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The Comics Code Authority came into existence in 1954 because many comic book publishers feared that government regulation of their product was a' comin'. Most of the major publishers formed an organization called the Comics Magazine Association of America, drew up rules as to what could and could not appear in a Code-approved comic and hired someone to whom each comic had to be submitted for approval before publication.

It was technically a voluntary measure but a lot of smaller publishers quickly found out that it was tough to get distribution and/or advertising if they didn't join. One example: At about the time The Code was instituted, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were attempting to start a new comic book publishing firm called Mainline. According to both men, their distributor, Leader News, told them that if they didn't comply with the C.M.A.A., their books would never get on newsstands.

They went along with it and Mainline's books still didn't get decent distribution, at least in part because Leader News had also distributed Bill Gaines' E.C. line of crime and horror comics like Tales From the Crypt. Those books were largely killed by The Code but both Joe and Jack felt that the major publishers still had it in for Gaines and his distributor. Several other small publishers also folded despite displaying Code approval. Both Joe and Jack felt that was one of the reasons the major publishers banded together: To drive out smaller publishers.

But there were at least two companies then publishing that thrived despite refusing to sign onto The Code. Those two were Gilberton (which put out Classics Illustrated and other somewhat educational comics) and Dell (which put out Disney and a lot of TV and movie-based comics). Both those firms felt that the content of their books protected them and that they should let the wholesomeness of their lines be used to help the companies that had, as one editor who'd worked for Dell back then put it, "damn near destroyed our entire industry."

Later, when Dell Comics split into two lines — Dell and Western Publishing's Gold Key Comics (explained here) — neither outfit subscribed to The Code. Several times in interviews, whoever was the spokesperson for The Code at the moment would be asked about those two holdouts and they'd say something like, "Those companies choose not to participate but they've assured us they unofficially follow our guidelines," whereupon someone from Dell and/or Western would fire off a letter to the C.M.A.A. which said something like, "That's a lie and if you say it again, we'll sue your sorry asses!"

The Comics Code seal of approval/compliance was designed by the great designer of logos for DC Comics, Ira Schnapp. It appeared on the other publishers' wares until Marvel dropped it and stopped submitting their books in 2001 and the other companies withdrew over the next decade. And that was the end of the Comics Code.

A reader of this site, C.K. Bloch, wrote to ask me a whole bunch of questions about the Comics Code and I answered most of them in the above paragraphs. But he also wanted to know…

Do you know of a lot of cases where good stories or art were ruined by the Comics Code demanding changes?

Nothing in my career but I started in 1970. At the inception of The Code, that seems to have happened a lot. The C.M.A.A. had to prove that its rules had teeth and so they demanded way more changes than they did later. Arnold Drake, who started writing for DC around 1956, said that the editors there sometimes put in dialogue or images that were specifically intended to give The Code something to cut. There was also this problem: At the moment The Code was instituted, every publisher had a lot of material in the pipeline that was written and maybe drawn when those rules did not exist. Much of that material had to be laundered to pass The Code.

At Marvel, the guy stuck with making a lot of the alterations on as-yet-unpublished material was the Production Artist, Sol Brodsky. He not only relettered and redrew a lot of stories then in the works, he was told make "before" and "after" stats that the C.M.A.A. could put in press releases to show how the new standards were cleaning up the business.

In the mid-seventies, I had a long talk with Sol about how The Code had affected the business and I came to the conclusion — this is my view but he agreed with it — that the main impact The Code had was that editors, writers and artists more-or-less censored themselves. And they may at times have erred too much on the side of timidity.

Comic books have always been a business where things are being sent to press at the last moment and there were penalty fees if your book got to the engraver or to press late. So people tended to also err on the side of caution. Most did not try things that they were afraid might cause the Code Administrators to demand changes. Changes took time that they often did not have.

I experienced something similar when I worked in animation for Hanna-Barbera or Ruby-Spears or other companies making Saturday morning cartoons. Most shows operated on tight deadlines. If production on a show had to be halted to make changes demanded by the Standards and Practices divisions at the networks, a few days might be lost…and those few days might cost the show a lot of money. It might even jeopardize an episode making its air date.

