had had
when he started. I tried talking about the old days of
comics, a subject I was intensely curious about, but
hed drop a tidbit or two and kept coming back to
undergrounds. It was a pretty heady experience.
Wills interest was purely academic because he hadnt
actually seen any undergrounds, so we walked down
to the dealers room where Phil had several tables covered with the latest. Will grabbed one at random,
flipped through it and stopped at a particularly explicit
and disturbing S. Clay Wilson page. Will blanched. He
had no idea just how outrageous some comix were. I
normally took glee in seeing undergrounds shock an
older generation, but I was suddenly aghast that I was
losing Will, the new convert. As we debated the merits of complete artistic freedom, a young artist named
Art Spiegelman, standing nearby, joined the fray along
DF: What do you think there is about the

Spirit that could make the character
appeal to a wide audience?
DK: Well, to start, Wills art is so wonderful
that it just pulls you in, especially the classic splash pages, the distinctive feathering,
the luscious women, the masterful layouts.
No offense to Write Now!, but art is the
initial attraction for all comics. Then with
The Spirit you also have the skillful writing, likable characters, memorable villains,
concise plots packed generally into just
seven pages. Youve got romance, action,
mysterythe whole package. And, as weve
seen, its timeless. The Spirit has been
entertaining generations for almost 70
years.
DF: Have you been involved in the previous

attempts to make a Spirit movie?
DK: Not really. At Kitchen Sink I optioned Alan Moores
From Hell, was heavily involved with The Crow, and
got Mark Schultzs Cadillacs & Dinosaurs on CBS, but
Will regularly optioned The Spirit on his own during
the nearly 30 years that I was his publisher. That
included the made-for-TV movie. When Mike Uslans
group exercised their option a dozen or so years back,
they tied it up until the movie Frank Miller just made.
So when Kitchen Sink went under in 1999 and my role
changed to being Wills art and literary agent, the die
was already cast in terms of The Spirit in Hollywood.
However, my partner Judy Hansen and I are working to
develop certain of Wills graphic novels.
DF: What was your involvement with the current Spirit
movie?
DK: Hands off. Ive met with the producers and Frank
and saw his script drafts, but Im not in the movie
DENIS KITCHEN | 33
business. Will understood that
Hollywood would make the
Spirit movie it wanted to
make. He had no illusions
about influencing the process
and, frankly, no interest in
meddling in another medium.
Other than helping assemble
the image bible for merchandise, quality control, and participating in the DVD extra, Ive
kept a distance. I didnt even
visit the set because I was literally too busy during the
shooting. Ill have to meet
Scarlett Johansson another
time...
comics, where you can be an

auteur. A cartoonist doesnt
have to fight with a writer over
a script, or fight with an artist
over interpretation or layout;
with a singular vision he can
theoretically move seamlessly
or at least more efficiently
through the process. Its hard to
separate the writer from the
artist in Will, but I certainly
know which aspect he was
most proud of. At conventions
hed often sit at the Kitchen
Sink booth signing for a line of
fans, and during the minute or
so he and a fan were one-onone, the most frequent comDF: How did his style evolve
ment was, Mr. Eisner, I love
over the years, on The Spirit,
your art, or Mr. Eisner, your art
and on his later work?
is just amazing. And hed nod
Mostly completed by Eisner before his 2005 death,
DK: The short seven-page
and thank each person graExpressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative is
Spirit weekly format forced Will the third and final volume in The Will Eisner
ciously. But every once in a
to work economically; to estab- Instructional Series, a project Kitchen helped shepwhile, a fan would say, Mr.
lish the premise and get to the herd from idea to print. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
Eisner, I love your writing. In
resolution quite quickly. There
those instances his face would
wasnt time or space to ruminate or stray. Despite
glow, hed look up and genuinely be grateful for the
those apparent limitations, he created some real gems.
compliment. Though Id disagree with him, Will
He played with various genres, balanced the fight
thought drawing was a relatively easy mechanical
scenes, the smooching, the tension and the humor
process. For him it was seemingly effortless. But he
and then jumped right into the next story with no time
thought writing comics was a much more intellectual
off. The discipline was good but the pace tough to susprocess; one which called upon a greater talent and
tain. He also had to write for a newspaper audience, a
insight.
family audience, ranging from little kids to octogenarians. It was different with his graphic novels that came
DF: Are there other Eisner-related projects youre
later. There, the stories he wanted to tell determined
involved with?
the length, a luxury he didnt have with The Spirit. And DK: I was recently involved, along with Peter Poplaski,
he was able to write for a peer audience. He was
in finishing Expressive Anatomy for W. W. Norton, the
proud of what he did with The Spirit but much proudfinal part of Wills instructional trilogy [along with
er of his later work. From an artistic point of view, his
Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic
art also evolved. The prime Spirit art is gorgeous and
Storytelling]. It was largely written and penciled when
tight and the folds in the clothing and the brushwork is Will died. I helped with Insights Spirit Pop-Up Book,
a wonder to behold. In later years, Wills artistry didnt
adapting the same Sand Saref story I first discovered in
diminish but he learned to tell the stories with a more
1961. I work closely with DC on their long-running
economical line and fewer details, but no less masterSpirit Archives series, just about to wrap up, and with
fully.
Dark Horse on their upcoming collection of The Spirit:
The New Adventures.
DF: Will once told me he wasnt a writer or artist but a
cartoonist. Do you agree, or do you think an objective
Handling the sales of Wills artwork is another
observer can separate the writer in Will from the
responsibility, and there are serious buyers for his work
artist?
well outside of comic fandom, including fine art collecDK: I understand what he meant because a cartoonist
tors willing to pay serious money for prime stories,
has those combined skills. Some people can write
covers and pages. Were seeing a major trend for blue
great and some can draw great. Those are rare enough
chip comic art: geniuses like Eisner, Kurtzman and
talents. But the combination is especially valuable in
Crumb are increasingly being treated like museum
34 | WRITE NOW
Denis worked closely with DC on their just-concluding Spirit

Archives hardcover collections. On the left is the cover art to
#25, which collects the entire run of the little-seen 1941-44
Spirit daily newspaper strip. On the right is the cover art to
#26, which features Eisners post-1952 Spirit material. Both
covers, of course, are by Will. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
artists. Probably my most satisfying involvement is

curating or providing original Eisner art for exhibitions
there have been roughly 20 since Will died. Sometimes
his work has simultaneously been in three or four
exhibitions, often overseas: recently Paris, Amsterdam,
Frankfurt, and Athens. Next year his art will be in
Brussels and Poland, among others. Its a shame that
Will didnt live to be the centenarian most of us
expected; virtually all of his work is in print, the Eisner
Awards are going strong, theres The Spirit movie and
merchandise in the works, and art traveling around the
world. Hed be pleased that interest in his lifes work
continues to grow.
DF: Anything else youd like to say about upcoming
Kitchen projects?
DK: Well, despite so much happening with Wills legacy, I actually am involved in other things! I recently coauthored a book with Paul Buhle, The Art of Harvey
Kurtzman, for Harry N. Abrams new ComicArt imprint
this spring. It includes a ton of images that have never
before been seen. Harvey, like Will, was a great friend
and mentor, so doing a book about his career was
intensely satisfying. It was sad, though, in reviewing his
career to see how Kurtzman never quite achieved the
success his talent and influence would imply. I also

just co-authored Underground Classics with James
Danky, another book on Abrams Spring 2009 list, connected with a traveling exhibition Jim and I co-curated,
consisting of 50-some underground cartoonists. It
debuts at the Chazen Museum in Madison in May.
On a personal artistic level, coming full circle, I have
a sketchbook in the works and in late 2009 or early
2010 Dark Horse is publishing The Oddly Compelling
Art of Denis Kitchen, a career overview. My partner
John Lind designed or was involved in the design of all
the books Im mentioning here. And then theres my
11-year-old daughter Alexa, whose third book, GrownUps are Dumb! (No Offense) will be published by
Disney/Hyperion this summer. With those projects, representing a couple dozen clients and estates with two
different partners, and packaging other books, theres
not much time for loafing.
DF: Thanks, Denis!
DK: My pleasure, Danny.
THE
END
DENIS KITCHEN | 35
WILL EISNER
AND THE ART OF
by N.C. Christopher Couch
ADAPTATION
ike most creators, especially of popcontent for newsstand comic books. The
ular culture, Will Eisners Spirit
studio had been very successful, producstories would often reference
ing lots of memorable properties and
well known works of fiction as well
making Eisner remarkably financially
as celebrities from all fields. Eisner
successful for one so young; he startwas saturated in the works of O.
ed in comics at age 18, and was
Henry and Guy DeMaupassant,
only 25 in 1939, when he left the
among many others, as well as
studio to create The Spirit. Of
in the popular radio, music, and
course, he couldnt turn out a
movies of his time. Part of the
three-feature weekly comic book by
fun of reading The Spirit is
himself, especially since he was also
catching Eisners cultural refermanaging the enterprise. He essenences. (Awesome Bells, for
tially organized a new studio, and he
instance.) In a few cases, though,
and Iger worked out an amicable
Eisner made a point of adapting
agreement about which artists might
specific stories to comics form in the
follow him, and which would stay with
context of a Spirit tale. Here, comics
his former partner. If The Spirit somehow
scholar N.C. Christopher Couch examfailed, then Eisner would be in an excellent
ines those cases, and along the way
position to return to packaging content
shows us how Eisner used his literary N.C. Christopher Couch by James Barry. for comic books. In fact, as it turned
[ 2009 James Barry]
influences to inform The Spirit in
out, The Spirit, Lady Luck and other
general. Its a great insight into Eisner, and into the art
features created for the comic book supplement were
and craft of comics writing in general. Enjoy!
later reprinted in a variety of Quality comic books. After
Eisner returned from service in World War II, his Spirit
DF
studio was used more and more to produce licensed
comics, including P*S Magazine for the Army. Eventually
When Will Eisner was offered the opportunity to create
Eisner dropped The Spirit altogether to concentrate on
his own weekly comic book as a newspaper supplement
this kind of contract work, which was much more profin 1939, he jumped at the chance. He would suddenly
itable in the booming postwar American economy (and
have the same kind of autonomy that many newspaper
post-Wertham comics industry) of the 1950s, the period
strip artists enjoyedthe comic would be circulated by a
that Henry Luce called The American Century.
syndicate, and overseen by comics publisher Everett
Busy Arnold, but effectively Eisner would be his own
If Eisner was doing so well in creating original material
editor and publisher. The proof would be in the pudfor comic books, why did he move on to doing a comic
dingif the supplement was successful, if enough newsbook newspaper supplement? There was no hint in 1939
papers bought and kept it to make a nice profit for all
or 1940 that comic book sales were going to do anyconcerned, then it was a success. But it would all be in
thing but grow. (Later in his career, Eisner would say,
Eisners hands. He would create the lead featureThe
Ive seen this industry die three times!, but there was
Spirit, of courseand oversee the backup stories that
no hint of that then.) The explanation Eisner has offered
would fill out the book.
most often is that he wanted to create comic books for
readers who were more intellectually adult than those
Before starting The Spirit, Eisner sold his interest in
attracted to comic books. But why did he expect to find
the Eisner & Iger Studio to his partner, Jerry Iger, and
such readers among the consumers of newspaper
effectively abandoned the business of creating original
comics? Werent these also read by children? The stereo36 | WRITE NOW
type is that the Sunday paper
gets split up among the family, Dad reads the front page,
business and sports, Mom
reads the ladies sections,
and the kids go for the
comics. Didnt Mayor
LaGuardia read the comics to
the kids over the radio during
the New York newspaper
strike? Where were the adult
readers Eisner was looking for?
Sunday funnies, either. In the 1930s,

the great adventure strips had continuities that ran for two months or
more. Even the family strips, like
Bringing Up Father or The Gumps
might have stories that continued
over weeks and months. Gasoline
Alley famously featured characters
who grew, changed and aged at
the same pace as the calendar
time in which the strip ran (and
continues to run). Most humorous
strips, however, confined their
stories to each daily or Sunday
strip. There really was nothing
equivalent to a short story in the
newspaper funnies. The strips
with longer continuities were
novels, or perhaps novellas,
while the single-strip stories
were more like jokes or vaudeville routines or, perhaps when
they were at their best, poems.
They were there; the Sunday

funnies offered a variety of
strips, aimed at a variety of
demographics. Bringing Up
Father and Gasoline Alley, with
their humorous but also moving
and realistic depictions of family
life, attracted male and female,
adult and child readers. Little
Orphan Annie captured the
attention of the nation, and its
political content attracted the
But short stories were everyIn
P.S.
Magazine,
Eisner
used
appealing
illustration
commentary from newspapers as
where in comic books. They
and commonplace situations to help train soldiers
well as huge gouts of mail. And
werent usually very different
on how to handle preventative maintenance on
the adventure strips, from Milton
from each other. Otto Binder
everything from engines to sun block. Heres his
Caniffs atmospheric Terry and the cover to 1956s issue #44. [ 2008 copyright info.]
and C.C. Beck brought humor of
Pirates to the lush and sensual
a delightful, self-deprecating sort
Flash Gordon of Alex Raymond, could appeal to anyone
to the adventures of Captain Marvel, and Dada playlets
who went to a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. movie, which was
as good as those of Ring Lardner appeared in the Plastic
everyone. So the adult readers were there, if Eisner could
Man stories of Jack Cole. But mostly the short stories
only reach them, if he could just get them to pick up the
were crime stories, where a mystery would be solved,
Comic Book Supplement, as The Spirit sections were
and the costumed hero would right the wrong and bring
often labeled in a box at the top left.
the criminal to justice. They were often inventive, as writers like Batmans Bill Finger came up with a hundred difHis first answer to this problemattracting the readferent and colorful story settings, and equally clever vilersis well known. He created the amazing splash pages
lains to defeat. But the stories simply didnt have the
that the feature is famous for. (These engaging splash
range and resonance of the kind of fiction that Eisner, as
pages, which Eisner said were designed to get readers to
well as Finger and other voracious readers among the
start reading as soon as they saw the supplement, were
early comics creators, like Jerry Robinson and Jack Kirby,
limited to The Spirit and never appeared in any of the
were finding in the collected works of a Poe or a Bierce
back-up features like Klaus Nordlings Lady Luck.) Of
or an O. Henry.
course, once he had the readers hooked, Eisner had to
give them something that they would read, and come
In 1948, Eisner actually chose to adapt two stories by
back to read again the next week. And if he was looking
American masters into The Spirit. A close look at how he
for adult readers, as he has so often said, he had to give
did this can help illuminate his working methods, and
them something they wanted, something familiar but
also help highlight some of the reasons the stories in
new at the same time. And Eisner had an answer for
The Spirit were so inventive and influential.
that: he gave them short stories, and not just crime and
mystery stories, although there were plenty of those, but
When, in the summer of 1948, Eisner adapted these
short stories in a variety of genres, told in a variety of
two short stories, he presented them as the Spirits
voices, running the gamut from comedies to ghost stochoices, selected from his vast library of mystery and
ries to parables.
intrigue, the works of classic masters in the field. Each
adaptation begins with a dramatic splash page showing
This was something readers werent getting in the
the Spirit preparing to read the story to Ebony. The first,
WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 37
Hugh Morgan, a western hunter and loner. The second is
the first-person account of the only witness, reporter
William Harker, read aloud to the coroners jury. The third
returns to the narrative of the inquest, and the fourth
consists of excerpts from Morgans diary, which the coroner read to himself earlier in the story, while he and the
jury awaited Harkers arrival to testify.
Eisner shows the inquest on the first two pages, setting a dark tone in the candlelit room of the cabin where
the jury meets. The next page and a half are the killing of
Morgan by the damned thing, an invisible savage creature, which takes place outdoors in broad daylight. Eisner
created tension by using close-ups, swirling gunsmoke,
and crowding the pages with panels. The end of the
inquest takes only half a page, and the final page of the
story is a collage of panels created like torn pages from
the diary, with drawings and captions in script. Bierces
story referred to pages ripped and torn from the diary,
and Eisners page carries that idea visually.
Eisners splash page to the 1948 The Spirit Section retelling

Ambrose Bierces short story, The Damned Thing.
of Ambrose Bierces The Damned Thing, first published

in 1893, appeared on July 25, 1948. One of Bierces
most memorable stories, it was adapted in 2006 for television in Showtimes Masters of Horror series, with a
teleplay by Richard Christian Matheson, directed by Tobe
Hooper. The second was Edgar Allen Poes The Fall of
the House of Usher, first published in The Gentlemans
Magazine in 1839, which appeared on August 22, 1948.
The best-known media adaptation is the 1960 Roger
Corman film version, which featured a screenplay by
Richard Matheson, father of Richard Christian Matheson.
Adapting Usher may have influenced at least the title of
Eisners next Spirit story. In Poes story, a burial crypt is
referred to as a donjon, and the August 29, 1948 Spirit
is entitled The Prisoner of Donjon, using the antique
spelling of the word for the tale of Simon Smudge, an
inmate who doesnt want to be let out.
Eisners adaptation of The Damned Thing is a model
of economy. He devoted the full first and last pages to
the Spirit and Ebony framing device, so only five pages
were left in which to turn the Bierce story into sequential
art. Bierces short story is divided into four equal parts,
each with its own subhead, and each a different sort of
text. The opening describes the inquest into the death of
38 | WRITE NOW
Dave Schreiner, editor of the Kitchen Sink Press reprint

of the story, noted the original title Bierce chose was
The Damned Thing, but the 1940s newspaper reader
apparently could not stomach what the 19th century
reader could, so the title was sanitized, changed simply
to The Thing. In Schreiners interview with him, Eisner
said Ambrose Bierce was always able to convey horror
and terror and fear so beautifully He always left me
with the frustration that I could not capture visually what
he captures. On page four, in the second-to-last panel,
Bierce writes There was a loud savage cry, like that of a
wild animal! You can envision that in your mind; you
can hear the cry. On paper, youre missing that dimension, but youre still trying to visualize it. You cant get it. I
was not successful here. But in most other ways,
Eisners adaptation was marvelously successful.
For example, Eisner made one small change in the
story that makes visualization easier. At the end of the
inquest, Harker asks to read Morgans diary, but the coroner refuses and slips it into his pocket. In both Bierces
story and Eisners adaptation, the coroner says, The
book will cut no figure in this matterall the entries in it
were made before the writers death. But in Eisners
story, Harkers hand is shown holding the diary and,
without changing Bierces dialogue, the reader believes
the reporter takes it. The last page of the adaptation, featuring the diary pages, then reads as though Harker and
the reader of the story are sharing the secrets of its
pages, making Eisners captioned images stronger and
more acceptable as a shared visualization of the diarys
entries.
Unlike The Damned Thing, Poes The Fall of the
House of Usher has relatively little dialogue, and only a
single voice, the first-person account of the unnamed
narrator. The
story has been
adapted many
times, including
into comics by
Richard Corben
and P. Craig
Russell, as well
as films and
plays. Its events
can be summarized briefly: the
narrator comes to
visit his distressed
friend Roderick
Usher in the family
mansion, discovers
The last images of The Thing.
that Ushers sister
Eisners visualization of Bierces story
gives it, as Chris Couch explains in
Lady Madeline is ill,
this article, an interpretation that
she dies and is
makes the reader almost a participant.
interred in a don[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
jon within the castle to prevent grave
robbery, she returns (whether through supernatural
means, or as the victim of premature burial is left purposely vague), the narrator flees, and the mansion collapses into a tarn, a highland lake.
Poe was a master of the Gothic romance, a literary
genre whose popularity began in the mid-18th century,
fueled by atmospheric terror tales like Horace Walpoles
Castle of Otranto (1764) and M.G. Lewiss The Monk
(1795). Northanger Abbey is a wicked satire of the
Gothic thriller, a type of story that thrilled the hearts of
refined female readers, who were particularly fond of the
works of Mrs. Radcliffe such as The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1795). Eisner opens his adaptation of the story
with specific references to this literature, with the Spirit
in Gothic lettering on a vellum codex. Since the conceit
of these stories is that the Spirit is retelling them to
Ebony, Eisner is also able to link his version to the seasonal element of Sunday funnies through their banter on
the first page, as the Spirit explains to Ebony that hes
turned off the lights because its so hot tonight... I
thought it would be cooler. Eisner has noted, in the
Schreiner interview, that I would have to, from time to
time, pay dues to acknowledging seasons and holidays,
as he does in this August-dated story. And having the
lights out provides the motive for Ebony to light a candle,
setting up a symbol used throughout the subsequent
pages. The title, The Fall of the House of Usher,
appears on page 2, and next to this, Eisner drew a
knights helm, sword and shield. These prefigure a
medievalesque romance the narrator will read to Usher
as Madeleine arises.
The heart of Poes Gothic story is the escape from the
crypt and resurrection of Madeleine, while the climax is

the collapse, the fall of the House of Usher into the
lake. After the opening with the Spirit and Ebony, Eisner
had six pages left for the Poe story. He allotted two
pages for the resurrection of Madeleine, the final page
for the fall of the house into the tarn, and then used
one each of the other three pages for the narrators
arrival at the House of Usher, his meeting with Roderick
(in which dialogue and visual details quickly establish
the latters mental state), and for the death and interment of Madeleine.
When Eisner commented on the story to Dave
Schreiner for the Kitchen Sink Press reprint, he said he
thought that, because it lacked dialogue, it was more a
work of illustration for a story than a truly visual comics
story. Analysis of the Eisners version, however, shows
that he addressed the perceived lack of dialogue in several ways.
First, given the limited space he had to work with,
Eisner used a remarkably large amount of Ushers
speech to the narrator. Eisners atmospheric story is filled
with smoke from guttering candles and on page 4, which
otherwise lacks dialogue, the smoke forms ethereal balloons around the narrators words, making them read as
speech rather than captions. In Poes story, the sounds of
WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 39
Madeleine breaking free from her coffin and leaving the
burial chamber are paralleled in the noises described in
a knightly romance the narrator reads to Usher to calm
him, The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning. Poe
invented this book, although its reminiscent of Sir Walter
Scotts prose. Poe thus created within his single story a
pair of texts that echo one another, combining the narrators stream of consciousness account of the events preceding the fall with his reading aloud of the fictitious
romance to Usher. The two parallel narratives are in different literary genres, the knightly romance embedded in
Poes Gothic tale. As the narrator reads the text, he hears
the very sounds he read of in the tale. They are the
heros exploits in the book, but in the Gothic story, they
are the sounds of Madeleine breaking free of her tomb.
This parallel is effectively rendered by Eisner into sequential art by the appearance of the romance read aloud in
word balloonsthe only time in the Eisner story that the
narrator speakswhich parallels the narration rendered
as captions. Yet a third, parallel level is created by the
sound effects, which move the description of sounds in
the romance to the real world of the comic book story.
Its a tour de force by Eisner, using comic means to create an effect parallel to Poes literary structure.
Eisner also used some of his trademark visual effects,
not only to create a Gothic atmosphere, but also to create other visual equivalents of Poes language. The
famous opening passages of The Fall of the House of
Usher evoke the atmosphere around the mansion with
words and images, including gloom, desolate, terrible,
bleak walls, blank windows, rank sedges and decayed
trees. Eisner drenches the opening page in rain, his soaking, puddling precipitation that Harvey Kurtzman named
Eisenshpritz, although Poes text makes no mention of
this. The adaptation was laid out and loosely penciled by
Eisner, and then the tight pencils and inks were done by
his assistant at the time, Jerry Grandinetti. The watery
effects, although finished by Grandinetti, are clearly part
of the visual universe Eisner created here, and Eisner
himself redrew parts of the story throughout. For example, the blowing papers, scudding across the courtyard
and catching on the mansions ridgeline in the first page
of story, were drawn by Eisner. In his interview with
Schreiner, he described them modestly as one of his
characteristic clichs. The drenching rain and the blowing papers create a sense of abandonment surrounding
the House of Usher, and also create a visual analogue of
Poes descriptive language.
Also in the prose storys opening passage, Poes narrator asks, What was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? and offers this partial
answer: Beyond doubt, there are combinations of very
simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us Eisner filled the story with such objects:
flickering candles, carafes and wine glasses which Usher
40 | WRITE NOW
Eisners splash page to the Spirit-version of Poes The Fall of the

House of Usher. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
cant fill without spilling, candelabra and chess pieces.

