Screenwriting Vs. Writing a comic

Alright, this is my first venture really into the comic world. I've written other scripts and drawn clumsy knock off comics of my own in Junior High (you know the kind where it's not Spider-Man but it sure looks like him).

But, comic script pages are a lot leaner -- not much happens on a page. I was at a dinner party recently where one of the producers of Afro Samurai was there. We started talking about movies and comics, evidently he's launching a new title with Samuel L. Jackson. You can check it out here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=24892

And he was talking about how you don't need that much on a panel. He mentioned four or five being a little crowded -- and as I continue to develop the script, I agree.

If you start putting more than five panels on a page, the thing's going to get crowded (Ahem, Alan Moore).

We've got a page here from Jim Lee's work on the "Hush" story-arc. And then below we've got a example from the Watchmen.

Both by great artists, both great, blah blah blah -- but you can see the difference. When I wrote my first comic pages, I showed them to a comic artist friend of mine -- you can check out his work here (http://www.nick-nix.blogspot.com/)

I think I was writing for twenty panels. I just had waaaaayyy too much going on. Things take longer in a comic.

Look at the batman page -- there's like two things that happen -- they look at each other... and that's about it. Now, in Watchmen Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons cram as much as they can on there -- he jumps, he lands, there's a kick, he's umasked...! Whew!

So, as I write the pages I'm trying to leave as much air on the page as I can -- even more white space than a screenplay!

In the next few posts we'll have some examples of comic scripts and screenplays.