At least a half-dozen times when I worked for H-B, the network folks (especially at ABC then) would ask for changes and I would talk them out of them…and even if it was only took a day or two to get them to say, "Okay, leave it in," Bill Hanna would already have made the alterations in a rush to get the show off to Korea or Taiwan or wherever it was being animated.

In that conversation with Sol, he admitted to me that Stan Lee or someone else in the office would decide to rewrite something or have something redrawn…and perhaps it was a creative decision or perhaps they were afraid something might not get past The Code and the book was running late. But the change would be made and if anyone asked or the writer or artist objected, the excuse was "The Comics Code made us change it!"

Over the years, I asked several folks who edited comics in the sixties and seventies, the following question: "Did you ever make a change in story or art and when the writer or artist complained, you fibbed and said the Comics Code had demanded it?" Offhand, I recall asking that of Julius Schwartz, George Kashdan, Joe Kubert, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin and maybe one or two others. All of them said yes. And of course, I asked Stan Lee and of course, his answer was, "I don't remember but probably." You got that answer a lot when you asked Stan a question about almost anything. He once said it when I asked him if he'd gone to lunch yet.

I am not saying the Code did not at times insist on changes…and often stupid changes. I am saying that I think it got blamed for a lot of changes it did not demand, especially in later years. And I think its main damage was that its mere presence — the fact that someone was going to look over the work and look for things that were in questionable taste — inhibited a lot of writers and artists and editors.

Ever since that conversation with Sol, I've been skeptical when I hear, "Oh, the Comics Code made us change that" or the assumption by readers that when something was changed that it was the restrictive, puritanical Comics Code at work. Here's an example. At left below, you see the cover of Captain America #101 as it first appeared, drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Syd Shores. At right, we see the cover of an issue that reprinted the same material years later. You will notice that the head of the villain, The Red Skull, is different…

Comic book scholars noticed the difference and the theory/assumption or whatever you wanted to call it, went like this: Jack forgot and drew the old, uglier version of the Red Skull from the forties. When the artwork was submitted to the Comics Code, they thought the villain looked too scary and demanded that it be redrawn…which it was, not by Kirby or Shores. Years later, when the material was reprinted, Marvel used a stat of the cover as it stood before submission to The Code and whoever was at The Code then saw the material differently and let it pass.

That is all entirely possible but I have an alternate theory. When Syd Shores was inking Kirby on Captain America, he often made changes in Jack's work which Stan didn't like. Mr. Shores had been told that any issue now, he would stop being just the inker on the comic and it would take over the penciling of the book so that Kirby could be rotated to another project. That transfer of power never happened but when it was the plan, Shores took some liberties with Jack's art from time to time. And more than a few times, Stan had the work retouched back closer to the way Jack did it.

I don't think we know which artist — Kirby or Shores — made the Red Skull look like he did in the forties when both men drew him. If I had to, I'd bet on Shores but I think this was retouched before the folks at the C.M.A.A. offices saw it. Stan Lee often (very often) would look at a cover that was being ready for publication and ask to have the character's face redone by a staff artist, usually John Romita Sr. If you can't spot a lot of touch-ups on Marvel covers of that era, you aren't paying attention. Romita redraws abound and when they aren't by him, they're by Marie Severin or Herb Trimpe or someone else. Some editors just love to tamper.

Later when the reprint was sent to press, a pre-retouch stat was used but Stan wasn't in charge of covers by then…and if he did see it, by then he didn't care. And the Comics Code never cared.

There was plenty wrong with the Comics Code and we can talk more about that at another time. I just think that arguably-necessary-at-one-time institution didn't make all the obvious changes that comic fans think. And again, a lot of changes were made (or work softened) because someone was afraid of what The Code would say…which is not the same thing as The Code demanding something be changed. That's what I think.

From Derek Teague comes a message with a few questions…

Were you working for Welcome Back, Kotter when DC Comics issued its comic book adaptation during  the summer of 1976? What might have the reaction to it from the cast and crew? Did DC send free comic books to be used as on-air props?