The most striking use of a simple natural object is in a
small, borderless panel on page 4. Here, Eisner has
drawn an hourglass with the last sands running out of
the top. Hes made the round top of the glass into the
floor of a room in the mansion, where Usher is telling
the narrator that the Lady Madeleine was no more! The
metaphor perfectly suits Poes atmosphere, visually
marking a key moment in the story, as time runs out for
Ushers sister.
The final effects in the story are created, not metaphorically, but by literally depicting what Poe describes, even
things that might normally be considered invisible. For
example, Poes narrator described Ushers mansion,
when he first saw it, as appearing whole but not really
sound, like wooden furniture rotting from the inside out.
The narrator particularly notices a barely perceptible fissure which runs from roof to base. In the final scene, as
the narrator flees, the mansion cracks apart along this
line and the light of the full, setting and blood-red
moon surrounds him, and he turns and sees the House
of Usher fall into the lake. This page is the most like illustration, with a caption at the bottom of each panel. But
the narrative is so active, it works as sequential art. The
Spirit. Although not exactly ghost stories, Eisner
created at least a half dozen Spirit stories about
characters lost in time, miraculously long-lived
individuals who appear in the Spirits world from
the past. These include Old West outlaw Sam
Chapparel, Revolutionary War veteran Abraham
Pewter, Nazi scientist Adolphe Link and Donjon
Prison inmate Simon Smudge. Spirits explicitly
identified or strongly indicated to be ghosts
include Capitan Muerto, a Spanish Conquistador,
John Dailey, an industrialist who returns from the
dead to take revenge on his murderous partner,
and Andre Bouchard, who haunts his friend
Maurice Maywee after a Nazi doctor uses
Bouchards blood in a transfusion. This last story is
entitled Journeys into the Bizarre No. 1: The Case
of the Inner Voice and, though set in the Spanish
Civil War, recalls the haunting American Civil War
stories of Bierce.
Eisner created a witch with magical powers for
his Halloween seasonal stories, Hazel P. Macbeth,
who was identified as a descendant of the Salem
Eisner uses the panel shapes, lettering style, and weather-effects to crewitches. Although lighthearted and seasonal, sevate a specific type of atmosphereliteral and figurativethat lures the
eral of these stories were not unlike Arthur Millers
reader into his Usher. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
1953 play The Crucible (film adaptations 1957,
1996), as Hazel was persecuted by bodies that satitop three panels show the narrator caught by the light
rized the House Un-American Activities Committee
from the rending mansion. The second tier of two panels
(H.U.A.C.), a prime force in the political witch hunts of
shows the whirlwind that destroys the mansion, first as
the post-World War II red scare.
semicircular speed lines surrounding the narrator, then
as literal circles filling the sky. Eisner captures the spirit of
A number of Eisners darker characters, like those of
Poes story, not through metaphor, but by drawing
Poe, appear to reflect the darker sides of human psycholimages directly from Poes text. Like many of Eisners
ogy. Although, as with Poe, applying to Eisner a rigid
Spirit stories, this adaptation uses a variety of visual and
Freudian structure of Id, Ego and Superego would be too
textual techniques to create a unified work.
constricting and insupportable, it is hard not to see
Eisners Spirit appears at first glance to be a detective
comic, in some ways not unlike Batman. The Spirit is a
former police detectivean ex-copwhos now, in effect,
a private investigator like the detective protagonists of
Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. In that context,
why would Eisner include as classics from the library of
the great criminologist, the Spirit, two stories that basically deal with the supernatural? Eisner clearly never saw
his Spirit stories as being limited to detective fiction. His
stories are famous for their focus on characters other
than the Spirit, who often steps aside and lets children,
veterans, politicians or other human types dominate.
Less noticed, but equally important perhaps to the
overall impact of Eisners work, are the number of Spirit
stories that deal with the supernatural, with Gothic
themes, or with darkly symbolic characters rooted in psychological archetypes, all characteristic of the work of
Poe and Bierce. Perhaps Eisner was just utilizing a set of
possibilities opened up by naming his character the
Eisner characters like the top-hatted dandy with the Iago

smile Mr. Hush, psychopathic murderer Mr. Dusk, and
the scoundrel and scam artist Mr. Carrion and his
beloved vulture Julia as anything other than archetypes
or symbols of the unconscious. Mr. Hush, the
Whisperer, was gossip personified. Dusk was married to
the beautiful, savage Twilight, a psychosexual pairing that
incarnates the relationship between lust and violence,
while Mr. Carrion, the most light-hearted of Eisners
archetypes personified sexual uncertainty. Eisner said of
him, I was never absolutely certain of Carrions gender,
his sex. In 1947, in newspapers or anywhere else, you
very carefully did not call much attention to abnormality.
In his final appearance, he abandons human society for
the gay camaraderie of his beloved Julia.
Poe and Bierce, like other 19th and early 20th century
masters of the short story, were never content to be limited to one or a few literary genres. Although O. Henry
did little with the supernatural, and Ring Lardner and
Guy De Maupassant were social commentators and realWILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 41
ists, these writers also explored society
high and low, corrupt and idealistic. In
The Spirit, Eisner claimed the same
ambition, the same writerly freedom
for himself that any and all of these
writers did in their work. Although
Eisner only adapted other writers
works in these two cases, they serve
as a good measure of his literary aspirations, and give insight into the kinds
of stories he was doing. No genre, no
type of story was off limits in the
world of The Spirit. Thats what set it
apart from the other adventure comic In images at once representational and abstract, Eisner conveys Poes idea of the House of Usher
splitting apart. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
books of the day, which were dominated by crime stories.
at Kitchen Sink Press, editor in chief at CPM Manga, and
teaches comics as art and literature at the University of
Eisner could do it all.
Massachusetts Amherst and the School of Visual Arts. He
is currently editing Conversations with Harvey
N. C. Christopher Couch has a Ph.D. in art history from
Kurtzman, and writing a book on early Batman artist
Columbia University. He is the author of numerous
and editorial cartooning stalwart, Jerry Robinson.
books and articles on Latin American art and on graphic
novels and comic art, including, with Stephen Weiner,
The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of
the Father of the Graphic Novel. He was senior editor
THE
END
SOURCES
On Eisners life and career, Bob Andelmans Will
Eisner: A Spirited Life (Milwaukie, OR: M Press, 2005)
is the best single source, based on extensive interviews
with Eisner and his friends, family and collaborators.
Eisner also gave literally hundreds of interviews during
his long career, but one of the most important appeared
in The Philadelphia Record (October 13, 1941), reprinted in Catherine Yronwode and Denis Kitchen, The Art of
Will Eisner (Princeton, WI: Kitchen Sink Press, 1982, p.
44). Many of the Spirit stories and characters discussed
above are also treated in The Will Eisner Companion:
The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic
Novel by N. C. Christopher Couch and Stephen Weiner
(New York: DC Comics. 2004).
The Eisner stories discussed here were reprinted in
The Spirit #33 and #34, (Kitchen Sink Press, 1987). The
issues featured interviews with Eisner by editor Dave
Schreiner, published in the column Stage Settings, from
which all Eisner quotes are drawn. The stories are
reprinted in color in vol. #17 of DC Comics The Spirit
Archives, which reprints the entire run of the series
from 1940 to 1952 in 24 volumes.
For Ambrose Bierces fiction, the best single compendium is The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce: A
Comprehensive Collection, edited by S. T. Joshi,
Lawrence I. Berkove, and David E. Schultz (3 vols.;
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), which
collects every known short story by Bierce, including
42 | WRITE NOW
many that have not been reprinted since Bierces time.

The Damned Thing appears in vol. 2, pp. 857-864.
The Fall of the House of Usher is in every Poe collection, but most readers find it in his Tales of Mystery
and Imagination. The finest illustrated edition is by the
Irish artist Harry Clarke, published in 1923 and recently
reprinted by Dover. An especially useful and enjoyable
collection is The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allen Poe,
edited with notes by Stephen Peithman (New York:
Doubleday 1981).
In addition to The Thing and The Fall of the House
of Usher, the Spirit stories referred to include the stories
of the following characters (with date of their appearances), whose biographies are synopsized in the Will
Eisner Companion: Sam Chapparell (10/10 and
11/14/48), Abraham Pewter (4/28/46), Adolphe Linke
(5/25/47), in the Companions Nazis entry, Simon
Smudge (8/29/48), Capitan Muerto (1/25/48 and
2/1/48), in the Companions Castanet entry, John
Dailey (6/6/48) in the Companions Abel Ferguson
entry, and Andre Bouchard (8/11/46), in the
Companions Maurice Maywee entry. For the characters Hazel Macbeth, Mr. Hush, Mr. Dusk and Mr. Carrion,
see the alphabetical entries in Companion, which list all
their story appearances.
NCCC
The Spirit of Comics!
THE WILL EISNER INTERVIEW
Conducted via telephone March 26, 2003 by Danny Fingeroth

Transcribed by Steven Tice / Copy-edited by Will Eisner
This interview first ran in WN! #5. It seemed appropriate to represent
it in this Eisner-centric issue. It stands up toand actually gets even
better withrepeated readings. Enjoy!
DF
rom the dust jacket of the hardcover The Spirit

Archives, currently being published by DC Comics:
Will Eisners career spans the entire history of

comic books, from his formative days in the 1930s through
the 1940s, when he revolutionized narrative sequential art
with his internationally famed series, The Spirit, to the 1970s,
when he created the contemporary graphic novel form. In
addition to his award-winning graphic novels, he is the author
of the influential study Comics and Sequential Art.
Or, as Dennis ONeil says in his introduction to DCs upcoming The Will Eisner Companion by Chris Couch and Stephen
Weiner:
Will Eisner is an Artist.
Writers Block in a Spirit splash from 1950. Story and art by Will Eisner.
[2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
He has a vision of
the human condition
and the means to communicate that vision to
us. It is essentially a
tragic vision, though not
a morose one, and that
may be why he no
longer does melodrama;
in the world that Will
has been presenting for
the last quarter-century,
problems are not solved
by violent action and big, fluffy endings are impossible. This is
our world, focused and purified and magnified, displayed for
our amusement
There arent many analogies, either inside or outside cartooning, for what Will does. Were not discussing caricature
hererather, something like caricatures smarter older brother,
a graphic strategy that not only exaggerates the exterior but
uses exaggeration to suggest the interior.
To which allow me to add: Will is one of the few titans
about whom it can truly be said that, without him, there
would be no comics artform and no comics industry.
It was one of my lifes honors to conduct this phone interview with him.
DF
DANNY FINGEROTH: I want to thank you for taking the time
to do this interview, Will. What are you working on right now?
I know youre in the middle of a project.
WILL EISNER: I just completed a book that Doubleday is publishing called Fagin the Jew. It will be published in
September, I believe. I just sent off the final art the day before
yesterday.
DF: Thats not part of the DC Library?
WE: DC lost the bid on it. They wanted it, but Doubleday
made me an offer I couldnt refuse. DC always gets first look
at any graphic novel I do.
DF: And are you starting something new now?
WE: Well, I always have... I have a file here that says do me
now. [laughter] Im just starting another book now.
DF: My understanding is that you dont like to talk about projects youre working on.
WE: I generally dont, and the reason for it is it dilutes itself if
I talk about it, because while Im working on it, Im developing
ideas and so forth. It just dilutes itself in my mind.
DF: At this point, how many hours a week do you devote to
work?
WE: I work pretty steadily. When Im not traveling, I work from
nine to five.
DF: Wow.
WE: Every day, five days a week.
DF: What, you take the weekends off? How dare you? [laughs]
EISNER | 43
back to doing The Spirit, by 1950 I realized I had done all I
wanted to do on The Spirit, and the opportunity to expand
into teaching material with sequential art presented itself. So I
started a company producing instructional material in sequential art, or comics, as you might call it. It lasted for about 25
years, and then in 1972, 73, I stumbled into Phil Seulings
conventions and discovered that the underground artistsIm
talking about Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman and Spain
Rodriguez and Denis Kitchen and a couple of otherswere
really using comics as a pure, literary form, in that they were
addressing the establishment mores and morals of the time,
and that encouraged me to go back to the area where I wanted to spend my life, which was producing comics or sequential art for adult readers, with grown-up subject matter.
DF: Now, the stuff youd been doing in the interim twenty
years was in comics format but in an educational milieu?
WE: Yes, what you might call the comics format. Actually, it
was the sequential art format. It is the arrangement of images
in a sequence to tell a story, and whether you do them on
three tiers or two tiers, with nine or six panels to a page, is
irrelevant. Its how you arrange the images in an intelligent
and readable sequence to convey an idea or tell a story that is
really the heart of the definition, if you will, of what I want to
do. And in 1975or 76, I guess, somewhere in thereI began
doing what I believed was a novel form addressed to adult
readers. And out of that came A Contract with God.
DF: Youd always aimed at adult readers, even with The Spirit.
WE: Yes. Writing for young readers was one of the problems
that I had during the Eisner and Iger Studio years, and one of
the reasons I went in for The Spiritwhich was quite a gamble at the time, for various reasons. I wanted to talk to an
adult audience. A newspaper readership would give me that. I
was always very impatient talking to the very young readers. I
didnt really know what to say to them. [laughs]
DF: You mean talk to them beyond just the basics of superhero action/adventure?
WE: Well, candidly, superheroes are one-dimensional characPencils for a page from Will Eisners graphic novel A Contract With God.
ters. You cant do very much with them. And life experiences
This art is among the unpublished pieces to be printed in Dark Horses upcoming
are filled with story material. Everybodys concerned with surhardcover volume The Will Eisner Sketchbook. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
vival and the life experience is concerned with that and how
WE: My wife says Saturday and Sunday are her days.
to deal with it. So its a wide-open area, there.
DF: Well, that seems to work for you. Im going to ask you a
DF: Now, in different hands, these can be very bleak subjects,
bunch of questions that range from the pretentious to the
but you certainly seem to do them joyously.
picayune. So if theres anything that you think is too stupid to
WE: Well... thats an interesting point you just made, calling
answer
them bleak. Every once in a while people do say to me,
WE: Ill give you stupid answers.
Your stories are bleak or theres a noir quality to them.
DF: Thank you. [laughs] Well, okay. Youve been doing comics
Thats French, you know. [laughter] I dont see it that way. First
and graphic storytelling for an amazingly long time and your
of all, Im not a moralist. Im not really writing books to define
stuff is still wonderfully fresh, innovative and exciting. Would
human morals. I consider myself doing reportage, reporting to
you say there is an overall theme or purpose or direction in
my fellow man the things I see. I see a man lying in the street,
your work, from the beginning to now? Or has it changed
nobody paying attention to him is something I want to turn to
over the years?
my fellow man and say, Hey, look at that, look at that. Hes
WE: Well, the direction has always been to explore areas that
lying there, nobodys paying attention. The other thing is, I
havent been explored before. I guess thats the way to put it.
think its necessary to explore the purpose of life. Thats what
I believe that this medium is a literary form and that it has not
drives us in living. In one of the books I did, theres a story
been used as fully as it could. So all of my experience, all the
called The Big Hit. At the end of the story, I have this one
things Ive been involved in since 1950, certainly, have been
guy saying to the other fellow, Living is a risky business.
an effort to employ this medium whose language is sequenReally, the whole business of living and survival is very much a
tial artthats the medium that were talking aboutin areas
part of how we think as human beings, so if you can talk
that it had not tried before. For example, when I was in the
about that, it has resonance, it means something. Its useful.
military between 1942 and 1946, I realized that the medium
What I want to be is useful, obviously.
is usable as a teaching tool, very effective as a tool. So I sold
DF: Do you think that focus, that direction, comes from the
the military on the use of that. It was very successful. I went
Depression era and World War II era experiences?
44 | WRITE NOW
WE: Living through the Depression has made me sensitiveas it did with all the people who also lived through
the Great Depressionsensitive to the human struggle
for survival. This is really the heart of all living.
Everybodys concerned with survival. Anytime you discuss it, it is of importance to an adult reader. Now, one
of the problems with writing to young readers is that I
cannot discuss heartbreak with a fourteen- or fifteenyear-old kid, because to him, heartbreak is if his father
didnt give him the keys to the car or something like that. Or
maybe his girlfriend decided he was a nerd.
DF: Thats heartbreak for that kid.
WE: Thats heartbreak, true. Youngsters are not concerned
with survival.
DF: But, its different.
WE: Its a different kind of heartbreak. But in one of my
booksI think it was A Life Force, where this man is trying to
decide what life it all aboutI discuss the meaning of living,
what is it, what its all about. He compares himself to a cockroach. It gave me a chance, again, to expand the capacity of
the medium.
DF: It seems that certain subject matter that, say, in The
Spirit, you may have been addressing in a more metaphorical way, youve been getting with more directly, or at least
with a different sort of metaphor system, since A Contract
with God. In other words, it seems that you did have some of
those same concerns when you were doing The Spirit, but
your way of dealing with them changed when you came
backwhat it seemed to the public was coming backwith A
Speed versus Art in a page from Eisners semi-autobiographical look back at the
Golden Age of comics, The Dreamer. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
Discussing the meaning of life with a cockroach in A Life Force.

Contract with God and so on.

