David Meadows
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 Post Mortem (Issue #23)
To begin with, there are some physical constraints. I limit each issue to 22 pages of "script", no more, no less. In some ways, this is less restricting than a word count, in other ways it is more so. I have control over how much dialogue and how many panels go on each page, but I have to be aware of what a comic page can physically accommodate.
Next, I define the needs of this particular story. I knew that very little would actually "happen" in this story. It's basically an interlude between major story lines. It's an opportunity to tidy up old threads, open up new ones, and "muster the characters" ready for the rest of the series. As a stand-alone story, it's potentially going to be very boring, and there was a temptation to skip it entirely and go straight into another action issue. But as part of the ongoing series, I felt it was an important chapter.
Before I start, I have a list of events that have to happen. I map these events to scenes and work out how many pages each scene will need (usually 1 - 3). So before I start writing I know if I'm going to hit my 22-page count. As the story progresses my page estimate may drift off, as a scene suddenly needs more dialogue (because there is a physical limit to how many speech bubbles can go in a panel), or I combine two panels into one (I do this when I can't think of an interesting new visual to accompany the dialogue). When I drift off the page target -- well, you'll see how I deal with that below.
So, I know what needs to happen, I know who needs to be involved, and I have to fit it all into 22 pages - no more, no less. Here's the breakdown of how I did it.
PAGES 1 & 2
This scene doesn't involve any regular characters but it introduces the villain who will feature in their next "mission". It's foreshadowing - an important part of comic-book storytelling. I placed this right up front for two reasons: (1) it's an action scene, so it's hopefully going to hook the reader right at the start; (2) throughout the rest of the issue, I want to show how the regular cast reacts to these events - as that reaction is going to drive the plot onwards to the next issue.
The time and place captions are kind of a trademark of the series -- I like to have it anchored in the real (though future) world.
(Continued...)
Last edited by David Meadows, 3/4/2006, 20:21
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"What is now proved was once only imagined" -- William Blake
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4/3/2005, 22:44
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David Meadows
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Re: Post Mortem
Notice that I don't have to describe every last visual detail for the artist -- one of the benefits of a real-world setting. I can say "draw a bank", and any artist worth his salt will know how to draw a bank. (And it works for a reader reading the script, too -- if I say, "it's a bank", every reader will get an instant image of a bank even when there are no pictures to look at. It makes good story-telling shorthand, and it leaves me free to concentrate on the dialogue, and on the descriptions that actually matter.)
The special effects captions (SFX) are deliberately over-the-top, because that's a convention of the genre I'm working in. Yes, you're allowed to laugh at them. (You should have seen the previous issue, I really went to town!)
I'm particularly proud of the line of dialogue on p2: "I don't want any heroes today". It's a link to "our heroes" in the next scene. And "Heroes" is, of course, the title of the series. It just reminds the reader what the whole thing is about. (Hopefully!)
PAGES 3 & 4
I don't waste a lot of time describing the main characters because the issues where they first appeared are there for anyone that wants to read them. Do I really need to repeat that Sara is blonde and beautiful and James is muscular and handsome? I don't think so. For similar reasons, I don't use captions full of exposition to fill in the back story. It's a chapter in an ongoing work and the interested reader can go back to chapter 1 if he really wants to.
This scene is really about Chi-Yun, but I devote a few panels to show James and Sara working out together. Because I need to show James and Sara working together as much as possible. No particular reason 
I'm also hinting, through James's dialogue, that Sara has something on her mind. I don't want to do more than hint - regular readers have enough clues to guess who she's pissed at and why, and I think it's better to leave it to their imaginations to fill in the details.
Next, Chi-Yun gets her spotlight. The seeds of this scene can be seen in an earlier issue where she is shown to be completely useless in a fight. So this is the start of Chi-Yun's attitude change. It's a small start, but she's arguably the character with the most (obvious) growing to do and it's got to start somewhere.
PAGE 5
I've known for a long time that Don has to abandon the group. I hate to do it, because I like Don, but the story is about them, not him, and they won't develop fully as long as he's mothering them. This page is the first part of his realisation of that.
My original plan was for Don to be the issue's narrator, so I could
portray his internal struggle over this via his thought captions. But I hope I've drawn Don's character sufficiently well that readers know what he's going through without having it spelled out, and I think it has a greater impact to simply hint at his thoughts. Here, Huey serves as a useful device for introducing the subject.
PAGE 6
The most pointless page of the issue. It is, literally, "filler". There is neither plot advancement nor character growth here. There was no need for either Fred of Jerome to get spotlight time this issue, but I had a page to spare and I wanted to remind readers that they are here. Both act in character but... well, I'm not happy with the page.
PAGES 7 & 8
Two seemingly unimportant scenes, but they both tie in to previous
events and advance ongoing sub-plots. Maybe I didn't need to devote so much space to them, but I had the space so why not?
PAGE 9
So I finally reintroduce the "on the run" theme of the series and
provide the impetus to move the characters on again. I thought having the warning come from Knight Owl made plot sense, but also character sense - Knight Owl abandoned the group to their fate a couple of issues ago, and I hope enough of his character has been revealed to show that he's a man who pays his debts.
You'll notice that we still don't know how much Knight Owl knows or how he knows it. This is, of course, deliberate. He's only a peripheral character (I wouldn't expect to see him again for at least 100 issues) but he's got enough background to merit an entire series to himself. I'm not about to blow all that potential by giving it all away in these few pages.
I'm assuming that the entire comic-reading public has already worked out which iconic figure Knight Owl is an... er... "homage" to, but just in case, the words "world's greatest detective" should leave no doubt.
PAGE 10
Now, what exactly is James thinking here? Once again I choose the path of leaving things unsaid -- it's a fine line to do that and still say enough to make things coherent. Hopefully I say enough to make the reader interested in analysing the scene.