Yes, I was a story editor on the TV show when DC put out the comic and I wrote two issues of it. I posted a bit about that experience back here.

As far as I know, DC never sent them anything and the cast members probably never saw most of the t-shirts, games, coloring books and other Kotter merchandise unless they went looking for that stuff in stores. We did hear occasional grumbling from some about how their likenesses were being exploited without them receiving any compensation.

Actually, if what I heard was correct, the "kids" on the show weren't paid all that much. One of the producers told me I was getting more dough per show than John Travolta and I wasn't taking home a very large paycheck.

If I was getting more than on that show than John, me was more than making up for it with outside gigs. While we were shooting the last few episodes of the only season I worked on, he was commuting to New York on the weekends for prep on Saturday Night Fever.

But that's what happens when you're low on or devoid of credits and you get hired in show business: You kinda have to accept the lowest-possible offer or something close to it. Once you're part of a success, you can demand and get way more. The first time I ran into him post-Kotter, Travolta told me about the airplane he'd just bought.

So I don't recall the cast — The Sweathogs, at least — having any awareness of the comic with one exception. Bobby Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein on the show, once saw some black-and-white Xeroxes of the first of the two issues I wrote of the comic book. I don't recall why I had them in my office or how he happened to see them but he flipped through the packet and said, "A little light on Epstein," which was the same thing he said about every single script we taped that season.

Back to Derek's message…

At the time, I was entering high school and the bloom seemed to be off the rose. My fellow ninth graders didn't think WBK was cool anymore – especially since ABC mistakenly shifted the program to lead off its Thursday night line-up.

I'm curious why you think that was a mistake since I believe the show won its time slot every single week that season.

I've noticed that, in the second season of Kotter that the writers were painstakingly shoving a new catchphrase down the viewers' throats, particularly "I'm so confused," which Vinnie Barbarino would utter when he was flustered. It seemed to have been used in a handful of consecutive episodes until it was abruptly and ultimately dropped.

What's it like when a second-generation catchphrase (or any catchphrase for that matter) just fizzles out just doesn't catch on?

For the most part, the writers on the show only wrote any of those lines once…the first time each line appeared in a script. Thereafter, they reappeared for a simple reason: They'd gotten huge laughs. The actor insisted on saying it and if it got a laugh during the dress rehearsal, it stayed in. It was kind of like, "Well, if he's going to say his catchphrase, I'm gonna say my catchphrase." I think we did put Horshack's "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" into scripts few times because he was going to say it, no matter what and we could pick a more appropriate spot for it. Our live audience wasn't going to leave until they heard it.

The main problem for me with the catchphrases is that Kotter was a half-hour show and while I don't recall the exact numbers, I think after you subtracted time for the opening teaser and credits, the closing credits and all those dangled commercials, we had something like 21 minutes. Each catchphrase got laughter and applause totaling about 30 seconds so if Barbarino, Horshack, Epstein and Washington each uttered two catchphrases in an episode, that was another four minutes we lost.

It's kinda rough to do a story featuring 6-7 people in 17 minutes and when we ran long, as we usually did, the decree from our Exec Producer was, "Cut story, not laughs." A frequently-heard phrase from his office was "Funny is money, funny is money."

With occasional exceptions — a show like M*A*S*H for instance — comedy on TV is best done in front of a properly-warmed-up live audience. But there's an easy trap there to fall into: Live audiences love the familiar. Imagine if Tony Bennett hosted a nightly program like The Tonight Show. If every single night he sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," the live audiences would always have been thrilled. And the same kind of folks sitting at home would have grabbed for their remotes and said, "Let's see what else is on!"

I think a lot of shows, especially those on every night like David Letterman's or Conan O'Brien's, lost audience share by catering too much to the few hundred people in the studio instead of the few million at home. And I think Welcome Back, Kotter was among a whole lotta shows that hastened their own demises by giving their live audiences the catchphrases and other elements they'd come to see and hear in person…and my, this was a long reply. Thanks for setting me off on this topic, Derek.