WE: Well, one thing we dont realize is that the artists and
writers, like everybody else, grow. They grow up. [laughter]
Thats a very interesting point, however, because one of the
reasons I never really wanted to do a daily strip was, I discovered that daily strips would not allow the artist to experiment
and grow, necessarily. He remained pretty much the way he
was when he first started. If you look at the daily strips over
the years, the ones that have survived for 50 years, theyre
pretty much the same as they were when they started, and
theres no room for experimentation. The joy, for me... the
truth of the matter is, youve got to love what youre doing,
youve got to enjoy what youre doing in order to do it well. If
you dont like what youre doing, you dont do it well. Nothing
good is ever done without enthusiasm, really. And for me, the
opportunity to cut new paths is to try new things. The real
excitement for me is to do something that nobody has ever
done before, if I can do it. Unfortunately, its very hard to
invent the wheel, because somebody has already done that,
but... [laughs]
DF: Theres steel-belted radials, though.
WE: [laughs] Okay. But the point Im trying to make is that the
excitement in any medium is to explore new territory, with all
the risk thats involved. And its a great risk, because you could
spend a whole year working on something only to discover
that its a bomb. [laughter]
DF: To me, looking at your work over the years, one significant change is that you yourself describe as going from a cinematic style to almost more of a theatrical awareness, where
people are more on stage.
WE: Thats an interesting point, very perceptive of you,
because I have always been influenced largely by live theater.
And the reason for that is that live theater is closest to reality,
and all the work I do is pressing for reality. All my work starts
out by saying, Now, believe me Even The Spirit was an
attempt to create a believable hero, even though he wore a
mask, which was kind of an idiot thing. [Danny laughs] I tried
to make him believable. Now, the cinematic stuff I did early
on was really a practical approach, because while youre writing, in this medium anyway, youve got to be aware of the fact
that reading patterns are influenced by other media, and in
the 30s, movies came along and began to influence reading
patterns. They added to the readers understanding a whole
new visual language, influenced graphic literacy, if you will.
Movies began using the camera as the reader, so to speak. Or
the audience became the camera, and the camera would look
through somebodys armpit, or look down from the ceiling.
You had birds-eye-views, you had worms-eye-views, and so
forth. Those are part of the language they were introducing.
EISNER | 45
Lots and lots of Eisnerspritz on the first page of the early-1980s Spirit Jam
story. Story and art by Will Eisner. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
So I employed them, because Im always eager to reach my

reader, and this was a new visual language.
Now, when I started back into the graphic novel, I moved
back into the live theater/real stage format, which Ive always
found to be the most sure way of communicating with my
audience. One other thing I should say is that live theater has
a sense of reality that movies do not have. You sit in the theater and people are doing something on the stage, theyre
real people, theyre real. You are looking in on a real incident.
In movies, youre looking at something that only seems to be
real. Its an artificial reality.
DF: Comics can mimic film or they can mimic theater. Youve
taken those elements and, in at least two eras, created a
whole new vocabulary for people. Whats the appeal of the
visual in presenting your message? You have things you want
to say and messages you want to get out. Why not straight
prose? Whats the appeal of the picture in there?
WE: Thats an interesting point. Prose is a different medium. I
write with pictures. Now, when people ask me what I do, to
answer it as quickly as I can, I say, Im a writer. I write with
pictures. This is my medium, and I think there is an advantage to sequential art, because, first of all, it communicates
more rapidly than text alone. Text cannot be dismissed,
because text is capable of revealing the great depth that single images or static images cannot do. And thats one of the
challenges of this medium. This is something thats challenging me all the time, how to better transmit internalization
which text can do. For example, someone writing with prose
or text alone can say, Sam Brown entered the room. His
whole life experience taught him that there was danger here,
and he sensed it and so forth, and it goes on and on. Well,
46 | WRITE NOW
doing that visually, you are unable to step aside and tell all
about Sam Browns long life experience and the dangers hes
been through. So these are the challenges that text deals with.
But, nonetheless, were living in a time, what I call a visual
era, in which text alone is under siege.
DF: Thats a polite way of putting it.
WE: Well, I think its about as accurate as you can be.
Whenever you try to describe something, you have a tough
time trying to get an accurate word. [laughs] The era were living in now is characterized by the fact that a huge amount of
information is being poured out on us at this geometric rate
of growth, and we dont have time to read. I remember when
I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts, I was trying to get
my students to read, and I discovered that most of them had
not read the novels that I was forced to read as a kid. They
werent even reading short stories, which sort of went out of
fashion. Used to be very fashionable in the 30s, which really
taught me how to write this kind of stuff, because I was a
great reader of short stories. But the times were living in,
communication is largely done by imagery. And Ive got to be
conscious of that and aware of it. I believe that is what I feel
Im providing in working in this medium, what everybody
working in what you call comics is providing. I hate the
word comics, its a misnomer. But its like Kleenex, you
know? You dont say facial tissue so it has stuck.
DF: I guess the other shift I noticed in your work over time
and again, Im sure Im not the only one nor the first one, but
I thought Id mention itis that in The Spirit, you had to get
your personal statements in as metaphor through the characters, through clever storytelling devices. Now you go directly
to the personal and to the memoir. But in other interviews
and Im sorry to throw quotes at you, but Ive been reading
nothing but interviews with you for three days [laughs]
youve talked about how painful it is to delve into these memories and put them on paper
WE: Oh, it is.
DF: But there must be some appeal to it for you to keep
doing it. Whats exciting about that process for you?
WE: I dont know how other writers work, but I can only write
about things that I know. Either things Ive seen firsthand,
experienced personally, or received maybe through a third
party. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons Ive been unable
to write science fiction stories is because Ive never met aliens
from another planet. I dont know any androids.
DF: [laughs] As far as you know.
WE: [laughs] I dont know, maybe I have. Some of the publishers I ran into very early on were probably from another
planet. So I prefer to write from what I know. And it allows
me to do some things which are very realistic and very understandable by my readers. For example, Ive always used climate or rainwhich, by the way, Harvey Kurtzman used to
tease me about and call it Eisnerspritz.
DF: [laughs] There should be a TM after that.
WE: [laughs] I should copyright that, I guess! People understand climate, they understand weather, they understand rain.
Everybody has felt rain, so if I can employ that in the process
of conveying an idea or telling a story, I do that. So as far as
philosophy is concerned, the first time I became aware that I
could possibly, in this medium, deal with a philosophical idea
or a morality concept was in The Spirit, with the story of
Gerhard Schnobble, a little guy who could fly. I did that and to
my surprise it worked out well, it came across well, and it got
a good response. And I was pleased. And it survives. As a mat-
ter of fact, the story has remained memorable among the
Spirit stories. People keep constantly talking to me about it. In
Denmark, theres a building wall with a painting of Gerhard
Schnobble on it. A city-financed mural.
DF: And yet, I dont think today you would do a story about a
guy who thought he could fly who gets caught in a shootout.
Today you seem much more involved in recounting
WE: Real stories, yes. The Schnobble story was really a philosophical statement, if you will. But now I prefer to deal with
reality.
DF: But reality often from, say, the 30s, 40s, 50s.
WE: Well, those are the years that I know. But apparently it
doesnt really matter, because the principles of the thing stay
the same. The last book I did, the one that came out last year,
The Name of the Game, which is a discussion on the whole
idea of marriage and so forth, spanned two generations.
Dropsie Avenue was an attempt to do a history of a neighborhood, that dealt with generations. But, as a matter of fact, I
prefer to do things set in the past because that will not
change, where today is liable to change on me. [laughs]
DF: Is there some inner drive you feel to get this down on
paper, to record a certain time and place in history?
WE: No, no, its just an environment thats very comfortable
for me to write in.
DF: Because my parents are from the Bronx of those years,
where many of your stories are set, its fascinating for me to
see what in your work intersects with stories Ive heard from
them and from my other relatives.
WE: We all want to know how it was. In fact, in doing the
autobiography Heart of the Storm, I remember my father
telling me about his life in Vienna. He was a young painter in
Vienna, an artist. And I was so eager to find out how it was
then. As a matter of fact, many years ago I stopped off in
Vienna when I was traveling around Europe on a business trip
just to walk the street, the Prada, that he walked on. Just to
get the feel of it. Its a thing to do. I know other people do the
same thing. I know Art Spiegelman went to Europe and I
think he visited one of the concentration camps just to get a
feel of what it felt like, what it looked like. I think one has to
do that to convey a sense of honesty in your work.
DF: This is just a picky note, so feel free to ignore this question. I can understand changing the names of real-life based
people in your stories, but why do you change the names of
streets and neighborhoods that exist or existed? Just so
nobody will give you a hard time about not getting an exact
likeness?
WE: No, no. Because... Its the way Faulkner created his own
county... its almost a metaphor. Its an example of. And
again, it enables me to connect with the reader. If I use an
actual street, with a name that truly existed, Id lose some of
the intimacy I would expect from the reader. So if its a street
thats got a fictitious name, it could be a street that he
remembers or she remembers. As you can see, my entire preoccupation is to connect with the reader. Thats one of the
reasons why I dont like to work in color. I prefer to work in a
single line in black and white. Ill sometimes print my books in
brown because I think its a way of making it softer and easier
to read, but I prefer not to work in color.
DF: But The Spirit was published in color.
WE: Well, that was necessary in those days. My attitude with
The Spirit was totally different than my attitude today.
DF: Are there authors who influenced you years ago and
today? Anybody you can cite as a particular influence?
WE: As far as cartoonists are concerned, Milton Caniff was a

very strong influence on me. Segars Popeye taught me a lot.
Usually, the guys who influence me are people that I try to
learn from. For example, Krazy Kat by George Herriman I discovered very early. As a matter of fact, I came upon him while
I was selling newspapers in the street during the Depression,
and his stuff was being published by King Features, in the
Hearst papers. And I was blown away by that. I thought,
Wow, this is great! And Ive always remembered that he had
the capacity of engaging the reader in a way that enabled him
to avoid or eliminate panels. As a matter of fact, he was rarely
consistent in his backgrounds. One scene had a moon and a
tower, and the next scene, they were still talking in the same
dialogue, but it was a rock of some kind. If youve seen it, you
know what Im talking about.
So those three authors really taught me an awful lot. I
learned an awful lot about storytelling from Caniff. And of
course I had many years of reading short stories. O. Henry
was a tremendous influence on me. So was Saki, the French
author...
DF: Guy DeMaupassant?
WE: DeMaupassant. And I read a lot of Russian short stories.
The short stories of the 30s were really tremendously influential, and really, literally, taught me how to write The Spirit.
Remember, doing a seven-page complete story every week
was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. [laughter] I
Eisner draws upon his fathers stories of Vienna for a chapter in To The Heart of
the Storm. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
EISNER | 47
discovered something early on. I started off with an eightpager and then I discovered I was working at a rate of a page
a day. [laughter] But I discovered there were only seven days
in the week. I had to cut back to seven-page stories.
DF: And you filled out the other nine pages with other peoples stuff?
WE: Yeah.
DF: Can you talk a little bit about how you create a story?
From what Ive read, you dont use a typewriter or a computer.
WE: I dont use a typewriter. I do the text and pictures at the
same time.
DF: Do you do an outline in longhand first?
WE: Sometimes I will. Ill do like a laundry list ofIll start off
with the ending. Before I begin, I know what the ending will
be. I work my way up to the ending, which is my way of
doing the story.
DF: Does the ending ever change as youre working your way
toward it?
WE: The ending doesnt change, but I will alter the path with
which I get to the ending, because as things happen, they
suggest another happening which works into it. I usually prepare a pencil rough first, a readable dummy, from which I sell
the book, actually. For example, at one time I had about four
or five publishers in Europe and a couple publishers in this
country and I would send out a dummy to them. Nobody really knows which you read first in a sequence, whether you see
the pictures first or read the text first.
DF: I cant believe nobodys done a study on that.
WE: I believe you see the images first and then go to the text,
because I think this is how it works in real life. For example,
just visualize a man lying on the street and a fellow comes
over to him and says, Charlie, are you all right? He looks at
him first, bends down, and then says, Charlie, are you all
right? It comes afterward. For that reason, for example, I dont
like what I call umbilical balloons. Harvey Kurtzman and I
used to argue about that all the time because he liked to do
balloons and text and have two or three balloons coming out
of the same person. And I believe thats all wrong, I dont
think it works. So each of us has our own style and technique
and preference. A lot of people are using umbilical balloons,
but I dont use them.

DF: Have you ever drawn from anybody elses script?
WE: I have difficulty writing from a script that belongs to
somebody else. The problem is, I would probably change it.
[laughs] No, the way I work is I have a kind of a roadmap that
Ive set up in my mind, or I have a list. To give you an example
of how it might work, say, would be the case of the Spirit
story where this man comes from another planet, finds it difficult to live here, and then returns to the other planet. This
was the basis of the story, and I wrote down a whole list of
steps. How he arrives, he gets a job in the weather bureau,
and my next step, he meets this lady, and so forth. And at the
end of the book, he goes off to another planet. All thats listed
down. Then I start writing my stories. Now, each page for me
is a mega-panel. I try to contain a number of cohesive incidents on a single page so the page has a containment in
itself. But thats also because Im very conscious of the technology of the reading of this medium, so, for example, I
believe that when you turn a page, you lose the reader for a
millisecond. Unless you recognize that, youre going to lose
the thread of the story for them. I used to warn my students
about the business of having someone on the last panel of
page one, lets say, start saying, I am going to... And on the
next page he says, Chicago. You lose the reader in that millisecond, as theyre turning the page. That has to do with the
technology of the medium. Now, that may change when we
arrive at the point where all comics will be displayed electronically, over the Internet, so youll have a totally different kind
of thing.
DF: Do you think thats going to happen?
WE: Well... thats been a long-running debate between me
and Scott McCloud over this subject. A friendly debate, but an
enthusiastic one, anyway. And I believe that whats going to
happen is that comicsor cartoons as still images, which print
lives onwill become animated. So what youre going to wind
up with is animated cartoons.
DF: Something like the webtoons that were popular, or were
trying to be popular, a few years ago?
WE: I dont know what they were, what are webtoons?
DF: You know, like the stuff that Stan Lee was doing with Stan
Lee Media.
Eisner adapts Cervantes. Panels from The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote, one of the series of graphic novels hes done for NBM in recent years,
adapting classic literature, fairy tales, and folk tales. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
48 | WRITE NOW
Bemmelman the famous illustrator. A foreigner. And he
said to me in broken English, Dont vorry, boy, somebody
vill like your vork.
DF: [laughs] Did he look at your work?
WE: No. I was carrying my big black portfolio, looking like
the world had fallen in on me.
DF: Now who was this guy?
WE: Ludwig Bemmelman. He was a very famous book
illustrator and painter.
DF: It was wonderful that he said that to you.
WE: Yeah, it was very encouraging. I walked out feeling a
little better.
DF: Any books or courses that you recommend to aspiring
comics writers and artists? I imagine Comics and
Sequential Art. [laughs]
WE: Well, I would recommend that. I think thats a very
Wills must-have books on comics theory and practice. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
good book. [laughs] And Graphic Storytelling and Visual
WE: Oh, yeah, when he got into Flash animation?
Narrative, too. Those books, by the way, are different from
DF: Right, the Flash animation stuff.
Scott McClouds book, Understanding Comics, which is very
WE: Theyll progress into pure animation, which is being proimportant, in my opinion. Scotts book is addressed to the
duced in Hollywood today. So I think still images, which is
broad public, and explains the phenomenon of comics, the
what comics in print deals with all the time, loses something
technology and the structure of it and so forth. What I tried to
when its projected over an image through the Internet.
do with Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic
Theyve been trying to do that, a lot of guys have done that,
Storytelling is provide something for someone who is workand it doesnt work as far as Im concerned.
ing in the medium or teaching it. So I suggest those. But there
DF: Well, its a different medium.
are lots of good books...
WE: So thats where its going. Im not very interested in
For those who want to learn anatomybecause its very
movies. Ive never really been interested in getting involved in
important to be able to manipulate the human figure if youre
the production of a movie. In fact, Ive never really been eager
going to talk about it and write about itI think the anatomy
to have any of my work made into a movie. Im satisfied with
books by George Bridgman are very, very valuable. And theyre
the way its been done with print. I love print, and as far as
cheap and easy for you to get. Everything I know about anatoIm concerned, as long as I am able to work I will continue to
my I learned from him. I took a course with him back at the
work in print. Ive had offers, as you can imagine, from time to
Art Students League in the 30s.
time, to do a movie, to get involved in making a movie, and
And writing, I think everybody who wants to write should
was really not interested at that time. Of course, one should
never say never eh?
DF: Because of positive things about print, or negative
things about Hollywood...?
WE: No, no. Well, Hollywoods a story all in itself. Its
because I have really not yet licked print altogether.
Theres a lot yet to conquer.
DF: Well, if you havent, nobody has. Take my word for
it. [laughs] You have had, certainly, a long and remarkable career. I imagine there have been setbacks along
the way. Any advice for people about how to deal with
career setbacks that would feel like impossible obstacles?
WE: Stay with it. Dont quit. Have faith in yourself. Believe
in what youre doing. Failures are a way of learning
things. As a matter of fact, I was telling a story, last week
I was speaking to a group of librarians and someone
asked me the same question. One of the difficulties of
this business is that you have to learn to deal with
rejection. Every kid coming out of school, sooner or
later, will walk into an art directors office or a publishers
office and the editor will look at his work and say, now,
dont take this personally... but this is the stupidest, crappiest work Ive ever seen.
DF: But dont take it personally. [laughs]
WE: Dont take it personally. Well it happened to me, I
remember, as a young kid. I showed my work to a magazine and the editor looked at this work and laughed and
said, These are the stupidest faces I have ever seen. And I
walked out of there very dejected. And sitting out in the wait- Demonstrating pacing in an illustration from the Writing Process chapter of
ing room, waiting to see this editor next after me, was Ludwig Wills book Graphic Storytelling. [ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]
EISNER | 49
Playing with panel construction in The School for Girls?? a 1947 Spirit story.
answers have been incredible and inspired many of the questions. Before we wrap this up, is there anything you want to
plug? I know youre going to be speaking at the Library of
Congress soon.
WE: Ill be going there next week.
DF: Thats very exciting.
WE: Your article will come out long after that. The only thing I
want to plug, I think, is Fagin the Jew, which is being published by Doubleday this fall.
DF: Okay. And maybe when I send you the transcript, after
youve done the Library, maybe we can do one or two followups by e-mail or something just so you can tell me about
that, if you have the time, because thats a very exciting thing.
WE: Well, Ill be talking about graphic novels.
DF: Are you excited about speaking there?
WE: What Im doing now is accepting invitations to talk about
the graphic novel. At long last the graphic novel has arrived.
Its being discovered by libraries around the world, all over the
country. And Im very eager to talk about that. I want to correct something. A lot of the people, librarians and other publishers, people who publish or buy graphic novelsIm not
talking about the readersregard a graphic novel as nothing
more than a collection of comics with a flat back. If its thick, if
its got more than a hundred pages, its a graphic novel. So
Ive been running around trying to correct that and point out
that the graphic novel is a literary form. It is written with a
structure very similar to the classic novel. As a matter of fact,
Signal From Space, a book I wrote... I wrote that book not
because I wanted to write about science fiction, but I wanted
to prove or show or demonstrate that a graphic novel could
be written following the disciplines of a standard text novel,
prose novel.
DF: The structural disciplines, you mean?
WE: Yeah, the same structural disciplines. It really worked.
Anyway, thats my conclusion.
DF: Thanks for your time, Will, and for sharing your knowledge. And for all the great work.
WE: Thank you, Danny.
read short stories. Go back to the old short stories of the 30s,
wonderful things. Ive always believed that the best comic
book, graphic novel, or sequential art, whatever you want to
call it, is done by the same man who writes and draws it. And
barring that, I think that someone who writes should be able
to think graphically when he writes a book, in order to deal
with the artist. As a matter of fact, I was talking about this
with Neil Gaiman once, and he told me that he writes with
the skills and the style and the talents of a specific artist in
mind. So before he starts writing, he wants to know who the
artist will be. So thats a good tip.
DF: Of course, if youre Neil Gaiman, you can have
some say in that. A lot of people just get whoever
theyre assigned by the editor.
WE: Well, no, I think even for a young writer
whos just starting to work at one of the
major houses certainly, it would be in order
to say, Who is going to illustrate this, so I
can write it better for this person Theres
some guys who cant draw horses. So why
do a story that involves a lot of horses?
[laughter]
DF: This is true, this is true. Anything youve
never been asked? Anything youve always
wanted to say for publication that youve
never been asked about? [laughs]
WE: Gee, no. Ive been talking about this
medium so long that I think Ive gotten out
everything Ive had to say. Listen, your questions are good, very provocative.
DF: Thank you. That means a lot. Your
Advice from a father to a son from Eisners autobiographical graphic novel, To The Heart of the Storm.
THE
END

50 | WRITE NOW
ON THE CREATORS LIFE:
THE COLLEEN
by Robert Greenberger
November 2008
DORAN INTERVIEW
ob Greenberger says:
Colleen Doran has been a writer, artist, illustrator,

teacher, mentor and activist since breaking into the
comics field as teen. Today, she is also an influential
blogger and a general straight shooter. I first met
Colleen at the beginning of her career and weve
remained friends ever since but this was our first real
chance to explore many of her influences and feelings
about the business.
To which Ill add that Ive had the pleasure of moderating convention panels on which Colleen has been a
participant, and her contributions to them always
impressed me with her hard-thought opinions and her
ability to defend them clearly and passionately. Im
extremely pleased she agreed to sit down and talk to
Bob for Write Now!
DF
BOB GREENBERGER: Hi Colleen. Thanks for taking the

time to chat. Its pretty amazing weve known each
other over 20 years. Youve certainly come a far way.
Your interest has always been more fantasy than science fiction or superheroes, was it that way from childhood?
COLLEEN DORAN: Im sorry, but thats just not true.
The first comics I ever read were superhero comics, and
I developed a love for comics because I had a big crush
on Aquaman! Aquaman comics were the first I ever
bought, and when I made my first money, I got subscriptions to Justice League and Adventure Comics,
starring Aquaman. My intention was to draw superhero
comics eventually. I was in fan clubs and doing APA
zines for superhero comics. I always liked them.
BG: Well, I stand corrected. How did you discover comic
books?
CD: Well, when I was very little, we lived in a fairly poor
city neighborhood, and I found some comics under the
bleachers at school. I held on to them for dear life. And
I would pick bottles out of the trash to redeem them
for money to buy comics. But when I was really young,
we moved out to a small town where there were no
stores and certainly no comics. And I think my parents

threw my comics out, including my carefully saved
Sunday Prince Valiant strips clipped out of the newspaper. So, I went for years with no comics, and kind of
forgot about them.
Then when I was 12, I got very sick with pneumonia,
and a family friend brought me a big box of comics,
and I was deliriously happy. I was hooked and never
looked back! Almost all of them were Marvel superhero
comics, but there were some DC Comics in there as
well. I read them until they fell apart.
BG: What led you to pursue a career as a writer/artist?
CD: I won an art contest sponsored by Disney when I
was five. I thought I would go to work for Disney. And
my mother had been a classically trained artist. She
was very supportive and used to give me books about
art, and she gave me drawing paper. My father used to
COLLEEN DORAN | 51
give me all his old papers from college to draw on.

