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So, let’s get into Alan’s Saga of the Swamp Thing #20 script, shall we?

I wrapped up yesterday’s post with the first page of the script proper; for the sake of easy readability and inclusion all in one post, here it is again:

OK, now you’re up to snuff.

Note, again, Alan’s clear, concise outline of his methodology in the opening paragraphs: what the script is to him, what it’s for, how it works, and what the parameters are in his mind for the rest of the team treating each script as a blueprint for the whole — the finished comic. This was utterly unique and unprecedented at the time; I’d never seen a writer do this, nor with such grace and good humor.

Now, here’s where it gets — well, for a professional working in the field, it was quite frankly unprecedented in my (admittedly still at that time rather meager) experience:

OK, yes, cool. Here’s Alan laying out his approach to the comics script form, and his variation on that. It was indeed different than Marty Pasko’s (which I’ll be getting into in a future post), but aspiring comics writers, take note, and consider adopting Alan’s formatting. It became a new standard.

But there’s something far, far more important happening here, in the first pages of his first-ever script for an American publisher:

Notes, via Len, to letterer John Constanza and colorist Tatjana Wood — amazing! Alan was immediately taking into account and talking directly to the entire creative team.

This was, again, unprecedented in my experience up to this point, and given all we went through the subsequent few years with DC, I’ve plenty to confirm that belief and assessment was accurate.

The mainstream publishers — in short, DC and Marvel — didn’t encourage (and at times openly discouraged) communication between the creators working on titles. This was particularly sensitive post-1976/77 revision of the US Copyright laws, and the tentative establishment of work-for-hire as a legal concept that defined the employer (in this case, DC Comics, Inc.) as the creator.

You must grasp that legal principle: work-for-hire contracts legally define the publisher as the author.

We just happen to be the pairs of hands tooling the product called a comic book.

Maintaining the legally-defined work-for-hire authorship of the product — particularly during the very sensitive years post-1977 in which publishers and legal departments were still figuring out what, precisely, work-for-hire meant and required contractually to maintain the publisher’s unchallengable ownership of the comics they published — meant rigorously enforcing the divison of labor.

In this, the editor representing fully the publisher-as-author in reality. (Fortunately for us — and for Swamp Thing and comics in general — neither Len Wein nor Karen Berger, who assumed editorial reins on the title with SOTST #25, discouraged our chemistry via direct contact with one another; as best they could within the parameters of working at DC, they encouraged our chemistry, with occasional reservations.)

Bear in mind, too, that this was all happening only a little over five-to-six years after Neal Adams had led an attempt to form a comicbook creators’ union of some kind. That attempt led by Adams went down shortly before or when Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates and I were in our first year at the Kubert School (fall 1976-spring 1977), if memory serves. I do recall a couple of outside-of-class conversations concerning this attempt to form a union that Rick and me and our classmates had with Dick Giordano, who taught inking during our first year at Kubert School.

Dick was, as ever, measured in what he shared, but I recall being immediately alarmed at the ‘division of labor’ explicit in Adams’ pitch: colorist and letterers were not considered creative collaborators, so to speak, and were not invited to participate in the planned union. That this attempt to form a cartoonists union dissolved rather quickly is a matter of recorded comics history, but I never forgot my own already firm belief at the time that all components of the creative process who had a hand in the page — writer, penciller, inker, letterer, colorist — should be partners at the table.

A beautifully written and drawn page that is badly lettered and/or colored is an eyesore, and we’ve since seen in more ways than I can cite in this limited venue how vital lettering and coloring indeed are to comics: just consider all that Todd Klein brought to Sandman, to name just one of the many works Todd has lettered. Consider what Tatjana Wood brought to Swamp Thing — damn, we were lucky to be working with Tatjana!

Thus, my pleasant amazement reading this first page of Alan’s first-ever Saga of the Swamp Thing script: Alan believed as I did, that all hands in the creative process were creative partners.

It’s a subtle point, and likely meaningless to many, but this was an immediately heartening landmark to me.

Alan’s immediate address to all members of the team went a long way toward my fully investing in the subsequent years we worked so hard together on Swamp Thing.

OK, points made, continuing:

Now, those of you really paying attention since Monday should have already heard alarm bells going off in your head.

“Hey, that’s not the page one in #20 — that’s not the page one Steve posted on Monday!”

That’s right, this script page for page one of SOTST #20 isn’t the page one that saw print.

The page one that saw print was Dan Day’s tableau splash page, a symbolic splash consistent with the kind of work Dan had done with his (sadly late) brother Gene Day. Gene was renowned for his elaborate, evocative use of symbolic splash pages and page designs, which broke out of the Canadian underground and indy scene into mainstream comics with Gene’s beloved (and, ultimately, terminal — quite literally) run on Marvel’s Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu series. Dan was very much carrying on that tradition with his opening page of SOTST #20 –

– but it wasn’t in the script.

Which I’ll get into in the next post about SOTST #20 in a couple of days or so.

(Script pages ©1983, 2009 DC Comics, Inc., though the photocopies are the physical property of yours truly and are only accessible today because I held on to them.)

Tomorrow:
New sketches for sale (the 10% off sale end tonight at midnight, and that isn’t an April’s Fool joke, folks — take advantage of it while you can, a couple folks already have!), and…

SpiderBaby Sketchbooks: Little Brothers, Part 2