The way registration for Comic-Con works is that some portion of the available badges is put up for purchase as "Returning Registration," meaning that if you attended the last con, you can purchase badges for this one. This sale is then followed by "Open Registration" on another date and on that date, anyone can try to purchase badges. Later on, there may be additional (but limited) opportunities but those two dates are when most of the badges that are going to be sold are sold.

Returning Registration was last Saturday and the anecdotal reports I've heard said that it went smoothly. That is not to say that everyone who wanted badges got them but the ones who got them seem to have gotten them with a minimum of stress and frustration. There will always be those who are unable to score badges because of simply math. The convention center can hold X number of people and the number of people who want to attend is more like ten times X. Or more.

Open Registration takes place Saturday, November 18, 2023 commencing at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. The Virtual Waiting Room opens an hour before that. You can find out more on this page and on this page. Our friends over at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog have written up their own unofficial guide that may also be helpful and you can read it here.

I would recommend digesting all this information well before the day, especially the part about having a Member I.D. in advance. I would also recommend keeping in mind that this is basically a lottery and not everyone can win. Until such time as the convention becomes a lot less popular — like, say, when I achieve my Master Plan to someday host all the panels and making sure every one of them is about Groo — there will always be way more people who want to attend than the con can accommodate. Just remember: It's not Real Life. It's Comic-Con, Jake.

And you probably will be able to get into WonderCon — run by the same people but it's smaller. That's at the Anaheim Convention Center from March 29 to March 31 next year. Badges for that will be on-sale soon.

I have a suitcase that I took with me to Comic-Con in San Diego last July and have not unpacked. Nonetheless, it is time for those who will need to procure badges to attend next year's Comic-Con International to start thinking about this. The convention next year will be July 25-28, 2024 at — where else? — the San Diego Convention Center. Preview Night will be July 24 and all of the parking spaces for the convention are already sold out.

No, I'm kidding about the parking spaces. Or maybe I'm just about 280 days early. Either way, I'm not kidding when I tell you that Returning Registration will take place on Saturday, November 4. Returning Registration is for those who purchased a badge for this past Comic-Con and didn't request a refund. At a later date, there will be a sale called Open Registration in which anyone, returnee or not, can compete to purchase badges.

Details of all this can be found on this page where they'll first tell you that you have to a valid Comic-Con Member ID. By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that my Comic-Con Member ID number is #1.

If any of what's over there seems confusing, you might get straightened out by visiting our friends at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. They are, as they boast, unofficial but they sure know a lot about how Comic-Con works. Keep an eye on their site and the official site for the latest news. Don't count on me to bring it to you.

This is Part 7 and it follows Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. There will be no Part 8, at least for now.

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One of the most-asked questions of my life — in person and via e-mail — is why at Comic-Con each year, I host or appear on so many panels. This past con, the number was 14 and no, that's not my record. In 2008, I did 17. Some folks think that's nuts and, of course, they're right. It is absolutely nuts. But the way I see it is that if you can't be nuts at Comic-Con, where can you be nuts?

The thing is: I like being at Comic-Con and I don't know what else I'd do with myself there if I didn't have some double-digit number of panels. In the previous part of this series, I listed a number of things that I was doing at Comic-Con that I was slowly deciding I didn't really enjoy doing.

I sorta/kinda/more or less appeared on my first Comic-Con panel at the first Comic-Con in 1970. It was not on whatever schedule they had. There was a fellow named Mark Hanerfeld who sorta/kinda/more or less worked for DC Comics in New York. I'd met him in their offices a month earlier. He was sorta/kinda/more or less an intern there and was paid occasionally for writing a text page or letter column.

Mark loved comics, wanted to be a part of that world and had some income sources that made it possible for him to, in effect, work for free for DC. He later became a paid assistant editor there…and a comic book character. The host of the House of Secrets comic, a bearded gent named Abel.

That first Comic-Con in San Diego coincided with a trip Mark made to visit relatives in Los Angeles so he stopped in. Someone — I'm fairly sure it was Shel Dorf — quickly announced a panel in which Mark, as some sort of official representative of DC Comics, would talk about what the company had planned for the future. Mark had me join him on this impromptu panel before, as I recall, about twenty people.