Almost all of my early drawings are on the back of university exams. I wasnt entirely certain it was the sort of
thing people did for a living. I entertained thoughts of
becoming a doctor or an astronaut along the way.
BG: If I recall correctly, youre largely a self-taught
artist. Was there ever any formal training?
CD: Yes, but not until after I had already become a pro.
Of course, I had some college, but a couple of years
ago, I took some time off to take art classes at an art
schoolmostly digital classes. I really didnt get much
from the classes themselves, but from the time I got to
devote to doing work just as a training exercise. I had
not had time to simply study in years.
BG: How did you make that essential first sale? What
lessons can others learn from that experience?
CD: I went to a science fiction convention and saw they
had an art show. I was 15. I thought I could do some
work as good as what I saw in that show. So, I went
home that night, and my mom cut some mats for my
drawings and we put them in the show. And I sold
some pieces. Also, a lady named Linda Wesley had a
small advertising agency, and she saw my work in that
show and gave me a job.
I guess the lesson is, just get out there and put your
work in front of people. No one will find you if you are
sitting in a corner being insecure about whether or not
you are any good.
BG: A Distant Soil was conceived when you were 12.
Is it the same story today?
CD: No, of course not! If it were everyone who read it
would run screaming from the comic shop. Maybe they
still do, but they are too polite to let me know.
BG: You broke in in the early 1980s when there were
very few women illustrators. What was harder, being a
teen or a woman?
CD: Well, Id say being a teen, because 15-year-olds are

not women, they are children. Nothing is harder than
having to face abuse and discrimination when you
dont have the faculties to understand it, or to handle it.
I think I would have handled everything I experienced
with a lot more savvy had I been ten years older. As a
matter of fact, almost all of the serious problems I ever
had in the business occurred before I was 21 years old.
Bullies are abusive to people who cant fight back, and
when youve got some middle-aged editor or publisher
abusing you, its a very intimidating thing for a kid. No
one pulls that kind of nonsense on me anymore.
I still have occasional problems with this or that
client, but an adult knows what their rights are, and I
can just pick up the phone and ring my attorney now. A
child does not even know theyve been taken advantage of sometimes, or blames themselves for their
problems.
Perhaps getting into the business so early was an
advantage in one way, because I do meet some clueless 30-year-olds who cant seem to stand up for themselves, or are incapable of reading a contract. Maybe I
got my school of hard knocks out of the way early, but
its not an experience I would wish on a kid.
I only regret not confiding in my parents more about
some of my problems. I was trying to protect them,
because I was concerned about lawsuits and stuff. I had
one publisher threaten to sue my family if I left the
company, because my family was acting as my management. That was very intimidating to me as a kid.
Now I know that publisher was full of crap, and I did
eventually leave them. I just didnt know what my rights
were, and tended to blame myself when things went
wrong.
BG: You avoided DC and Marvel and managed to
land A Distant Soil with WaRP. Was this your dream
project?
CD: I didnt avoid DC or Marvel at all. As a
matter of fact, I was offered a chance to try for
a Legion of Super-Heroes gig by Keith Giffen
when I was a teen fan of the Legion and
working on an APA zine devoted to the comic.
I was in several fan clubs, and often went to
comic conventions with superhero art in my
portfolio.
However, I had signed a letter of intent for A
Distant Soil with a small press, and had to
Hal Fosters classic Prince Valiant strip was
inspirational to the young Colleen Doran.
[ 2009 King Features Syndicate.]
52 | WRITE NOW
While still a teen, Colleen saw her creation, A Distant Soil, first published by of WaRP Graphics. She has since gone back to redraw
these initial chapters. Here, her original covers to the first four WaRP issues. [ 2009 Colleen Doran.]
stick to my word to go forward with the project, even

though it didnt come out for a couple of years. I would
gladly have worked for DC and Marvel, and began getting overtures from both companies in 1983. I began
doing freelance work for DC in 1984, and for Marvel in
1986. Ive been working for them both off and on ever
since. If I was avoiding them, I wasnt doing a very good
job.
I was quite skeptical about doing A Distant Soil in
the small press, and told my friends not to buy it when
it first came out, because I was not happy with the original version of the book. I had done some work using A
Distant Soil characters for several small press gigs,
mostly just pinups and stuff, but nothing was very
impressive, I thought. I was not at all happy with my
early publishers. They were small press, and not at all
professional level.
Its always a dream to work on your childhood project
and see it in print, but its better to be published well
and to have confidence in the work you are doing. I
wasnt happy with the result or the publishing circumstances. A short time later, when I decided to start
again, I chucked everything and started over from
scratch, rewriting and redrawing it all! I am so glad I
did that!
BG: ADS has endured for two decades and multiple
publishers. What speaks to you about the story and
characters?
CD: Its a labor of love, obviously. It has a great deal of
personal meaning for me, not only because it is something I have been working on since I was a kid, but
because I am very much in love with my characters!
Theyve been with me so long that it would be very
hard for me to just walk away from them. The story is
finite, so this is inevitable, but I go slower as I get closer
to the end. I am afraid this is separation anxiety! Ive
put a lot of myself and my personal experiences into
the tale, and it is a metaphorical exploration of some of

my feelings and experiences in the science fiction community and growing up in fandom, surrounded by such
a strange group of people, some of whom were very
nurturing, and others who were extremely exploitative
and unethical. I think I just expanded on a lot of that
weirdness and let it go in the story. Ive tried to avoid
the Mary Sue aspect of it, and I dont really think any of
the characters resemble me much, but some of my life
is in there.
BG: Talk to me a little about craft. How do you structure a story? Do you ever have to deal with ideas not
flowingor having too many ideas? Do you write a
script for yourself and then draw or do you plot and
draw as you go?
CD: Well, that depends. When I was working for some
early publishers, I had to write everything out, and
often did full script. But later, I decided this was simply
an inorganic and inefficient way of working that was
solely for the publishers benefit and did nothing for
me.
What I tend to do now is a synthesis of sketches and
copy. I often write free association copy. I almost always
did that in longhand on legal pads, but lately I write on
the computer. After Ive written my breakdowns, I start
doing thumbnails and script simultaneously. I may even
write copy directly in the margins of the original art,
and will make changes as I go. I reserve the option of
doing a complete rewrite directly on the original art.
Being able to write and draw the pages simultaneously means I tend to avoid those problems you get in
a lot of comics where script doesnt necessarily match
the facial expressions and body language.
I am pretty happy with the vast majority of the series.
I found some bits of dialogue I would like to change in
the final collection, if I ever get around to doing a masCOLLEEN DORAN | 53
sive tome of the whole enchilada. I can only think of

about five pages of art that need a re-do.
had to do some serious legwork to find all of this stuff

out.
Im afraid theres some stylistic inconsistencies in

early art that are just going to have to stay. I really cant
commit to redoing I dunno, the 120 pages of art Id
love to redraw! But there are five where the storytelling
just isnt correct. Thats later in the series. I may add a
few pages for storytelling clarity.
People come to me all the time, e-mail me the most

basic questions, and finding any of this info on your
own today is incredibly simple. Its really a waste of
resources to come to someone like me with basic copyright and trademark questions. I wish people would
come to me with meaty contract questions you cant
find out about in a basic Google search. But they
almost never do. Its a shame. This tells me that the creator is not willing to do legwork. Its a very bad sign.
BG: You learned some harsh publishing lessons early

on in a copyright dispute with a publisher. Has that led
you to become an expert on creator rights? What can
others learn from the experience?
CD: I wouldnt say I am an expert, but then, so many
creators are so bad about the business end of publishing, that I probably seem savvy by comparison. Thats
how bad publishers get away with
so much. They exploit ignorant creators who dont stand up for their
rights. You dont see them going
after Frank Miller, do you?
BG: Not at all. Years ago, some
artists, like Gene Colan, had me
speak to their art classes about the
business side of being a professional artist.
CD: I made it a point to be business-oriented from a very early age.
While I was still a teen, and had
worked for some unscrupulous
clients who didnt pay, or altered
the work and published portions
elsewhere without permission, or
claimed copyright and trademark
interests in my work even though
those rights werent granted them
by the contract, I knew I had better
get on the ball and start standing
up for myself.
I had been apprenticed by Frank Kelly Freas. Now,

when I was a teen, his wife Polly handled all of his
business affairs. When she died, I was pretty young. I
spent a lot of time at Kellys house taking care of him,
doing his cooking and cleaning.
Kelly had been a major science
fiction and fantasy artist for
decades, but in many ways, he was
helpless, unable to use even an
oven, and generally ignorant about
business affairs. Getting things in
order for Kelly took months of work
for a small team of people. During
that time, Kelly spent hours talking
to me, about what had happened
at publishers with whom we were
mutually displeased, and what had
happened to him during the course
of his career.
Basically, he did not want me to

make the mistakes he had made.
He had never learned to take care
of himself, never learned the basics
of law, and had many problems. He
and I would talk for hours. It was
strange, because I would go over
Colleen penciled this 1992 Legion of Super there to clean house, but all he
wanted to do on some days was
I had started picking up books on Heroes #31 cover, which homages and
satirizes classic romance comic covers. It
talk and talk. And he had so much
contracts, creators rights, and
advice, so many hopes for me. Once
womens rights. I didnt even know features her favorite legionnaire, Element
Lad. Ink are by Al Gordon. [ 2009 DC Comics.] he even had a psychic come in and
things like sexual harassment were
tell me my future! That was interestagainst the law. Most people didnt
ing. It was also touching, because it showed me how
know it was against the law. The Supreme Court
deeply he cared about me, he even wanted to see into
wouldnt even have its first sexual harassment case
my future and protect me on that level!
until 1986, and many of the things we know to be illegal now were not case law then.
It was important to have a role model like Kelly,
because after a few bad experiences, you can sour on
I got myself an attorney through the Volunteer
the business, and you begin to think its all just a bunch
Lawyers for the Arts, an organization I found out about
of creeps out for what they can get. And then you see
from a book. Keep in mind, there was no Internet for
people like Kelly who are warm and generous and carresearch. I lived in a very small town, too. Our local
ing.
library was a little one-room shop in a dinky strip mall. I
probably have more books now than they did then. I
54 | WRITE NOW
help someone I admired and respected. And that

changed my life.
BG: You have bounced between your own projects and
work-for-hire projects, how do you choose?
CD: Nowadays, I simply choose the projects I want to
do. I am likely to turn work down even if I need the
money. I just cant stand drawing things I dont want to
draw. Life is too short. If its fun, and I have the time,
and it pays well, I will do it. If not, I wont. Its that simple.
You dont do a good job when you are not enthusiastic about the work, and that will hurt your reputation.
You might as well skip the gig and hold out for something better. Desperation is not good for your work. I
dont pick jobs because I need them. I pick them
because I want them.
BG: While not a big fan of superheroes, some of your
earlier work was on the Legion of Super-Heroes. What
do you like and dislike about super-heroes?
CD: I like superheroes very much. I wouldnt want to do
them all the time, but now that I get all these highfalutin literary graphic novel assignments, I confess I
pine for a chance to do a good superhero yarn once in
awhile. I guess youre just not that familiar with my
work, but since you were at DC Comics for so long, and
I rarely got offers to do superhero work, perhaps that
explains why: editors at DC just had no idea I was interested! Too bad, maybe I should be more vocal about it.
I like superheroes and would love to do more.
Heres a page from LSH #31, penciled by Colleen and inked by Al
Gordon. The story was written by Keith Giffen and Tom and Mary
Bierbaum [ 2009 DC Comics.]
He was determined I would not fall into the same

dependency trap he was in. He was honest about every
misstep he had made. I had been considering chucking
the whole publishing thing, it had been so awful up to
that point.
We were talking about a bad time he had had with
Paramount. He had neglected to get proper rights and
permissions for some Star Trek prints he had made,
and I recall sitting down and explaining to him some
vagaries of trademark law. And he just looked at me
funny and got this big grin on his face, and said, I
didnt know that Youre going to be all right. Youre
going to do all right.
So, there I was about forty years younger than Kelly,
and explaining to him something about trademark law.
It made a big difference to me, the time I spent with
Kelly. More influential than any bad experience I have
ever had. Because my discussions with him helped me
to process and put what I had learned into action, to
BG: Could you write a superhero comic?

CD: Sure. Why not? I was offered Wonder Woman
some years ago, but turned it down. I didnt feel up to
the challenge then. Now it might be different.
BG: Youve collaborated with Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis,
J. Michael Straczynski and so many others. What do
you look for in a writer?
CD: Talent.
BG: How do they tailor their scripts for you?
CD: Youd have to ask them, but all the ones I have
spoken to say they feel confident I can draw good characterization, which some artists cant do. Also, they are
confident I will draw what they write. Some artists take
a lot of liberties. I dont.
Warren Ellis knows that if he gives me a really challenging set design request, I will be able to draw it.
BG: Okay, before we move on, I have to ask a question
as a fan: will you and JMS ever get back to The Book
of Lost Souls?
CD: I have no idea. He has become so successful in
COLLEEN DORAN | 55
Hollywood, that may be problematic. No one is

more disappointed than I am, but Joe is such a
great guy, and hes been very good to me. And he
has had such wonderful success with his films. Id
be the worst kind of friend to throw a fit and hold
him back. Thats for losers. I dont do that to my
friends. I want them to grow and be very successful. If I can be a part of that, great. If not, thats
fine. Im not a jealous person, and I am not insecure. It makes me feel good to see other people
succeed. If youre a real friend, you are happy for
your friends when they do.
BG: What have you learned from working with
other writers that has influenced your own writing?
CD: Working with JMS, especially, has got me to
thinking about structure, pacing and craft. I guess
because he is such a great craftsman, as well as
storyteller. After working with him, I began to get
very concerned about the technical aspects of my
work in a way I never had before, and I began
buying books on writing and brushing up on my
grammar.
BG: Have you written for other artists?
CD: Not that I can recall.
BG: How did it feel to have Neil Gaiman say
Thessaly in Sandman was based on you?
CD: Like Neil revealed my secret weapon.
That character is this mousey little woman who
looks completely normal, unglamorous and harmless. And in reality, shes incredibly powerful, and
extremely thorough, and you wouldnt want her as
an enemy.
And in a way, I almost want to knock Neil up
against the wall for blowing my truth.
Then again, you can be a small, mousey little woman
like me, and people just cant get beyond the prejudices of their eyes. I dont look like I could hurt a fly,
and I am quite capable, of course.
BG: When did you discover manga and what sort of
influence has it had on you as both a writer and an
artist?
CD: I was visiting New York in the early 1980s when I
first got into comics. And there was a woman named
Leslie Sternbergh who was an underground cartoonist,
who eventually went on to work for MAD magazine.
While I was in her apartment, she handed me these
books and said, This reminds me of your work. It was
a manga series called From Eroica With Love, which is
now being imported by CMX Manga, I believe. And I
just loved it. It had a line quality, a story pace, and an
56 | WRITE NOW
A page from 1990s Wonder Woman #49, drawn by Colleen. The

story was plotted by George Prez and Len Wein, and scripted by
Mindy Newell. [ 2009 DC Comics.]
aesthetic that I had been pursuing in a similar way in

my own work, and had been getting a lot of flak for.
None of my clients were comfortable with my aesthetic
sense, and despite the fact that one clientwho later
bragged constantly about loving manga and being a
great supporter of it in the early daysthey did not
want me to do the work I was doing. Every time I got
hired, they tried to make my work into something else.
When I discovered manga, I really began to dig my
heels in. Here was this style of comic that was incredibly popular on the other side of the world, and which
women were doing with great success. And here were
these weird American people who were claiming
women couldnt do comics, including most women
comics professionals, which was doubly weird. There
was this horror of anything or anyone feminine about
comics.
So, I just decided to go my own way when I discov-
ered manga. I decided I wasnt

going to change my work to suit
other people. My work doesnt
really look like manga, and it didnt come from manga, but it did
inspire me to stick to my guns.
the Beast, work-for-hire stuff like

Spider-Man and your own creations.
Youre both mainstream and independent. How do you see yourself in
the field?
CD: Even as you say. Mainstream and
independent. I do what I want to do,
what interests me. I dont feel any
obligation to stick to some kind of
ideology, particularly when that ideology is someone elses. I go my own
way.
BG: What was it like lecturing

about manga at the Smithsonian
Institution?
CD: It was a great honor, of
course. I was scared to death at
first, so nervous. What a responsiBG: Youve got quite the online presbility. But after the first couple of
lectures, I loosened up and
ence today. Whats the benefit?
CD: LOL! According to my family and
ditched my notes and just went
friends, there is none! They have all
with it. I spent a lot of time studyconvinced me to spend a lot less
ing for it, but it turned out to be a
time online, and I am following
lot of unnecessary effort, because
through. I even set up Leechblock on
most of the questions were pretty
my browser to make sure the amount
basic. But it was an interesting
of time I can look at websites or blog
experience, having to explain to
is very limited. It keeps me from wanpeople things like why it is a
Heres Colleens cover to Amazing
dering about and goofing off on the
Western cultural prejudice that
Spider-Man #326. Inks are by Al Gordon.
web. Its hard to be disciplined somemanga eyes look Western. I
[ 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
times when you work at home, and
remember an African-American
since I live on a very remote farm on a mountain, I can
woman asked me why all the manga characters looked
get antsy for social contact and start chatting online
white. That was a very interesting discussion, because
when I shouldnt.
my assertion was that none of the manga characters
look like human beings at all, but like cartoons.
An Internet presence is good for advertising and proNobody, not even Caucasians, has eyes like those
motion. An Internet presence is bad, because the
saucer eyes in manga. Its a cultural prejudice that
investment of time may not be commensurate with the
Westerners see Caucasians in those eyes. They are carrewards. It can be an insidious occasion to procrastinatoon eyes. No one has them.
tion.
BG: Youre a fangirl I would think, based on some of
You have to discipline yourself to stay out of online
your choices of assignment. Youre into Lord of the
discussions, and avoid some of the Internet crazies,
Rings and Star Wars, what else? When do you get to
who may have blogs where everyone reads what they
indulge those interests?
say, in the same way people enjoy the freakshow.
CD: While I am working! I get to watch great movies,
and I often listen to books while I work, on CD. On my
You want to be in touch with your readers and
iPod. That is wonderful. I have a big collection of LOTR
humanize yourself, but you also want to avoid begin
statues and knickknacks. I try to make sure I get to contoo accessible, because you find your time going into
ventions where I get to indulge my interests and have a
answering lots of e-mail, posts, and career questions.
good time with other fans. I dont want to just go to
And the hours tick away, and your deadlines creep up,
conventions to make a buck or promote stuff. Thats so
and you want to hit yourself in the head with a
boring. I want to be with people of similar interests and
hammer for not being more disciplined about time
enjoy the experience. Ive made some wonderful new
management.
friends that way.
I dont have huge fan obsessions outside LOTR, I
dont think, but I enjoy many things. LOTR is about the
only thing I collect. That and King Arthur books, but
frankly, my collection got out of hand, and I finally got
rid of a lot of stuff. I was a big Anne Rice fan for a long
time.
If you can limit your exposure while still getting your

message about your work across, and getting important
industry information out there, then thats good. Im
happy with some of my writings on my blog about
health insurance and creators rights. I get thank-you
letters from people every single day for that, and that
lets me know that the blogging is for the greater good.
BG: Youve done licensed material such as Beauty and