Incidentally, notice that James reads a printed newspaper whereas
everybody else (more so in other issues) reads on line. I don't know whether I want readers to notice this and realise it's totally in character, or where I want readers to not notice this at all because it's totally in character. (In other words, the quirk becomes transparent because it's so natural . . . am I making sense?)
(Continued...)
Last edited by David Meadows, 4/3/2005, 22:46
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"What is now proved was once only imagined" -- William Blake
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4/3/2005, 22:45
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David Meadows
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Re: Post Mortem
PAGES 11 - 13
I originally planned to show Don telling everybody to pack their bags ready to leave, after Knight Owl's visit. But as I scripted the page, I found there wasn't really anything interesting I needed to say about that. So I scrapped the page and we just assume (from Huey's dialogue) that he told them last night and they all accepted his lead. It's the kind of editorial pruning-as-I-go that I do a lot, and it's a tough choice -- do I include every last scene, however tedious, or do I prune scenes and risk a choppy, disjointed narrative. But I think the narrative flow works in this case.
Anyway, this is the "crunch" scene of the entire issue. Don is leaving the group - finally he knows it and we know it. All the focus on the new vehicle is just dressing for this revelation, really. Though there are valid plot reasons for focussing on the vehicle now -- it's going to be the team's base of operations for the foreseeable future, so might as well introduce it properly.
Oh, and the line about Don's crap music is part of a long-running joke/sub-text (that I knew I would pick up again on the last page). And there's a tiny bit of additional sub-text in revealing that Huey thinks it's crap - harking back to a conversation at the beginning of the last issue. But it's a very minor point, there for people who want to draw conclusions, so I treat it as a throw-away line and don't call attention to it (other than waffling on about it here, of course).
PAGES 14 & 15
So, now Don's told them. I don't bother with his speech to them -- instead I cut straight to their responses, as that tells us more about them as characters and is more useful than Don just delivering plot exposition that the reader already knows. So everybody responds in thier own ways -- sorry about Chi-Yun, but as soon as the Monty Python line popped into my head it kind of ran away with me.
Actually, Chi-Yun is a joy to write. She's so easy to write for because her sense of humour is pretty similar to mine (I'd have done the Python skit, too), but she's also incredibly useful because her naivety and impulsiveness lets her ask the questions
and make the points that would otherwise be lost without a ton of heavy exposition. (Er. . . this is not one of those times. This is just her being comic relief.)
You'll notice that I deliberately excluded Sara from the scene. To be honest, I was dreading writing the scene where Don tells her goodbye. Emotional drama is the hardest thing for me to write. Actually, by this point in the writing I had decided to scrap that scene entirely and leave it "implied". Thus . . .
PAGE 16
. . . this scene is a reflection of how I was thinking - I didn't want the confrontation any more than Don did!
Actually, this is a very clumsy scene transtion. There is nothing to show us that this is after the "meeting" and Don and James are talking alone. But I'm not sure how I could handle it better. My other attmpts had even more boring dialogue panels to accomplish the transition and didn't work any better.
Notice that James has already decided he's going after the Electric
Raider. It's inevitable - and I hope that readers realise why, because I'm not going to spell it out here. I've already decided that James will narrate the next issue, so I can go deeper into his thoughts and motivations then.
PAGE 17
Just reinforcing why James is going to Detroit. Ok, so it's not subtle storytelling. Though it does get a tiny bit more characterisation in for the villain, so it's not entirely wasted.
PAGE 18
And another recap of the "on the run" situation, though it says nothing new to long-time readers.
And. . . there's no such thing as too much Python ;-)
PAGE 19
Ok, this comes completely out of nowhere with no explanation. It's simply foreshadowing a future plot with no connection to current events.
The reason for this page is that I wrote a couple of scenes more tightly than I had anticipated and finished the issue at page 21. I have a stockpile of "interludes" which I can insert in cases like this (because I'm plotting the story line so far in advance that I know what is coming up and can pick a suitable future plot to foreshadow). Hopefully it looks deliberate and nobody can tell I screwed up my page count. Darn it, now I've given the game away!
PAGE 20
Maybe didn't need a full page here, but I wanted to remind the reader that James thinks he's a super hero (thus the costume and the shield) and give an update on the Detroit situation.
PAGE 21
Ok, so Don's spoken with Sara. Readers can fill in for themselves how well that particular meeting went. Although my motivations were just to chicken out of writing the "goodbye" scene, in the end I was pleased with how just showing her reactions (in fact, not even showing that really!) worked out. I felt this was quite a poignant scene. But then, I'm biased.
PAGE 22
So, everybody gets an in-character moment at the end. Driving off (not into the sunset, it was the wrong moment for that kind of symbolism) is supposed to be symbolic of the group's advancement to the next phase of their lives, and the dialogue is supposed contrast this by showing that nothing really changes. Well, maybe I'm trying to be too deep there, but the panel just felt right to me. I think I'm more happy with pages 21 and 22 than with anything else in the issue.
The song lyrics were only meant to be a couple of lines, to continue the running joke about Don's musical taste. But while searching my Barry Manilow collection for a song I haven't used before in the series, I came across one which provided such a perfect commentary on the scene -- on the entire series, maybe -- that I just had to use more of it.
---
"What is now proved was once only imagined" -- William Blake
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4/3/2005, 22:45
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Serval
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Registered: 09-2004
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 Re: Post Mortem
 Wow!
I didn't know you put all of that effort in! You make it seem effortless somehow. 
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5/3/2005, 0:12
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DrDiamond
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Registered: 03-2005
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Re: Post Mortem
Dam, im never ever gona badger you for a new issue
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5/3/2005, 0:52
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