COLLEEN DORAN | 57
CD: Well, I actively mentor young creators in school. I

get dozens of requests a year for mentoring from young
artists at university, and take on a couple a year.
J. Michael Straczynski and Colleen collaborated on the

creator-owned The Book of Lost Souls for Marvels Icon
imprint. Herere her covers to issues #1 and #2.
[ 2009 J. Michael Straczynski & Colleen Doran.]
It has been a learning experience, surely. If anything, I

have learned how extraordinarily bizarre some of the
fans beliefs about pros in comics are. Some think we
live lives of luxury and do nothing but fly to swank parties, and are all born with these great advantages, silver
spoons in our mouths, money. Otherwise, how could
we be successes? We must have had unfair advantages!
There are some, well, Ill call them semi-pro bloggers
who have the same attitude. Its like theyre trying to
create some kind of have/have-not class war or something.
I guess it makes people who dont have what they
want in life feel better about themselves to believe that
others must have cheated to get what they want. I suppose its a common belief system. But since my family
was extremely poor, and we had to work very hard to
climb out of poverty, I find it pretty offensive when that
nonsense is directed at me.
Fortunately, I dont meet many unpleasant people
online, but maybe thats because I tend to be very civil
myself. My blog is a very civil environment. And if I
notice a level of incivility on another blog or website, I
simply block it from my browser. I dont need to spend
time with unhealthy people. If you want a quality life,
spend it with quality people.
I dont let myself become involved in unnecessary
Internet dramas, especially with bloggers who have a
vested interest in getting you to up their hit counter. If
they are making money getting their readership wound
up with gossip and crazy talk, I dont give them my
money. I just turn them off and read something else.
BG: In the fall, you published an extensive list of
agents who handle graphic material. Do you see yourself as a mentor, advocate, or just a good member of
the business?
58 | WRITE NOW
I do work as an advocate, not just someone who

writes on a blog. I am on committees for various artist
rights organizations that review legislation that comes
up before Congress. We read proposals for our union
and decide what to present or what not to present. I
dont want to overstate the importance of what I do: I
am merely one of many people who do this sort of
thing. But right now, Im working on the new Graphic
Artist Guild handbook of pricing and ethical guidelines
as one of many creators who are consulted about standards and practices in my field of expertise.
Being a good member of the business means being
good to other creators. I learned this from Kelly Freas as
well. Very early on, when we first met, I was showing
Kelly my work at a convention and he took an awfully
long time with me, giving me advice. That was very
generous, because my work was not professional quality, even though I was being published. He must have
seen I had promise and was educable. Some guy came
over, about twice my age, and he was a real blowhard.
He says to Kelly, What are you doing? Giving out all of
your secrets?
But Kelly just looked him up and down like he was
an insect and said, These are not my secrets. This is for
anyone who wants to learn. And he went right back on
teaching me.
The trick is, making sure to spend the time with the
deserving creators and weeding out the people who
are unlikely to move forward. Thats tricky. Lots of people come to me because they hear I will help them out.
I simply cannot help everyone.
Now, with Kelly, I was at a show, and he could spend
time with me or leave off whenever he wished. And I
do that at shows, too. I am happy to talk to people at
seminars and when I am at my booth display. If theres
not a big crowd, come on over. Well talk.
But I am not going to be able to let anyone who
wants to hang out at my house or answer all of their
queries in e-mails. That can get very time-consuming.
And, of course, there is the ever-thorny problem of
dealing with some misguided aspiring creators who
think all women should stick together, apparently,
regardless of ability. I cant recommend you for a job if I
dont think your work is up to snuff, and that makes
some people mad. Some people have been treated
badly by publishers or by editors, and that is a shame. I
feel sorry for them. But, I cant give you access to a job
because I feel sorry for them having been treated

unfairly in the past. I can only get you access to a job if
your work is right for the job. Ive made the mistake of
giving some people of questionable ability a break, and
in every case they blew the gig.
And I have watched people who get incredibly
wound up about very minor slights and problems, and
even if they have ability, their behavior is a pretty good
indication that I am dealing with someone who doesnt
have the mental chops to take criticism or stand up to
pressure. I am very careful about dealing with people
who have histrionic reactions to stress, rejection, or criticism. I think weve seen a few bloggers who fit this bill.
They have lots of sad career stories, and after awhile, I
see that one of their biggest problems is them. And I
avoid them, because I know they probably dont have
the mental strength to take what this business dishes
out. In every case, Ive been right. They crack up at
some point, preferably when they are far away from
me. You feel sorry for them, but chances are, if you hire
them, youll be feeling sorry for yourself at some point.
This is meritocracy: if you have the ability, you should
get a chance at advancement. And there is nothing
egalitarian about talent. So, sometimes I have to say no
to people, or at the very least, pick and choose who to
help and when, so the time investment in them is in
accord with my work schedule. That advancement has
to go to the most worthy, not the most picked on.
I think I am fulfilling my duty to my industry by volunteering and doing advocacy work, but the drawback is
there are going to be some people who are disappointed when you are not all-giving. This can be miserable. I
hope I dont have to just cut out mentoring in future,
but I have had to cut way back.
Some people respond with vicious attacks to even
the mildest criticism. Others are certain every big name
creator is just dying to steal their ideas. I usually refuse

to look at portfolios, but on the rare occasions I do, it
can be an interesting experience. You never know what
youre going to get.
BG: With so many mainstream publishers now producing graphic novels, is it easier to sell new ideas?
CD: And how. I dont worry about my future the way I
used to. I have every confidence there will be more
work for me. And I turn work away I dont want to do. I
never used to turn away work, terrified there would be
no more. Now I know it is important to be discriminating. You cant waste your time doing work that has no
meaning to you beyond the money. Youll hate yourself
for it.
BG: You have had art gallery displays, youve illustrated for books (most recently Peter Davids Mascot to
the Rescue), and youve done trading cards, where is
your career headed?
CD: Wherever I want. And I may change my mind about
what I want tomorrow. I am not worried about being
able to tackle anything. I know I have the ability and
the mental strength to handle whatever comes. I am
not afraid of anything.
BG: I cant thank you enough for talking shop, its been
great. Tell me what youre working on next.
CD: I have two graphic novel contracts at Vertigo just
now, one for Stealth Tribes with Warren Ellis, and the
other for a book called Gone to Amerikay with Derek
McCulloch. I was just told today I was up for some
movie design work, but that is off later in the coming
year, and you never know, might fall through.
Regardless, I am expanding my digital painting skills,
and just did a Star Wars illustration. I am trying to take
a non-technical looking approach because I do not like
digital art that looks digital. I want it to look as if it has
been created by hand, and I think I am succeeding.
Also, I want to be able to do more A Distant Soil, in
my, ha-ha, spare time.
So, that is on my schedule, but that is subject to
change.
Robert Greenberger, Write Now!s managing editor,
has worked in the comics field since 1980, logging
time at Starlog Press, DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
His novel, Iron Man: Femme Fatales, will be published
this summer by DelRey Books.
More of Colleens striking covers, these from The Book of Lost

Souls #s 3 and 4. [ 2009 J. Michael Straczynski & Colleen Doran.]
THE
END
COLLEEN DORAN | 59
PAGE ONE (6 PANELS)

PANEL 1
Establishing shot of the LANDSTUHL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER
(see Appendix for reference).
LEGEND1
LANDSTUHL, GERMANY.
PANEL 2
Inside now. A wing of the hospital. Wide shot of the wing
with a variety of SOLDIERS in various conditions lying on
beds (see Appendix).
In Amazing Spider-Man #574,

writer Marc Guggenheim tells a story
that shows readers what had
become of supporting character
Flash Thompson. Flash was serving
in Iraq, and his war experiences are
juxtaposed against his memories of
Spider-Mans unique brand of heroism.
LEGEND
DECEMBER.
PANEL 3
CLOSE ON the LRMC SEAL (see Appendix) on a nearby wall.
LEGEND
IRAQ WAR, DAY 2026.
PANEL 4
New angle. Were on the side of one of the hospital beds.
Close enough to the FLOOR to see the crumpled and discarded
HOLIDAY WRAPPING PAPER lying on the floor near the bedside.
Under the bed itself, we might glimpse of pair of ARMY
BOOTS.
SINGING (OFF-PANEL)
Its evening in the desert...
PANEL 5
CLOSE ON a THE BEDSIDE TABLE next to one of the beds.
Theres a CHRISTMAS CARD standing open on it.
Penciler Barry Kitson was challenged to integrate the

storys two separate aspects, one rooted in real life, the
other in superhero fantasy. Heres Kitsons cover to the
issue. Inks are by Mark Farmer.
SINGING (OFF-PANEL)
Im tired and Im cold...
For this issue, could we deviate from our standard Brand New Day font for the
legends and go with either Courier or Times New Roman (or the like)?
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FLASHBACKS (3rd Draft) MARC GUGGENHEIM PAGE 2 OF 40
PANEL 6
New angle. The camera has moved around so that we can
now peek inside the card. The text of the card reads:
Merry Christmas! Hope you dont have
an iPod. I put a song on it for you.
Seemed appropriate.
Youre missed here.
soon.
Come back home
And come back safe, alright?

Your pal,
Peter
And the off-panel singing continues...
SINGING (OFF-PANEL)
But I am just a soldier, I do what I
am told...
END OF PAGE ONE
The story is written full-script, allowing Kitson

to know how much space to leave for dialogue
and sound effects. This splash page, for example,
is described, but Kitson added the spider web
background, linking present-time and flashbacks.
60 | WRITE NOW
PAGE TWO (5 PANELS)

PANEL 1
New angle. On the bed now. A pair of BRUISED HANDS cradle
an iPOD TOUCH. On the display, we see the graphic for the
song thats playing:
From the top of the iPod a HEADPHONE CORD snakes up towards

the top of panel.
SINGING (OFF-PANEL)
And I just got your letter...
(contd)
And this is what I read: You said,
Im fading from your memory...
PANEL 2
Reveal the patient: FLASH THOMPSON. The headphone buds in
his ears. Hes singing along. Some bruises on his face.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For the duration of this issue, whenever
we see Flash in his hospital bed, we never see below his
knees.
FLASH
(singing)
...so Im just as good as dead.
GENERAL FAZEKAS (OFF-PANEL)
Corporal Thompson?
FLASH
Sure. I dont get a lot of visitors.
Specially not ones with four stars.
PANEL 5
We can now see that Fazekas is holding a THICK FILE as he
takes a seat next to Flashs bed. Flash has a thin smile
on his face.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
You mind if I sit down?
FLASH
Only if you dont mind if I dont
stand up.
END OF PAGE TWO
Note the fact that Guggenheim calls for Flash to be listening to and watching an iPod. Aside from free publicity
for Apple (both in the comic and in WN!), the device
places the hospital scenes in the story firmly in the present.
PANEL 3
Flash is taking out one of the earbuds.
FLASH
Yeah?
PANEL 4
Two-shot of General Fazekas and Flash.
standing over Flashs bed.
The General is
Also, Guggenheims note specifies how Flash is to be

shown for all the present-time scenes in the issue. This
relates to the surprise ending of the story.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
General Fazekas. You got a minute or
ten for me?
Kitson does detailed, highcontrast (to show the inker

where shadows should be)
thumbnail drawings to design
each page. He then transfers
the final design to a penciled
page of artwork, inked, in this
case, by Mark Farmer.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 NUTS & BOLTS | 61
PAGE THREE (5 PANELS)

PANEL 1
This story page encapsulates many of the contradictions of modern

comics. Flash is a character who goes back to, literally, the first SpiderMan adventure. In stories of the 1960s, he served in VietNam.
Guggenheim wants Kitson to allude to this visually as a nod to longtime readers, or those familiar with continuity, although, of course, if
Flash is in his twenties, he couldnt logically have served in VietNam.
Two-shot of Fazekas and Flash.

GENERAL FAZEKAS
At least your sense of humor remains
uninjured, Corporal.
FLASH
You can call me Flash.
does.
Everybody
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Flash.
(contd)
What earned you that name?
PANEL 2
Also, the subtly-handled implication of a

sexual problem between Flash and the
(unnamed in copy) Liz Allan couldnt even
have been done in even this oblique manner in a 60s Spider-Man story.
New location. Were with a teenage FLASH THOMPSON and his

then-girlfriend LIZ ALLAN (an established character).
Theyre in the back seat of FLASHS CONVERTIBLE,2 at night,
at some lovers lane type makeout spot. Their clothing and
hair is a bit mussed. Flash cant look Liz in the eye as
she tries to console him.
LIZ ALLAN
It was nice.
Its okay.
Really.
PANEL 3
Back in the present.
looks deadpan.
Almost identical to Panel 1.
Flash
FLASH
High school football.
PANEL 4
Still in a two-shot of Flash and General Fazekas. Fazekas
is consulting his file now, looking down to read it.
That so?
GENERAL FAZEKAS
You play college ball, too?
2
Is there any way to make the convertible 60s-ish without making us feel like
were in the 1960s?
A little.
FLASH
Before I dropped out.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Which would be when you enlisted.
Volunteered, in fact. You did a tour
in one of our other fine wars, I
believe.
PANEL 5
A shot of Flash fighting in the Vietnam War. However, keep
the Vietnam of it all vague. Just jungle, uniform (see
refrence below) and M-16, so that the image looks like it
didnt happen yesterday yet remains a bit timeless.
END OF PAGE THREE
62 | WRITE NOW
PAGE FOUR (4 PANELS)

PANEL 1
Back in the present with Flash and Fazekas.
still consulting his file.
Fazekas is
GENERAL FAZEKAS
You got your discharge, yadda yadda
yadda... then they called up inactive
reserves... yadda yadda yadda...
youre in Iraq, am I right?
While the page is an important one for the

reader, with important plot and character
information conveyedespecially the
discomfort between Flash and the General.
Its also static, with Flash confined to the bed,
and the General sitting at his side. Kitson
keeps shifting angles, expertly interpreting
Guggenheims instructions, and makes the
scene feel active.
FLASH
If the file says so...
GENERAL FAZEKAS
The file says so. And Ill tell you
what else the file says.
PANEL 2
Close on Flash.
Completely surprised.
GENERAL FAZEKAS (OFF-PANEL)

It says Im supposed to interview you
in connection with a recommendation
you receive the Medal of Honor.
PANEL 3
Back to a two-shot. Fazekas looks pleased his bombshell
has had the desired effect. Flash still looks shellshocked.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
You mind if I ask you a few questions?
FLASH
Sir, you can ask moren a few.
PANEL 4
Close on General Fazekas.
A thin smile.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Yeah, I figured thatd be your
reaction.
(contd)
Yknow, weve only awarded two Medals

of Honor for service in Iraq so far,
so this is kind of a special thing and
the M.O.H. is pretty special to begin
with.
(contd)
Generally (thats a little pun), I like to
get some background on the candidate
first...
(contd)
You grew up in Queens, New York...
END OF PAGE FOUR
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 NUTS & BOLTS | 63
PAGE FIVE (5 PANELS)
On this page, we learn something new about a long-established

character: that Flash had a difficult relationship with an abusive
father. It adds texture to how the readers think about Flash, without contradicting anything weve learned about him in the past.
Another skillful thing Guggenheim does here is reveal that,
because the teenager idolized at best, a masked vigilante, and at
worst, a super-powered menace, the FBI opened a file on Flash.
And when Dr. Doom (only alluded to in dialogue, to keep the
Generals point-of-view real world,) actually captured Flash
(thinking he was Spider-Man), of course the government took an
interest in the teenager. Again, Guggenheim brings us a new way
of thinking about a character we may feel we know everything
about.
PANEL 1
Widen back out to a two-shot of Flash and Fazekas. Reestablishing. Fazekas is reading from his file again.
Yessir.
FLASH
Forrest Hills.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Father was a policeman, I see. I
suppose you grew up following his
example.
PANEL 2
Flashback. A teenaged Flash Thompson is getting punched by
his father, HARRISON. Its a sloppy, messy, nasty punch.
Harrison wears a 1960s POLICE UNIFORM. His free hand
clutches an empty LIQUOR BOTTLE.
HARRISON THOMPSON
Whod your mom step out on me with,
huh?! It mustve been somebody,
cause theres no way a loser like you
could be any son of mine!
PANEL 3
Back to the Present.
looks surprised.
Fazekas reading the file.
Flash
FLASH
Not really. There was another-Forget it. Its stupid.
Of course, Kitsons effortless-seeming visual storytelling makes these touches effective without the
reader having to be hit over the head with the info.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Spider-Man is stupid?
FLASH THOMPSON
How did you--?
GENERAL FAZEKAS
In high school you started a SpiderMan Fan Club. The first of only three
in the whole country, in fact.
FLASH THOMPSON
Um, who told you--?
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Its in your FBI file.
FLASH THOMPSON
I have an FBI file?
PANEL 4
Close on General Fazekas.
Laying out his case.
GENERAL FAZEKAS
Son, you started a club celebrating
the exploits of, at best, a masked
vigilante and, at worst, a superpowered menace to law and order.
(contd)
Of course, the FBI opened a file.
(contd)
And even if they hadnt when you
started the fan club, they certainly
wouldve after you got abducted by the
leader of a sovereign nation.
PANEL 5
Flashback. Back to the events of Amazing Spider-Man #5.
Young Flash is wearing the SPIDEY COSTUME (draw it in the
old Ditko style with the big webs under the arms):
Flash is being held up by the throat in DR. DOOMs iron

grip. The Spidey mask is torn, almost in half, revealing
Flashs terrified face.
YOUNG FLASH
Let me out of here! Please! Im not
Spider-Man! Youre making a big
mistake! Honest! Youve got to
believe me! Youve got to!
Bah!
END OF PAGE FIVE
THE
END
64 | WRITE NOW
DR. DOOM
Silence, you cringing sniveling
coward! The famous Spider-Man!
Youre nothing but a frightened
weakling!
BEING
DISCOVERED
AGAIN
AND AGAINAND AGAIN
by Alex Grecian
riter Alex Grecian and artist Riley Rossmo are

the co-creators of the Proof series, published
by Image. (Issue #17 should be out in late
February.) Heres how Alex describes the inspiration for
Proof:
One evening, as my wife and I were having dinner

with friends, somebody said he knew why Bigfoot hadnt been captured yet: he works for the government.
Everybody laughed and picked up their forks. I picked
up a pen and began writing. The scene I wrote on my
napkin eventually became the opening section of the
first issue.
I e-mailed the idea to Riley that night and he loved
it.
If Bigfoot were real, what would he want? Why
would he work for the government? What would they
have to offer him? The more I thought about it, the
more fully-developed John Proof Prufrock became.
But how Alex got Proof publishedwhat in his
career led to that momentis what I wanted to know
about. Like everyone else who earns all or part of his
or her living making comics, Alex has his story of when
that magic moment (or series of them) happened,
where he went from being an outsider to being an
insider of some kind. He tells that story here.
Cover to Proof #1, by Riley Rossmo and Tyler Jenkins.
As with all first-person accounts in Write Now!, the

idea behind printing such an article is not so a reader
can do exactly what Alex or any other writer did
(although attempting to do so would make an interesting premise for a story), but to inspire you to look
at your own life, skills, contacts, etc. and see how you
might be able to use them, as Alex used his.
So read and learn (and it wouldnt kill you to buy an
issue of Proofyou might just like it)
DF
My goal, for as long as I can remember, was always
[ 2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]
to create comics. But Im pretty sure I took the most

circuitous route possible to get there.
I cant point to a single moment and say thats
when I was discovered. But most of the progress Ive
made in my writing career has come about because
the right person saw my work at the right time. The
catch, of course, is that Ive done an awful lot of work
that reached the wrong person at the wrong time. Or
didnt reach anyone at all. And much of the work Ive
done, work which has fed directly into my writing
BEING DISCOVERED ... AGAIN | 65
career, seemed at the time to have nothing to do with

writing.
Growing up, I didnt know anybody else my age who
liked comic books. When I reached that magic point at
which future pros often begin to specialize, there was
no one else around to specialize along with me. So I
did everything myself. I created my own characters and
revamped existing characters, wrote stories about
them, drew them, practiced lettering... The only thing I
didnt bother with was coloring. After all, some of my
favorite comics were black-and-white.
I grew up in an environment where creativity was
valued. My father was (and is) a professional writer, so
that always seemed to me to be an achievable career
goal. I wanted to write the Great American Novel. And,
in my spare time, I wanted to draw comic books. So,
during college, while I busied myself writing prose, I
put together a portfolio and went about breaking into
the comics industry as an artist. For some reason, it
never occurred to me to combine my two career goals
and concentrate on writing comics. If it had, I might

not have poured so much energy into drawing them,
since that was always the weaker of my creative skill
sets.
I met Ande Parks while I was in college. He was on
the verge of breaking into the industry as an inker and
he introduced me to some of his friends. Through him,
I met Phil Hester, who was doing some work for
Caliber Comics and let me write and draw a two-page
backup story for a book he was doing called Fringe.
That was my first published work (if you dont count
some uncredited inking assists I did for Ande). I drew
pinups for other Caliber books and, after meeting
Batton Lash at a convention, sent some pinups and a
back cover to him for his series, Supernatural Law.
Batton introduced me to the writer, and soon-to-be
publisher, Nat Gertler. Before I knew it, I was drawing
The Factor for him. Our first Factor story was published in Negative Burn, another Caliber series, this
one edited by Joe Pruett. The Factor spun off into its
own anthology series through Nats new About Comics
line, and I drew more of it, then moved on to draw
another series for Nat. He was incredibly patient as I
began to slow down. Each story took me longer to
draw than the previous one had and each story looked
worse than the one before it.
I was discovering I didnt enjoy drawing other peoples stories. Nats a fine writer, but I didnt want to
illustrate his scripts. I wanted to be doing what he was
doing, not what I was doing. I learned how to format a
script by looking at his and started writing scripts of my
own. But I was still concentrating on the wrong end of
the process by only writing stories I planned to draw. I
still thought of myself primarily as an artist.
Meanwhile, comics werent paying the rent. I took
my portfolio around to ad agencies and print shops
and got some work doing spot illustrations. On the
strength of some brochures Id designed, I landed a
day job working for a printer/publisher, and learned
how to get magazines ready for the press. That turned
out to be valuable knowledge when I eventually began
putting together a monthly comic book series for
Image. But Im getting ahead of myself
Rossmo and Jenkins cover to Proof #2.

[2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]
66 | WRITE NOW
While I was working in the prepress department for

that publisher, I was still freelancing as an artist and
graphic designer and got head-hunted by an ad agency
for a full-time gig. Id done some illustrations for them
and had been invited to sit in on a handful of brainstorming sessions as they worked on new campaigns
for their clients. Brainstorming new ideas and fleshing
them out into new campaigns was a blast and the

agency was using many of my concepts, but only paying me for the graphic design work I did. They hired
me as an illustrator, but with the understanding that Id
be involved in the entire creative process. I flourished
there, getting promoted within the agency from
drawing spot illustrations to creating storyboards,
writing ad copy and, eventually, directing TV spots. All
of those skills helped me to think visually in my
writing. But one of the agencys partners didnt fully
understand the creative process and thought I might
use up all of my good ideas on comic books. He was
afraid Id have nothing left for advertising work and
required me to sign a non-compete contract that
specified I wouldnt do any freelance comic book work.
The contract said nothing about prose fiction so I
continued to work on my novel and spec screenplays.
I also started writing and drawing minicomics, giving
them away to pros at local conventions and mailing
them to creators I admired. One of those creators,
Scott McCloud, chose my story, Little Remains, for
inclusion in his anthology 24-Hour Comics. That book
also featured stories by Neil Gaiman and Steve
Bissette. I was in such good company that I decided
to use that credit as a springboard for a comic book
writing career. That ridiculous non-compete contract
had kept me from doing what I loved for too long. I
quit my job at the agency, abandoned the still-unfinished novel Id been working on and finally started
writing and pitching comic book stories.
With the McCloud-book credit as my foot-in-thedoor, one of those pitches was picked up by two publishers at the same time and I found myself in a bind. I
researched comic book agents, picked the one with
the most impressive client list, and sent him a letter,
explaining my situation and my general inability to
negotiate anything with anyone. I heard back from him
within the week.
Rossmos art for a Seven Sons promotional piece

2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]
drawing title sequences for ESPN, we sent the eightpage pitch to AiT/Planet Lar, but were told that wed
have to finish the book before AiT would seriously consider it for publication.
So we finished it.
The pitch that got me the attention of two publishers

and an agent has still never seen the light of day. My
new agent didnt like the deals Id set up with either
publisher and never had any luck placing that series
elsewhere. But having done the work of selling that
pitch put me in a better position to attract someone
who could help me sell future work.
While Riley was painting Seven Sons, I started work

on another prose novel, this time paying attention to
something I enjoyed writing, crime fiction, rather than
trying to write to a specific market. I finished my first
crime novel in five months, sent it to my agent (who
knew some literary agents) and immediately started
my second crime novel. It took me nine months to finish that second book, mostly because other things kept
happening. What things?
I was in the right place at the right time again when I

met Riley Rossmo at the 2004 Comic-Con International
in San Diego. We hit it off and put together an original
graphic novel pitch called Seven Sons. Again trading
on my single anthology credit and Rileys experience
Well, for starters, when Seven Sons was published,

we got a fan letter from Brian Wood, whod done a lot
of writing for AiT, Image and Vertigo. He loved Seven
Sons and wanted to know what else we were doing.
He was kind enough to give us an introduction to pubBEING DISCOVERED ... AGAIN | 67
lisher Eric Stephenson at Image.

Riley and I enjoyed working
together and wanted to follow
up Seven Sons with something
new, but didnt know what. I
contacted Joe Pruett, whod
published that early story of
mine in Negative Burn. Hed
relaunched Negative Burn
through Image and remembered me. He was willing to
publish anything I sent him, so
Riley and I put together a short
story about Bigfoot.
As Riley and I were working
on what would become Proof,
and I was finishing my second
novel, another publisher
contacted my agent. Id met
the publisher at a convention
and he liked my work. Wed
Alex and Riley's first Proof story appeared in
been looking for a project to
do together, but hadnt hit on Negative Burn #7. [ 2009 the copyright holders.]
the right thing yet. He knew
Id written some scripts and asked if I could adapt one
of his existing comic book series for the screen. My
treatment wasnt an unqualified success, and went
through many rewrites, but it did pave the way for me
to write more for the screen by giving me a screenplay
sample to show around. Im currently hard at work on
a horror screenplay.
While I was working on the publishers treatment
and on my second novel, Riley and I decided our
Bigfoot story would make a great ongoing series. We
put together the entire first issue of Proof for Image
because we assumed, from our experience with AiT,
that we needed to have a completed project before
wed be seriously considered. We didnt hear anything
from them, so we sent them the second issue too. By
the time we got a green light, wed completed three
issues of Proof and were on a roll. The enormous risk
involved in producing so much of the series on spec
has paid off tremendously for us, giving us a big headstart and helping us stay on schedule.
It took me a long time to get around to achieving my
dream. But everything else Ive writtenad copy, movie
treatments, novels, short storieshas hopefully made
me a better comic book writer.
And, looking back, I guess I can say Ive been discovered over and over again. The comic book industry
68 | WRITE NOW
is full of gracious people and I

havent been given enough words
here to list them all.
Without some of them, I might still
be trying to break in as an artist!
ALEX GRECIAN writes for a variety of
media. His critically-acclaimed ongoing comics series, Proof, drawn by
Riley Rossmo), is now in its second
year of publication. The first two
Proof trades, Goatsucker and The
Company of Men are available now.
He has several completed upcoming
projects, including a series of all-ages
graphic novels called Squeak! (with
artist Kelly Tindall), a digital spin-off of
Proof called Scotland Yard (with Riley
Rossmo), and a series of prose crime
novels.
BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK?!

E
arly issues of Write Now!

contained editorials from
yours truly with the above title.
Hey, I had my name above the
mags logo, so I figured I should
make some attempt at providing
profound observations (or something like them) for my readers.
But as the WN went on, I realized that I was more interested in

the opinions of the people we
were interviewing and who were
writing articles for the magazine. I
already knew what I thought! Still,
this is my last chance, in this context, to comment on the state of
comics writing, although, I have to
say, I still pretty much feel the
same way:
So those are Write Now!s parting

words of advice:
Write well.
There. Got that out of my system.
Now, lets get to wrapping some
other points up
I think its pretty cool that Write
Now! lasted 20 issues, spawned a
Best Of volume, and a how-to book
and DVD (the latter two with Draw! s
EIC Mike Manley). I think its pretty
cool that even people who didnt buy
WN knew of it and thought it was the
best magazine about writing comics.
That it was the only magazine about
writing comics was besides the point.
Write Now! gave a place for people
to come for information about writing
comics and related media. I was able
to get the best and brightest, as well
as the up-and-coming, to talk about writing and the
writing life in a way that they rarely get to do. We got
people to talk about their creative process, and what
they do to deal with setbacks, and to actually show
with scripts and arthow they pull the rabbits out of
the hat. To hear that the magazine helped people find
their own way and their own voice makes me very
proud and happy over what weve accomplished.
It all started here, with Mark Bagleys

incredible cover to Write Now! #1.
[ 2009 Mark Bagley.]

Comics are an incredible medium. They can tell any kind of story, or even convey
mood, feelings, and ideas without the need for conventional narrative. By the same token, I do feel that a
writer who sets out to write genre narratives (such as
superhero stories) has an obligation to his or her readers to make stories clear and comprehensible. (It goes
without saying that the more exciting, intriguing, interesting, novel, and colorful and all those other great
things a story is, the better.)
Job #1 of a genre writer is making sure readers

know who the characters are and what the status quo
of those characters is. Everything else takes off from
there. Im not advocating doing these basics in a hackneyed or formulaic way. As legendary editor Julius
Schwartz used to say, be original. There are great
comics that experiment with time and place and character and convention. This is a wonderful thing. But if
your goal is to tell genre stories to people who like
genre storiesthen do just that. Learn your craft. And if
your editors and your peersor even your teachers
wont teach you, read up on what the masters of the
craft have done in the pastand then adapt the principles they used to a modern audience.
Its been a great ride, and there are a lot of people

to thank. So let me start
Who Does Danny Thank?
The list has to start with JOHN MORROW. From the
moment I called him and pitched the idea for a writing
magazine, he has been nothing but supportive. John
and the entire TwoMorrows crewespecially ERIC
NOLEN-WEATHINGTONhave always been nothing but
a pleasure to work with. Thanks, folks!
I also have to thank MIKE MANLEY, first for not getting ticked (or not telling me if he was) that I got the
idea for WN from seeing the great work he was doing
with his TwoMorrows art-oriented how-to magazine,
BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK | 69
The in-your-face cover to WN #2 was

penciled and inked by Erik Larsen. [Savage
Dragon TM & 2009 Erik Larsen. Other characters
TM & 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
DRAW! Mike and I

go back to when
we were the
writer-artist team
on Darkhawk. It
was great to once
again be on the
same publishing
team as Mike, and
to partner with
him on the WNDraw crossover
that blossomed
into the How To
Create Comics
paperback and
How To Draw
Comics DVD.
Also deserving
of massive thanks are people who took a chance on
Write Now! by being interviewed or writing for it early
on, no questions asked. This list would include: STAN
LEE, BRIAN BENDIS, TOM DEFALCO, MARK BAGLEY,
ERIK LARSEN, J.M. DEMATTEIS, JOE QUESADA, JIMMY
PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, STAN BERKOWITZ, TODD
ALCOTT, and ANNE D. BERNSTEIN.
Other Friends
of ol Write
Now! (or
FOOWN) would
would have to
include:
MICHAEL
USLAN, BRUCE
JONES, TODD
McFARLANE,
TOM BREVOORT,
MIKE MARTS,
PAUL DINI,
JEPH LOEB, J.M.
STRACZYNSKI,
NEIL GAIMAN,
KURT BUSIEK,
MIKE CARLIN,
Howard Chaykins drawing of Reuben Flagg
graced the cover of WN #4. [American Flagg TM &
PAUL LEVITZ,
2009 Howard Chaykin.]
HOWARD
CHAYKIN, RON FRENZ, SAL BUSCEMA, MICHAEL OEMING,
NEAL ADAMS, STEVEN GRANT, JOHN OSTRANDER,
CHRISTOS GAGE, JIM McCANN, DAVID HYDE, ALEX
SEGURA, CHRIS IRVING, and a bunch of other folks Im
no doubt forgetting. THANK YOU!
On the staff front, thanks have to go out for stellar

editorial help to BOB BRODSKY, ERIC FEIN, LIZ
GEHRLEIN, and BOB GREENBERGER. For awesome
design workwhich often included suggesting and
hunting down artgratitude to CHRIS DAY, RICH
FOWLKES, JOHN McCARTHY, and DAVID GRENAWALT.
And hats off to the king of transcribers, Mr. STEVEN
TICE!
In addition to the above-mentioned Mr. Manley,
many thanks for help and support to fellow
TwoMorrows editors JOHN MORROW (wearing his
other hat), ROY
THOMAS,
MICHAEL EURY,
BOB McLEOD,
and JON B.
COOKE.
Gratitude and
love to my wife
VARDA, my sons
ETHAN and
JACOB, and to
BLANCHE, JIM,
and PAT FINGEROTH for their
faith in Write
Now!, as well as
in my other
hare-brained
schemes.
WN#11 sported an eye-catching Spider-Girl

cover. The art is by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema.
Thanks to the teachers, peers, and colleagues who

helped me learn my craft, and to the great storytellers
whose work inspired and continues to inspire me.
Finally, clich as it may sound, I thank you, the readers of Write Now!not just for buying and reading the
magazinebut for making a point of writing in or coming up to me at conventions to tell me how much you
get out of the magazine. That means more than you
can know. May your writing grow and thrive.
Well, thats it for now. You can still get hold of me via
the WriteNowDF@aol.com, and you can still get back
issues of Write Now!, either in print or via digital
download at www.twomorrows.com.
Write Away!
Danny Fingeroth
Editor-in-Chief
70 | WRITE NOW
Feedback
Letters from our readers
Heres the last WN lettercol. Not much to say except to

thank everybody who took the time to write in and tell
me what you thought of the magazine. Your comments
were always appreciated and seriously considered by me
and the rest of the WN staff.
Before we get to comments on the end of WN, we have
a correction to last issues Amazing True Stories: Writing
Non-Fiction Comics, by Jim Ottaviani. Seems that,
despite the fact that at least four people proofread the
article, the word research, which was used multiple
times in Jims diagrams, was misspelled a couple of those
times. (And now that Im looking, I see that one diagram
instructs you to Wait with baited breath. That would
mean to have worms in your mouth. I believe the correct
term is bated breath.)
Heres the official correction:
A quick note on Jim Ottavianis flowchart in issue #19s
Amazing True Stories: Because of a production mix-up, it
appears as if neither Jim nor the Write Now! editors did the
appropriate research on how to spell research. The irony
isnt lost on any of us, we regret the error, and assure you
that we do know how to use a dikshunairy.
And now, on to some of the wonderful e-mailed
comments I received when word of WNs cancellation hit:
Write Now! was really a terrific magazine, Danny, and you
did a great job with it. It will be missed!
Tom DeFalco
(Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief, current writer of Amazing
Spider-Girl)
Just read about Write Now! folding. Sorry to hear it. It was
a really fun magazine and you did a fantastic job with it, Danny.
I was really happy to have been part of it along the way.
J.M. DeMatteis
(Writer of Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, Abadazad
and Editor-in-Chief of Ardden Entertainment)
So bummed to read that Write Now! will be closing shop.
What a shameyou have really done such a nice job with
that book.
Ed Catto
(Publisher of Captain Action comics)
Im sorry to hear that Write Now! is stopping publication. I
thought it a great magazine and something that the field really needed. All the other magazines in the comics world are
geared toward the artist and the drawings. Write Now! was
the only one that dealt with writing. What a loss to the
comics field.
Marc Bilgrey
(Author of And Dont Forget to Rescue the Princess, and
its upcoming sequel, And Dont Forget to Rescue the
OTHER Princess.)
Im so sorry to hear that Write Now! will soon be ending. It
has been my favorite of the TwoMorrows magazines. I have
every issue, and every now and then Ill re-read an issue or
two because of the informative and helpful info in it.
Johnny Lowe
(Letterer of 10th Muse and other fine comics)
Im crushed that Write Now! is being canceled. I subscribe
and have given a subscription as a gift. Would it help if I
added another subscription to Write Now!? Hey, if thats
what it takes
Scott Ryfun
Say it isnt so! As an aspiring writer this was the best comic
book magazine for writers and the best comic book magazine
out there, period. I loved the in-depth interviews and the
script samples in Write Now! It really was a pleasure to read
it. This is really a special magazine.
Pawel Goj
Im very sorry to see Write Now! go (both for its unique
and valuable content, and because of knowing Danny
Fingeroth), but I understand the difficulties of the niche publishing business.
Sean Flahaven
(Writer, composer, orchestrator, conductor, and producer
and graduate of the Danny Fingeroth-Dennis ONeil
tag-team writing course at NYU)
Thanks everybody. And dont forget, you can still get
back issues (in print or electronically) as well as the Best
Of Write Now! trade paperback, the How to Create Comics
from Script to Print paperback and the How To Draw Comics
From Script to Print DVD (the latter two co-created with
DRAW!s EIC, Mike Manley) from www.twomorrows.com
and/or finer comics and bookshops,
If you have any further questions or comments for me
about Write Now!or anything elseyou can still contact
me at WriteNowDF@aol.com, or c/o TwoMorrows, 10407
Bedfordtown Road, Raleigh, NC 27614.
Thanks for writing!
Danny Fingeroth
FEEDBACK | 71
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TwoMorrows Publishing
2009 Update
WINTER/SPRING
Supplement to the 2008 TwoMorrows Preview Catalog
ORDER AT:
www.twomorrows.com
SAVE
BATCAVE COMPANION
All characters TM & 2009 their respective owners.
ITS FINALLY HERE! The writer/editor of the critically acclaimed KRYPTON COMPANION and the designer of the eye-popping
SPIES, VIXENS, AND MASTERS OF KUNG FU: THE ART OF PAUL GULACY team up to explore the Silver and Bronze Ages of
Batman comic books in THE BATCAVE COMPANION! Two distinct sections of this book examine the Dark Knights progression
from his campy New Look of the mid-1960s to his creature of the night reinvention of the 1970s. Features include issue-byissue indexes, interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA, DENNIS ONEIL, and NEAL ADAMS, and guest essays by MIKE
W. BARR and WILL MURRAY. Contributors include SHELDON MOLDOFF, LEN WEIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, and TERRY AUSTIN,
with a special tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS. With its incisive introduction by DENNIS ONEIL and its iconic cover painting by
NEAL ADAMS, THE BATCAVE COMPANION is a must-have for every comics fan! By MICHAEL EURY and MICHAEL KRONENBERG.
15
WHE %
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(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 US ISBN: 9781893905788 Diamond Order Code: NOV068368 Ships April 2009
COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION

Comic book podcasts have taken the Internet by storm, and now TwoMorrows offers you the chance to go
behind the scenes of ten of today's top comic book podcasts via all-new interviews with the casts of
AROUND COMICS, WORD BALLOON, QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK, COMIC BOOK QUEERS,
iFANBOY, THE CRANKCAST, THE COLLECTED COMICS LIBRARY, THE PIPELINE PODCAST, COMIC
GEEK SPEAK, and TwoMorrows own TUNE-IN PODCAST! Also featured are new interviews about
podcasting and comics on the Internet with creators MATT FRACTION, TIM SEELEY, and GENE COLAN.
You'll also find a handy guide of what youll need to start your own podcast, an index of more than thirty
great comic book podcasts, numerous photos of your favorite podcasters, and original art from COLAN,
SEELEY, DC's MIKE NORTON, and many more! By ERIC HOUSTON, with a spectacular new cover by
MIKE MANLEY.
(128-page trade paperback) $15.95 ISBN: 9781605490182 Ships May 2009
ALL-STAR COMPANION Volume 4

The epic series of ALL-STAR COMPANIONS goes out with a bang, featuring: Colossal coverage of
the Golden Age ALL-STAR COMICS! Sensational secrets of the JUNIOR JUSTICE SOCIETY! An
index of the complete solo adventures of all 18 original JSAers in their own features, from 1940 to
1951! The JSA's earliest imitators (Seven Soldiers of Victory, All Winners Squad, Marvel Family,
and International Crime Patrol)! INFINITY, INC. on Earth-Two and after! And the 1980s SECRET
ORIGINS series! With rare art by ALEX ROSS, TODD McFARLANE, JERRY ORDWAY, CARMINE
INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, GIL KANE, MURPHY ANDERSON, IRWIN HASEN,
MORT MESKIN, GENE COLAN, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE TUSKA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT,
GEORGE FREEMAN, DON NEWTON, JACK BURNLEY, MIKE MACHLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN,
DICK DILLIN, and others. Edited by ROY THOMAS.
CAPTAIN ACTION:
THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE
(240-page trade paperback) $27.95 US ISBN: 9781605490045

Ships June 2009
(Hardcover 2nd Edition)
CAPTAIN ACTION was introduced in 1966 in the wake of the Batman TV show craze, and later received his
own DC comic book with art by WALLY WOOD and GIL KANE. Able to assume the identities of 13 famous
super-heroes, his initial career was short-lived, but continuing interest in the hero has led to two different
returns to toy-store shelves. Lavishly illustrated with over 200 toy photos, this FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER
SECOND EDITION chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually
EVERY CAPTAIN ACTION PRODUCT ever released, spotlights on his allies ACTION BOY and the SUPER
QUEENS and his arch enemy DR. EVIL, an examination of his comic-book appearances, and Action facts
that even the most diehard Captain Action fan wont know! The original softcover edition has been sold
out for years, but this revised, full-color hardcover second edition includes behind-the-scenes coverage of
CAPTAIN ACTIONS TRIUMPHANT 2008 RETURN to comics shelves in his new series from Moonstone
Books, and spotlights the new wave of Captain Action collectibles. Written by MICHAEL EURY.
(176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US ISBN: 9781605490175 Ships July 2009
MARVEL COMICS
IN THE 1960s:
An Issue-By-Issue
Field Guide
The comic book industry experienced an

unexpected flowering in the early 1960s,
compliments of Marvel Comics, and this
book presents a step-by-step look at
how a company that had the reputation of being one of the least creative
in a generally moribund industry, emerged as
one of the most dynamic, slightly irreverent
and downright original contributions to an era
when pop-culture emerged as the dominant
force in the artistic life of America. In scores
of handy, easy to reference entries, MARVEL
COMICS IN THE 1960s takes the reader from
the legendary companys first fumbling
beginnings as helmed by savvy editor/writer
STAN LEE (aided by such artists as JACK
KIRBY and STEVE DITKO), to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity.
With the history of Marvel Comics in the
1960s divided into four distinct phases,
author PIERRE COMTOIS explains just how
Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and others created a line
of comic books that, while grounded in the
traditional elements of panel-to-panel storytelling, broke through the juvenile
mindset of a low brow industry and provided a tapestry of full blown pop culture icons.
(224-page trade paperback) $27.95 US ISBN: 9781605490168 Ships July 2009
GRAILPAGES:
Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors

GRAILPAGES brings to light the burgeoning hobby of collecting the original, hand-drawn art that is used to
create comic books! Beginning more as a novelty, the hobby of collecting original comic art has expanded to a
point where some of the seminal pages commonly run more than $10,000 each. Author STEVEN ALAN
PAYNE lets you meet collectors from around the globe and hear their passion in their own words, as they
detail collections ranging from a few key pages, to broad, encompassing collections of literally hundreds of
pages of original comic art by such artists as JACK KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR., and others! Balancing out the
narratives are incisive interviews with industry pros, including writers GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART,
and ROY THOMAS, and exclusive perspectives from Silver Age artists DICK GIORDANO, BOB McLEOD,
ERNIE CHAN, TONY DeZUNIGA, and the unparalleled great, GENE COLAN! Completing the book is a diverse
sampling of breathtakingly beautiful original comic art, some lavishly presented in full-page spreads, including
pages not seen publicly for decades. Fans of comic art, comic books, and pop culture will find in GRAILPAGES
an appreciation for a uniquely American form of art!
(128-page trade paperback) $15.95 US ISBN: 9781605490151
Diamond Order Code: JAN094470 Ships March 2009
MAGAZINES
DIEDGITIIOTANSL
BL
AVAILA
BRICKJOURNAL magazine is the ultimate

resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages,
spotlighting the LEGO Community with
contributions and how-to articles by top
builders worldwide, new product intros, and
more. Edited by JOE MENO.
ALTER EGO
focuses on
Golden
and Silver
Age comics
and creators with
articles, interviews and
unseen art, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of
America), Mr. Monster & more. Edited by
ROY THOMAS.
BRICKJOURNAL #3
BRICKJOURNAL #4
BRICKJOURNAL #5
BRICKJOURNAL #6
Event Reports from BRICKWORLD, FIRST

LEGO LEAGUE WORLD FESTIVAL and
PIECE OF PEACE (Japan), spotlight on our
cover model builder BRYCE McGLONE,
and interviews with ARTHUR GUGICK and
STEVEN CANVIN of LEGO MINDSTORMS
to see where LEGO ROBOTICS is going!
Theres also STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING
INSTRUCTIONS, TECHNIQUES, & more!
Interviews with LEGO BUILDERS including

BREANN SLEDGE (BIONICLE BUILDER),
Event Reports from BRICKFAIR and
BRICKCON, plus reports on new
MINDSTORMS PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP
BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and
TECHNIQUES for all skill levels, NEW SET
REVIEWS, and a report on constructing the
Chinese Olympic Village in LEGO!
Features event reports from around the

world, and the MINDSTORMS 10TH
ANNIVERSARY at LEGO HEADQUARTERS!
Plus an interview with the head of the
LEGO GROUPS 3D DEPARTMENT, a
glimpse at the LEGO Group's past with the
DIRECTOR OF LEGO'S IDEA HOUSE,
instructions and spotlights on builders, and
an idea section for Pirate builders!
Spotlight on CLASSIC SPACE SETS and a

look at new ones with LEGO SET DESIGNERS, BRANDON GRIFFITH shows his STAR
TREK MODELS, plus take a tour of the
DUTCH MOONBASE with MIKE VAN
LEEUWEN and MARCO BAAS. There's also
coverage of BRICKFEST 2009 and FIRST
LEGO LEAGUE'S WORLD FESTIVAL and
photos from TOY FAIR NEW YORK!
(80-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 US

Diamond Order Code: JUN084415

Diamond Order Code: SEP084428

Diamond Order Code: DEC084408
Ships March 2009

Ships June 2009
THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!
TM
BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the

1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety
of recurring (and rotating) departments,
plus rare and unpublished art. Edited by
MICHAEL EURY.
DRAW!
is the
professional
How-To
magazine on cartooning and animation,
featuring in-depth interviews and step-bystep demonstrations from top comics
professionals. Edited by MIKE MANLEY.
ROUGH
STUFF
features
never-seen
pencil
pages,
sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused
inked pages from throughout comics
history, plus columns, critiques, and more!
Edited by BOB McLEOD.
WRITE
NOW!
features
writing
tips from pros on both sides of the desk,
interviews, sample scripts, reviews, exclusive Nuts & Bolts tutorials, and more!
Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH.
ALTER EGO #81
ALTER EGO #82
ALTER EGO #83
ALTER EGO #84
New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a

look at the late-60s horror comic WEB OF
HORROR with early work by BRUNNER,
WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH,
SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with
comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND
KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS 1971 origin
synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY,
plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!
MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index

illustrated with vintage images of The
Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood,
by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES
BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & othersbehind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover
by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV
NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR.
MONSTER, and more!
SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by

ARTHUR SUYDAM, in-depth art-filled look
at Marvels Conan the Barbarian, DCs
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dagar the
Invincible, Ironjaw & Wulf, and Arak, Son
of Thunder, plus the never-seen Valda the
Iron Maiden by TODD McFARLANE! Plus
JOE EDWARDS (Part 2), FCA, MR.
MONSTER, and more!
Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES

discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONS,
BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE,
KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY,
STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great
WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES
SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman
co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!
(100-page magazine) $6.95 US

Diamond Order Code: AUG084454

Diamond Order Code: OCT084483

Diamond Order Code: NOV084368

Diamond Order Code: JAN094555
Ships March 2009
C o l l e c t o r
The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine

celebrates his life and career through
INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE
AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, and more.
Edited by JOHN MORROW.
SUBSCRIBE TO
THE PRINT
EDITION, AND
GET THE
DIGITAL
EDITION
FREE,
BEFORE THE
PRINT ISSUE
HITS STORES!
BACK ISSUE #29
BACK ISSUE #30
BACK ISSUE #31
BACK ISSUE #32
Mutants issue! CLAREMONT, BYRNE,

SMITH, and ROMITA, JR.s X-Men work,
NOCENTI and ARTHUR ADAMS Longshot,
McLEOD and SIENKIEWICZs New Mutants,
the UKs CAPTAIN BRITAIN series, lost Angel
stories, Beasts tenure with the Avengers, the
return of the original X-Men in X-Factor, the
revelation of Nightcrawlers original father,
a history of DCs mutant, Captain Comet,
and more! Cover by DAVE COCKRUM!
Saturday Morning Heroes! Interviews with

TV Captain Marvels JACKSON BOSTWICK
and JOHN DAVEY, MAGGIN and SAVIUKs
lost Superman/Captain Thunder sequel,
Space Ghost interviews with GARY OWENS
and STEVE RUDE, MARV WOLFMAN guest
editorial, Super Friends, unproduced fourth
wave Super Powers action figures, Astro
Boy, ADAM HUGHES tribute to DAVE
STEVENS, and a new cover by ALEX ROSS!
STEVE GERBER Salute! In-depth look at his

Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, Omega the
Unknown, Defenders, Metal Men, Mister
Miracle, Thundarr the Barbarian, and more!
Plus: Creators pay tribute to Steve Gerber,
featuring art by and commentary from
BRUNNER, BUCKLER, COLAN, GOLDEN,
STAN LEE, LEVITZ, MAYERIK, MOONEY,
PLOOG, SIMONSON, and others. Cover
painting by FRANK BRUNNER!
Tech, Data, and Hardware! The Official

Handbook of the Marvel Universe, WEIN,
WOLFMAN, and GREENBERGER on DCs
Whos Who, SAVIUK, STATON, and VAN
SCIVER on Drawing Green Lantern, ED
HANNIGAN Art Gallery, history of Rom:
Spaceknight, story of BILL MANTLO, Dial H
for Hero, Richie Richs Inventions, and a
Spider-Mobile schematic cover by ELIOT
BROWN and DUSTY ABELL!

Diamond Order Code: MAY084246

Diamond Order Code: JUL084393


DRAW! #17
DRAW! #18
ROUGH STUFF #10
ROUGH STUFF #11
ROUGH STUFF #12
Interview with Scott Pilgrims creator and

artist BRYAN LEE OMALLEY on how he
creates the acclaimed series, plus learn how
B.P.R.D.s GUY DAVIS works on his series.
Also, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning
from The Great Cartoonists by BRET
BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and
more!
Features an in-depth interview and demo

by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigos
Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave
with Cartoon Networks JAMES TUCKER
on the new hit show Batman: The Brave
and the Bold, plus product reviews by
JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot
Camps Anatomy: Part 2 by BRET
BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!
Interview with RON GARNEY, with copious

examples of sketchwork and comments.
Also features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL
JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing
how their work evolves, excerpts from a
new book on ALEX RAYMOND, secrets of
teaching comic art by pro inker BOB
McLEOD, new cover by GARNEY and
McLEOD, newcomer critique, and more!
New cover by GREG HORN, plus interviews with HORN and TOM YEATES on
how they produce their stellar work. Also
features on GENE HA, JIMMY CHEUNG,
and MIKE PERKINS, showing their sketchwork and commentary, tips on collecting
sketches and commissions from artists, a
Rough Critique of a newcomers work,
and more!
Interview and cover by comic painter

CHRIS MOELLER, features on New
Zealand comic artist COLIN WILSON, G.I.
Joe artist JEREMY DALE, and fan favorite
TERRY DODSON, plus "GOOD GIRL
ART" (a new article about everyone's
favorite collectible art) by ROBERT
PLUNKETT, a "Rough Critique" of an
aspiring artist's work, and more!
(80-page magazine with COLOR)

$6.95 US Ships Spring 2009



Ships April 2009

$6.95 US Ships February 2009
ALTER EGO #85
ALTER EGO #86
ALTER EGO #87
ALTER EGO #88
WRITE NOW! #20
Captain Marvel and Supermans battles

explored (in cosmic space, candy stories,
and in court, with art by WALLY WOOD,
CURT SWAN, and GIL KANE), an in-depth
interview with Golden Age great LILY
RENE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS
(home of BILL EVERETTs Amazing-Man
and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new
RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!
Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD

WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMANS EC smash (see Captain
Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince
Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON &
KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU &
ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many
others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/
Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!
The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great

Britains MARVELMAN (decades before he
metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an
interview with writer/artist/co-creator
MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/
Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN
MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus
FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR.
MONSTER, and more!
First-ever in-depth look at National/DCs

founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and early editors WHITNEY
ELLSWORTH, VIN SULLIVAN, and MORT
WEISINGER, with rare art and artifacts by
SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CREIG
FLESSEL, FRED GUARDINEER, GARDNER
FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others,
plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!
Focus on THE SPIRIT movie, showing how

FRANK MILLER transformed WILL EISNERs
comics into the smash-hit film, with interviews with key players behind the making
of the movie, a look at what made Eisners
comics so special, and more. Plus: an interview with COLLEEN DORAN, writer ALEX
GRECIAN on how to get a pitch green
lighted, script and art examples, and more!

Ships May 2009

Ships June 2009

Ships July 2009

Ships August 2009

FINAL ISSUE! Ships February 2009
BACK ISSUE #33
BACK ISSUE #34
BACK ISSUE #35
KIRBY COLLECTOR #52
KIRBY COLLECTOR #53
Teen Heroes! Teen Titans in the 1970s &

1980s, with CARDY, GARCA-LPEZ,
PREZ, TUSKA, and WOLFMAN, BARON
and GUICE on the Flash, interviews with TV
Billy Batson MICHAEL GRAY and writer
STEVE SKEATES, NICIEZA and BAGLEYs
New Warriors, Legion of Super-Heroes
1970s art gallery, James Bond Jr., and the
Archies! New Teen Titans cover by GEORGE
PREZ and colored by GENE HA!
New World Order! Adam Warlock examined with JIM STARLIN and ROY THOMAS,
the history of Miracleman with ALAN DAVIS
& GARRY LEACH, JIM SHOOTER interview,
roundtable with Marvels post-STAN LEE editors-in-chief on the New Universe, Logans
Run, Star Hunters, BOB WIACEK on Star
Wars and Star-Lord, DICK GIORDANO
revisits Crisis on Infinite Earths and The
Post-Crisis DC Universe You Didnt See,
and a new cover by JIM STARLIN!
Villains! MIKE ZECK and J.M. DeMATTEIS

discuss Kravens Last Hunt in a Pro2Pro
interview, the history of the Hobgoblin is
exposed, the Jokers short-lived series, looks
back at Secret Society of Super-Villains and
Kobra, a Magneto biography, Luthor and
Brainiacs malevolent makeovers, interview
with Secret Society artist MIKE VOSBURG,
plus contributions from BYRNE, CONWAY,
FRENZ, NOVICK, ROMITA JR., STERN,
WOLFMAN, and a cover by MIKE ZECK!
Spotlights Kirbys most obscure work, like

an UNUSED THOR STORY, his BRUCE LEE
comic, animation work, stage play, and see
original unaltered versions of pages from
KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK,
and more, including a feature examining
the last page of his final issue of various
series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING
(with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby covers
inked by DON HECK and PAUL SMITH!
Spotlights THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK!

Theres a new interview with STAN LEE, a
walking tour of New York showing where
Lee & Kirby lived and worked, a re-evaluation of the Lost FF #108 story (including
a missing page that just surfaced), What
If Jack Hadnt Left Marvel In 1970?, plus
MARK EVANIERs regular column, a Kirby
pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age
Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby
cover inked by GEORGE PREZ!

Ships May 2009

Ships July 2009

Ships March 2009
(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 US

Ships February 2009
(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 US

Ships May 2009
THE ULTIMATE MAGAZINE FOR

LEGO ENTHUSIASTS OF ALL AGES!
TM
BRICKJOURNAL magazine (edited by Joe Meno) is the ultimate resource for LEGO
enthusiasts of all ages. It spotlights all aspects of the LEGO Community, showcasing
events, people, and models every issue, with contributions and how-to articles by top
builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Edited by JOE MENO. Begun as a
digital-only publication in 2005, the NEW PRINT VERSION (Vol. 2) of BrickJournal
launched in 2008, and is available in both print and digital form. Print subscribers get
the digital version FREE!
DIEDGITIIOTANSL
BLE
AVAILANLY
FOR O PER
$3.95 LOAD
DOWN
BRICKJOURNAL #4 (Vol. 2)
The ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages,

showcasing events, people, and models! FULL-COLOR
#1 features an interview with set designer and LEGO
Certified Professional NATHAN SAWAYA, plus step-bystep building instructions and techniques for all skill levels, new set reviews, on-the-scene reports from LEGO
community events, and other surprises!
This FULL-COLOR issue spotlights blockbuster summer

movies, LEGO style! Go behind the scenes for new sets
for BATMAN and INDIANA JONES, and see new models, including an SR-71 SPYPLANE and a LEGO CITY,
plus MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATIONS, BUILDING
INSTRUCTIONS, tour the ONLINE LEGO FACTORY, and
more!
(80-page FULL COLOR magazine) $8.95 US

(Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to print subscribers)
Diamond Order Code: FEB088010

Diamond Order Code: MAR084135
FULL-COLOR issue #4 features interviews with top LEGO BUILDERS including BREANN
SLEDGE (BIONICLE BUILDER), Event Reports from LEGO gatherings including BRICKFAIR
(Washington, DC) and BRICKCON (Seattle, Washington), plus reports on new MINDSTORMS
PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and TECHNIQUES for all skill levels,
NEW SET REVIEWS, and a report on the recreation of the Chinese Olympic Village in LEGO!
FULL-COLOR issue #5 features event reports from
around the world, and the MINDSTORMS 10TH
ANNIVERSARY at LEGO HEADQUARTERS! Plus an
interview with the head of the LEGO GROUPS 3D
DEPARTMENT, a glimpse at the LEGO Group's past
with the DIRECTOR OF LEGO'S IDEA HOUSE,
instructions and spotlights on builders, and an idea
section for PIRATE BUILDERS!
Our third FULL-COLOR print issue has LEGO Event reports from BRICKWORLD (Chicago),
FIRST LEGO LEAGUE WORLD FESTIVAL (Atlanta) and PIECE OF PEACE (Japan). There's also a
spotlight on the creation of our amazing cover model, built by BRYCE McGLONE, as well as
interviews with ARTHUR GUGICK and STEVEN CANVIN of LEGO MINDSTORMS, to see
where LEGO robotics is going! Plus step-by-step building instructions, techniques, and more!
(Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to print subscribers) Diamond Order Code: JUN084415

Ships March 2009
FULL-COLOR issue #6 goes into space, with a look
at old LEGO CLASSIC SPACE SETS and a look
toward the new with set designers! BRANDON
GRIFFITH beams in with a look at his STAR TREK
MODELS, and you'll take a tour of the DUTCH
MOONBASE courtesy of MIKE VAN LEEUWEN and
MARCO BAAS. There's also coverage of BRICKFEST
2009 and FIRST LEGO LEAGUE'S WORLD FESTIVAL
as well as photos from TOY FAIR NEW YORK!
Ships June 2009
4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $38 US Postpaid by Media Mail

($48 First Class, $55 Canada Elsewhere: $78 Surface, $85 Airmail)
PRINT SUBSCRIBERS GET THE DIGITAL EDITION

FREE, BEFORE THE PRINT ISSUE HITS STORES!
DOWNLOAD A
FREE DIGITAL EDITION
OF VOL. 1, #9 NOW AT
www.twomorrows.com
GET THE 9 ORIGINAL DIGITAL ISSUES!

The first nine original issues of BRICKJOURNAL shown below comprise VOLUME ONE, and were released online from
2005-2007 as Digital Editions only. Theyre available in PDF form for downloading now for $3.95 EACH, and #9 is FREE!
Those first nine digital-only issues that comprise Vol. 1 are finally available in
PRINT FORM FOR THE FIRST TIME in our series of BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUMS!
Each full-color trade paperback offers a wealth of information and building tips on all things LEGO!
(NOTE: These are DIFFERENT ISSUES than the new ongoing print edition (Vol. 2)!
BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM 1
COMPENDIUM 1 compiles the digital-only issues #1-3 (Vol. 1) of the acclaimed online
magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages for the first time in printed form! It features
interviews with LEGO car builder ZACHARY SWEIGART (showing his version of the timetraveling Delorean from the movie Back to the Future), JRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO
of LEGO Systems, Inc.), Mecha builders BRYCE McLONE and JEFF RANJO, paraplegic
LEGO builder SCOTT WARFIELD, BOB CARNEY (LEGO castle builder extraordinaire) and
RALPH SAVELSBURG (LEGO plane builder), REVEREND BRENDAN POWELL SMITH
(author of the LEGO version of the Bible), NASA Astronaut Trainer KIETH JOHNSON,
JAKE McKEE (Global Community Director for The LEGO Group), builder JASON
ALLEMANN on recreating the spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The
Year We Make Contact, features on the BIONICLE universe, how to make your own
custom bricks, plus instructions and techniques, and more!
(256-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $39.95 US ISBN: 978-1-893905-97-9
Diamond Order Code: FEB084083 Now shipping
magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages for the first time in printed form! It features
interviews with: MIKE WILDER (about using a Mindstorms robot to film a 3-D documentary) and MARK LARSON (creator of the Fabuland Housewifes online comic strip),
ALBAN NANTY on his LEGO-based Star Wars film, plus features on LEGO character
sculptures, tutorials on LCad software for creating projects, an examination of
LEGOLand's history, behind the scenes at a LEGO factory, building big with LEGOs (from
castles and rollercoasters to ships and skyscrapers), creating custom minifigures, instructions and building techniques, and more!
(224-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 ISBN: 9781605490021
Diamond Order Code: JUN084416 Now shipping
magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages for the first time in printed form! This
FULL-COLOR book spotlights all aspects of the LEGO COMMUNITY through interviews
with builders KNUD THOMSEN (builder of a LEGO city), ANTHONY SAVA (castle and
dragon builder), JRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO to the LEGO Group) and the duo
ARVO (builders of many incredible models), plus features on LEGO FAN CONVENTIONS,
such as BRICKFEST, LEGO WORLD (the Netherlands), and 1000STEINE-LAND
(Germany), reviews and behind the scenes reports on two LEGO sets (the CAFE CORNER
and HOBBY TRAIN), how to create custom minifigures, instructions and techniques, and
more! Edited by JOE MENO.
(224-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 US ISBN: 9781605490069
Diamond Order Code: JAN094469 Ships April 2009
magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages for the first time in printed form! It covers a
Lego art show, building a larger-than-life Yoda, an interview with LEGOLand builder GUY
BAGLEY and a top LEGO Star Wars set designer, how to build a DROID STARFIGHTER, a
LEGO POKMON character gallery, a look at the POWER FUNCTIONS electric building
system, a visit to an amazing STAR WARS LEGO DISPLAY in the United Kingdom, coverage of the 75th Anniversary celebration at the LEGO headquarters in Denmark, and
more! Features LEGO event reports, building instructions and techniques, and more!
Edited by JOE MENO.
(256-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $39.95 US ISBN: 9781605490199
Ships July 2009
TM
TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of LEGO. (& Comics!)

TwoMorrows 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com www.twomorrows.com
NEW MODERN MASTERS VOLUMES

Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artists files, a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW, DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more!
Volume 19:
MIKE PLOOG
Volume 20:
KYLE BAKER
Volume 21:
CHRIS SPROUSE
Volume 22:
MARK BUCKINGHAM
Volume 23:
DARWYN COOKE
by Eric Nolen-Weathington & Roger Ash

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95
ISBN: 9781605490076
Now shipping
by Eric Nolen-Weathington
ISBN: 9781605490083
Ships February 2009
by Eric Nolen-Weathington & Todd DeZago

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95
ISBN: 97801605490137
Ships March 2008
ISBN: 9781605490144
Diamond Order Code: JUL088519
Ships May 2008
ISBN: 9781605490205
Ships June 2008
EXTRAORDINARY WORKS
OF ALAN MOORE:
Indispensable Edition
KIRBY FIVE-OH!
LIMITED HARDCOVER
COLLECTED JACK KIRBY

COLLECTOR Volume 7
Limited to 500 copies, KIRBY FIVE-OH!

LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION covers
the best of everything from Jack Kirbys
50-year career in comics, including his 50
BEST STORIES, BEST COVERS, BEST
EXAMPLES OF UNUSED KIRBY ART, BEST
CHARACTER DESIGNS, and profiles of,
and commentary by, 50 PEOPLE INFLUENCED BY KIRBYS WORK! Plus theres a
50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirbys PENCIL ART,
a DELUXE COLOR SECTION, a previously
unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by
DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by
MARK EVANIER! Includes a full-color
wrapped hardcover, and an individuallynumbered extra Kirby pencil art plate not
included in the softcover edition! Its ONLY
AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS,
and is not sold in stores! Edited by JOHN
MORROW.
Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30,

with looks at Jacks 1970s and 80s work,
plus a two-part focus on how widespread
Kirbys influence is! Features rare
interviews with KIRBY himself, plus
Watchmens ALAN MOORE and DAVE
GIBBONS, NEIL GAIMAN, Bones JEFF
SMITH, MARK HAMILL, and others! See
page after page of rare Kirby art, including
a NEW SPECIAL SECTION with over 30
PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE
PUBLISHED, and more!
AGE OF TV HEROES
Examines the history of the live-action television adventures of everyones favorite
comic book heroes! FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER features the in-depth stories of the
actors and behind-thescene players that made
the classic super-hero
television programs we
all grew up with.
Included are new and
exclusive interviews
and commentary from
ADAM WEST
(Batman), LYNDA
CARTER (Wonder
Woman), PATRICK
WARBURTON (The
Tick), NICHOLAS
HAMMOND
(Spider-Man),
WILLIAM KATT
(The Greatest
American Hero),
JACK LARSON
(The Adventures
of Superman),
JOHN WESLEY
SHIPP (The
Flash),
JACKSON
BOSTWICK
(Shazam!), and
many more!
Written by JASON
HOFIUS and GEORGE KHOURY, with a
new cover by superstar painter ALEX ROSS!
(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US ISBN: 9781605490106
Rescheduled for July 2009
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
2009 SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
Media
Mail
The definitive biography of the co-creator of

WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA finally
returns to print in a NEW EXPANDED AND
UPDATED VERSION! Features an extensive
series of interviews with MOORE about his
entire career, including a new interview
covering his work since the sold-out 2003
edition of this book was published.
Includes RARE STRIPS, SCRIPTS, ART, and
private PHOTOS of the author, plus a
series of tribute comic strips by many of
Moores closest collaborators, a COLOR
SECTION featuring a RARE MOORE
STORY (remastered, and starring MR.
MONSTER), and more! Edited by GEORGE
KHOURY, with a cover by DAVE McKEAN!
(240-page trade paperback) $29.95 US
ISBN: 9781605490090
Limited Hardcover Signed by Alan Moore
(100 hardcover copies) $49.95 US
Only available from TwoMorrows!
1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority

Intl.
Intl.
US
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)
$50
$60
$60
$84
$136
BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)
$44
$60
$70
$105
$115
DRAW! (4 issues)
$30
$40
$47
$70
$77
ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!
$88
$120
$140
$210
$230
BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)
$38
$48
$55
$78
$85
(168-page Limited Edition Hardcover)

(500 hardcover copies) $34.95 US
Only available from TwoMorrows!
SHIPPING COSTS: Order online for exact

weight-based postage, or ADD $2 PER
MAGAZINE OR DVD/$4 PER BOOK
IN THE US for Media Mail shipping.
OUTSIDE THE US, PLEASE ORDER
ONLINE TO CALCULATE YOUR
EXACT POSTAGE COSTS & SAVE!
Subscriptions will start with the next available issue, but CURRENT AND OLDER ISSUES MUST
BE PURCHASED AT THE BACK ISSUE PRICE (new issues ship in bulk, and we pass the savings on
in our subscription rates). In the US, we generally ship back issues and books by MEDIA MAIL.

ISBN: 9781605490120
Ships February 2009
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To get periodic e-mail updates
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TM
TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! )

DRAW! (edited by top comics artist MIKE MANLEY) is the professional

HOW-TO magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue
features in-depth INTERVIEWS and STEP-BY-STEP DEMOS from top
comics pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling. NOTE: Contains nudity for purposes
of figure drawing. INTENDED FOR MATURE
READERS. TWO-TIME EISNER AWARD
NOMINEE for Best Comics-Related
Periodical.
4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS:
$26 US Postpaid by Media Mail
($36 First Class, $44 Canada,
$60 Surface, $72 Airmail).
DRAW! #4
DRAW! #5
DRAW! #6
Features an interview and step-by-step

demonstration from Savage Dragons ERIK
LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN on drawing
and inking techniques, DAVE COOPER
demonstrates coloring techniques in
Photoshop, BRET BLEVINS tutorial on
Figure Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on
the Design Process, reviews of comics
drawing papers, and more!
Interview and sketchbook by MIKE

WIERINGO, BRIAN BENDIS and MIKE
OEMING show how they create the series
Powers, BRET BLEVINS shows How to
draw great hands, The illusion of depth
in design by PAUL RIVOCHE, must-have
art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus
reviews of the best art supplies, links, a
color section and more! OEMING cover!
Interview, cover, and demo with BILL WRAY,

STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview and
demo on cartooning and animation, BRET
BLEVINS shows How to draw the human
figure in light and shadow, a step-by-step
Photo-shop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, expert
inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, plus reviews
of the best art supplies, links, a color
section and more!
(88-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95


Diamond Order Code: APR022633

DIEGDITITIOANL
DIEGDITITIOANL
BLE
AVAILA
DRAW! #8
From comics to video games: an interview,
cover, and demo with MATT HALEY, TOM
BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character
design, Drawing In Adobe Illustrator
step-by-step demo by ALBERTO RUIZ,
Draping The Human Figure by BRET
BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION,
International Spotlight on JOS LOUIS
AGREDA, a color section and more!
DRAW! #10
RON GARNEY interview, step-by-step
demo, and cover, GRAHAM NOLAN on
creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN
and other pros discuss lettering, Draping
The Human Figure, Part Two by BRET
BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ with more
Adobe Illustrator tips, interview with
Banana Tail creator MARK McKENNA,
links, a color section and more!
ONLY!
BL
AVAILA
DIEGDITITIOANL
E
BL
AVAILA
DRAW! #14
DRAW! #15
Features in-depth interviews and demos

with DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE,
OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation),
STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), plus Part
3 of editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET
BLEVINS COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on
Using Black to Power up Your Pages,
product reviews, a new MAHNKE cover,
and a FREE ALTER EGO #70 PREVIEW!
BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE, covering major

schools offering comic art as part of their
curriculum, featuring faculty, student, and
graduate interviews in an ultimate overview
of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a
how-to demo/ interview with B.P.R.D.S
GUY DAVIS, MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS
COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, a FREE
WRITE NOW #17 PREVIEW, and more!


BL
AVAILA
DRAW! #11
DRAW! #12
DRAW! #13
STEVE RUDE demonstrates his approach to

comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS
on Flash animation, political cartoonist JIM
BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits,
plus DRAW!s regular instructors BRET
BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on Drawing
On LIfe, more Adobe Illustrator tips with
ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and
more! New RUDE cover!
KYLE BAKER reveals his working methods

and step-by-step processes on merging his
traditional and digital art, Machine Teens
MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, Making
Perspective Work For You by BRET
BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop
techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, Adult
Swims THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, a
color section and more! New BAKER cover!
Step-by-step demo of painting methods by

cover artist ALEX HORLEY (Heavy Metal,
Vertigo, DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus
interviews and demos by Banana Sundays
COLLEEN COOVER, behind-the-scenes on
Adult Swims MINORITEAM, regular features
on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE
MANLEY, links, color section and more,
plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #3 PREVIEW!

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT

(96-page Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #16
DIEGDITITIOANL
DIEGDITITIOANL
Features an in-depth interview and coverage of the

creative process of HOWARD CHAYKIN. From the
early 70s at DC, STAR WARS, and HEAVY METAL,
to AMERICAN FLAGG and now WOLVERINE, we
catch up with one of comics most innovative
artist/storytellers! Also, we go behind the drawing
board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS,
from JET CAT and TUTENSTEIN to his new Cartoon
Network show, SECRET SATURDAYS! Then there's
more COMIC ART BOOTCAMP, this time focusing
on HOW TO USE REFERENCE, and WORKING
FROM PHOTOS by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE
MANLEY. Plus, reviews, resources and more!
Ships Summer 2008
Dont miss our

BEST OF DRAW
volumes, reprinting the
SOLD OUT ISSUES!
DIEGDITITIOANL
E
BL
AVAILA
HOW-TO BOOKS & DVDs
WORKING METHODS:
COMIC CREATORS DETAIL
THEIR STORYTELLING &
CREATIVE PROCESSES
Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this
book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional
comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they see and solve the
problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative
and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT
HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT
QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and
students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches
regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the
results are profoundly complex!
(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $21.95
ISBN: 9781893905733
HOW TO CREATE COMICS

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT
REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW!/
DRAW! crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY show step-bystep how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks,
colors, letteringit even guides you through printing and distribution, and
the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result!
PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including full and Marvelstyle scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editors
point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more!
HOW TO DRAW COMICS

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT DVD
Documents two top professionals creating a comic book, from
initial idea to finished art! In this feature-filled DVD, WRITE
NOW! magazine editor DANNY (Spider-Man) FINGEROTH
and DRAW! magazine editor MIKE (Batman) MANLEY show
you how a new character evolves from scratch! Watch the
creative process, as a story is created from concepts and
roughs to pencils, inks, and coloringeven lettering! Packed
with how-to tips and tricks, its the perfect companion to
the HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT
book, or stands alone as an invaluable tool for amateur and
professional comics creators alike!

ISBN: 9781893905603
(120-minute DVD) $29.95

ISBN: 9781893905399
BUNDLE THE BOOK & DVD TOGETHER FOR JUST $35.95 (SAVE $8)
NEW
FOR
2008
FREE!
FREE!
COMICS 101: HOW-TO & HISTORY LESSONS

TwoMorrows has tapped the combined knowledge of its editors to assemble How-To and History lessons
including: Figure Drawing and How To Break Down A Story from DRAW!s MIKE MANLEY and BRET
BLEVINS, Writing Tips from WRITE NOW!s DANNY FINGEROTH, plus ROUGH STUFFs BOB McLEOD
provides Art Critiques of promising newcomers! Theres even a Comics History Crash-Course, assembled
by ALTER EGOs ROY THOMAS and BACK ISSUEs MICHAEL EURY!
(32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping charge applies) Diamond Order Code: FEB070050
COMICS GO HOLLYWOOD
TwoMorrows unveils secrets behind your FAVORITE ON-SCREEN HEROES, and whats involved in taking a
character from the comics page to the big screen! It includes: Storyboards from DCs animated hit THE NEW
FRONTIER (courtesy of DRAW! magazine)! JEPH LOEB on writing for both Marvel Comics and the Heroes TV
show (courtesy of WRITE NOW! magazine)! Details on the unseen X-Men movie (courtesy of ALTER EGO
magazine)! A history of the Joker from his 1940s origins to his upcoming appearance in the Dark Knight film
(courtesy of BACK ISSUE! magazine)! And a look at Marvel Universe co-creator JACK KIRBYs Hollywood career,
with extensive Kirby art! So before you head to your local cineplex this summer, make sure you pick up your
FREE copy of this must-have item from your local retailer on May 3, 2008!
(32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping applies) or FREE at your local comics retailer on May 3, 2008
BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1
Compiles tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations

from DRAW! #1-2, by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and
drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (figure
drawing), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working
methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN
(inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on
animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating
web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE
PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Cover by
BRET BLEVINS!
Compiles tutorials and interviews from issues #3-4 of

DRAW!, with ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), DICK
GIORDANO (inking techniques), BRET BLEVINS
(drawing the figure in action, and figure composition),
KEVIN NOWLAN (penciling & inking), MIKE MANLEY
(how-to demo on Web Comics), DAVE COOPER
(digital coloring tutorial), and more! Each artist presents
their work STEP-BY-STEP, so both beginning and
experienced artists can learn valuable tips and tricks
along the way! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

ISBN: 9781893905412

ISBN: 9781893905580
NEW
FOR
2008
COMICS ABOVE GROUND
SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS

MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS
BEST OF WRITE NOW!

Whether youre looking to break into the world of comics writing, or missed key issues of DANNY FINGEROTHS WRITE
NOWthe premier magazine about writing for comics and related fieldsthis is the book for you! THE BEST OF WRITE
NOW features highlights from the acclaimed magazine, including in-depth interviews about writing from top talents, like:
BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS, WILL EISNER, JEPH LOEB, STAN LEE, J. M. STRACZYNSKI, MARK WAID, GEOFF JOHNS,
TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, AXEL ALONSO, and others! Theres also NUTS & BOLTS tutorials, featuring scripts
from landmark comics and the pencil art that was drawn from them, including: CIVIL WAR #1 (MILLAR & McNIVEN),
BATMAN: HUSH #1 (LOEB & LEE), ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #47 (BENDIS & BAGLEY), AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539
(STRACZYNSKI & GARNEY), SPAWN #52 (McFARLANE & CAPULO), GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH #1 (JOHNS & VAN
SCRIVER), and more! Also: How-to articles by the best comics writers and editors around, like JOHN OSTRANDER, DENNIS
ONEIL, KURT BUSIEK, STEVEN GRANT, and JOEY CAVALIERI. Professional secrets of top comics pros including NEIL
GAIMAN, MARK WAID, TRINA ROBBINS, PETER DAVID, and STAN LEE! Top editors telling exactly what it takes to get
hired by them! Plus more great tips to help you prepare for your big break, or simply appreciate comics on a new level, and
an introduction by STAN LEE! Edited by Spider-Man writer DANNY FINGEROTH.
COMICS ABOVE GROUND features comics pros discussing their inspirations and
training, and how they apply it in Mainstream Media, including Conceptual
Illustration, Video Game Development, Childrens Books, Novels, Design, Illustration,
Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies and more! Written by DURWIN TALON
(author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators
sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their other professions,
with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring:
BRUCE TIMM
BERNIE WRIGHTSON
ADAM HUGHES
JEPH LOEB
LOUISE SIMONSON
DAVE DORMAN
GREG RUCKA
AND OTHERS!

ISBN: 9781893905313

ISBN: 9781893905926
NEW
FOR
2008
NEW
FOR
2008
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE

DESIGN OF COMICS

Compiles more of the best tutorials and interviews
from DRAW! #5-7, including: Penciling by MIKE
WIERINGO! Illustration by DAN BRERETON! Design
by PAUL RIVOCHE! Drawing Hands, Lighting the
Figure, and Sketching by BRET BLEVINS! Cartooning
by BILL WRAY! Inking by MIKE MANLEY! Comics &
Animation by STEPHEN DeSTEFANO! Digital
Illustration by CELIA CALLE and ALBERTO RUIZ!
Caricature by ZACH TRENHOLM, and much more!
Cover by DAN BRERETON!
ISBN: 9781893905917

More tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #8-10, spotlighting: From comics to video games with artist MATT
HALEY! Character design with TOM BANCROFT and
ROB CORLEY! Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO
RUIZ! Draping the human figure by BRET BLEVINS!
Penciling with RON GARNEY! Breaking into comic strips
by GRAHAM NOLAN! Lettering by TODD KLEIN!
International cartoonist JOS LUIS AGREDA! Interviews
with PvPs SCOTT KURTZ and Banana Tails MARK
McKENNA, and more! Cover by MATT HALEY!
ISBN: 9781605490007
Ships May 2008
Art professor DURWIN TALON gets top creators to discuss all

aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from panel and page layout, to
use of color and lettering:
WILL EISNER SCOTT HAMPTON
MIKE WIERINGO WALT SIMONSON
MIKE MIGNOLA MARK SCHULTZ
DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI MIKE CARLIN
DICK GIORDANO BRIAN STELFREEZE
CHRIS MOELLER MARK CHIARELLO
If youre serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or
just enjoying them from the creators perspective, this guide is
must-reading!
ISBN: 9781893905146
MODERN MASTERS SERIES

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON,
these trade paperbacks and DVDs are
devoted to the BEST OF TODAYS
COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains
RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct
from the artists files, plus a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences
and their views on graphic storytelling),
DELUXE
SKETCHBOOK
SECTIONS, and
more! And dont
miss our companion DVDs,
showing the
artists at work
in their studios!
MODERN
MASTERS:
IN THE STUDIO
WITH GEORGE PREZ DVD
Get a PERSONAL TOUR of Georges studio, and watch STEP-BY-STEP
as the fan-favorite artist illustrates a special issue of TOP COWs
WITCHBLADE! Also, see George as he sketches for fans at conventions,
and hear his peers and colleaguesincluding MARV WOLFMAN and
RON MARZshare their anecdotes and personal insights along the way!
MODERN
MASTERS: IN THE
STUDIO WITH
MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD
Go behind the scenes and into Michael Goldens studio for a LOOK
INTO THE CREATIVE MIND of one of comics' greats. Witness a
modern master in action as this 90-minute DVD provides an exclusive
look at the ARTIST AT WORK, as he DISCUSSES THE PROCESSES he
undertakes to create a new comics series.
(120-minute Standard Format DVD) $29.95

ISBN: 9781893905511
(90-minute Standard Format DVD) $29.95

ISBN: 9781893905771
Volume 1:
ALAN DAVIS
Volume 2:
GEORGE PREZ
Volume 3:
BRUCE TIMM
Volume 4:
KEVIN NOWLAN
ISBN: 9781893905191
ISBN: 9781893905252
ISBN: 9781893905306
ISBN: 9781893905382
Volume 5:
GARCA-LPEZ
Volume 6:
ARTHUR ADAMS
Volume 7:
JOHN BYRNE
Volume 8:
WALTER SIMONSON
ISBN: 9781893905443
by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington

ISBN: 9781893905542
by Jon B. Cooke & Eric Nolen-Weathington

ISBN: 9781893905566
by Roger Ash & Eric Nolen-Weathington

ISBN: 9781893905641
Volume 9:
MIKE WIERINGO
Volume 10:
KEVIN MAGUIRE
Volume 11:
CHARLES VESS
Volume 12:
MICHAEL GOLDEN
by Todd DeZago & Eric Nolen-Weathington

ISBN: 9781893905658

ISBN: 9781893905665
by Christopher Irving & Eric Nolen-Weathington

ISBN: 9781893905696
ISBN: 9781893905740
NEW
FOR
2008
NEW
FOR
2008
Volume 13:
JERRY ORDWAY
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1

THE SPIRIT NUTS & BOLTS

Odd Lot Perspective

Will Eisner and the Art of Adaptation

Nuts & Bolts Department

Special Thanks To:

Danny Fingeroths Write Now! is published 4 times a year by

Back in 2003, two years before his

LAST MINUTE SHAMELESS HYPE:

THE SPIRIT SECTION | 3

He Dared Evil on a Dark Night:

THE FRANK MILLER INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail

Frank took a few minutes to give us talk to us

The first The Spirit movie poster. Art by Frank Miller.

DF: Please talk a little about your process of using

Will Eisner and Frank Miller had discussions and

FM: No. I would not want to do it

KEEPING THE FAITH:

THE MICHAEL USLAN INTERVIEW

Conducted via phone November 6, 2009 by Danny Fingeroth

ICHAEL USLAN is the producer on The Spirit,

Michael is a writer, producer, and entertainment

Jules Feiffers book, The Great Comic Book Heroes?

the convention inI want to say 68, but I dont have

DF: Who would want old comic

DF: Did you have a friendship

time to time, and to some of my buddies who were

DF: How did you become involved with Ben to begin

kind of wound up in one. I said, This is not going to

And I had a really good pitch for The Spirit. I

Thats the kind of stuff that we continually ran into,

book superhero come to life and be really effective.

knew it was going to be the Octopus. Beyond that, it

Will would love. There are such high quality products

DF: I look forward to hearing how those projects

DC Comics is currently producing a

Heres the first page of Sergio Aragons

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Sergios version was sent to the editor, Joey

THE SPIRIT #24 NUTS & BOLTS | 19

After the lettering was done, the letterer e-mailed

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

So Sergios thumbnails are the equivalent of a

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Just as Will Eisner always found a clever

THE SPIRIT #24 NUTS & BOLTS | 21

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Note how what Mark has submitted is the dialogue for

Chad takes advantage of a flashback to play with the layouts, setting

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

A subtle device that carries the story

THE SPIRIT #24 NUTS & BOLTS | 23

[ 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Chad subtly alters the pacing by

Conducted October 27, 2008, in person, by Danny Fingeroth

.J. DeSANTO is co-producer of The Spirit movie. He

DF: Tell me a little bit about the origins of the movie.

DF: What else has Odd Lot done?

DF: So the story as it appears on screen, where did that

working with Deb and company there. He had a drawing

F.J. has begun doing more producing on his

DF: So there was a version of the