In case I haven't made it clear, DC had not sent Mark to this con. He'd just decided to go and he paid his own way there. But when he got back to New York, he began telling everyone about the terrific convention he'd attended in San Diego. He had much to do with the fact that over the next few years, people in the New York industry began making the trek, often at their own expense, to what we now know as Comic-Con International.

I don't recall any panels at the second San Diego Con in 1971 but I have a fuzzy memory of another impromptu panel at the '72, which was the first of many held at the El Cortez Hotel in downtown San Diego. If I'm right, it wasn't even listed on the programming schedule but was thrown together at the last minute with a number of convention guests who didn't really have much in common with each other.

That was the problem with a lot of panels at the first comic conventions I attended — in San Diego or elsewhere. Someone thought that any random grouping of professionals could constitute an interesting panel. Well no, not if they worked in very different capacities and, as was occasionally the case, they'd never even heard of each other.

I am certain though that at the 1973 con, which was held at a Sheraton on Harbor Island, there was a Writers' Panel consisting of just my friend Mike Friedrich and me. For many years after, I was always on a Writers' Panel not just at San Diego conventions but at every con I attended. They were all pretty much the same panel in terms of what was said and I think Mike was on several of them with me.

For a long time, I was on two or three panels per year at what didn't become known as Comic-Con International until 1995. Sometimes, I was the moderator, sometimes not. Sometimes, they were fun, sometimes they were not. They were more fun later when I had more say in who was on those panels and what they'd be about. The number of panels with which I was involved slowly grew from year to year.

At one point, someone from the convention called and asked if I'd host the almost-annual spotlight panel on Ray Bradbury…and how could anyone turn that down? For several years, I got to ask questions of one of the greatest writers alive for 60 (once, I think, 90) minutes…and I also got to sit down. As I mentioned in the last part, I liked having a place to sit down at the con somewhere I didn't feel isolated from the rest of the convention or expected to sell things or sign books.

At the 1997 Comic-Con, Al Williamson approached me. Al, as I suspect you know, was one of the best artists who ever worked in comics but you may not know what a terrific guy he was. We'd met before but that year as I recall, he had seen me interviewing another great artist and guy, George Tuska, on a panel. Mr. Tuska was quite hard of hearing but I sat as close as possible to him and talked slowly and managed to get some good answers out of him.

Al loved Tuska as both an artist and a human being and he thanked me for the effort. Then he said, "The convention has me doing one of those 'spotlight panels' in an hour. I don't think they get that I'm an artist, not a talker. I wouldn't even know how to start such a thing but I really liked the way you interviewed George. Would you interview me like that for my spotlight?"

Of course I would. I got to talk with Al Williamson for an hour or so and get him talking about the things that were of interest to me. Al told other professionals to ask for me and then when the convention invited some older comic book writer or artist and that person was uneasy about speaking in front of an audience, they'd tell him, "We've got a guy here who can make it real easy for you."

I mention Al because I think he was the one who made me realize that I was being useful at the con and could be more so…by doing something I enjoyed. I think it was because of him that I went to whoever was then doing the programming for the con — Gary Sassaman, most likely — and said, "Assign me to as many panels as you want."

Understand please that I'm not saying I started doing panels at Comic-Con in 1997 because Al Williamson suggested it. I was doing panels before that. He was just the one who made me realize how much I enjoyed it and how I'd found the best way for me to "do" Comic-Con. This will probably cause some of you to scratch your collective heads and say something like…

Let me get this straight, Evanier. You just took seven whole posts on your blog to tell us that to "do" Comic-Con, we should figure out what we enjoy doing there and do more of it and also figure out what we don't enjoy there and to the extent possible, do less of it? Is that really what it took you seven parts to tell us?

Yes. Yes, it is. And call me stupid if you like but it took me more than twenty-five Comic-Cons to figure that out.

Part 1 can be read here. Part 2 can be read here. Part 3 can be read here. Which brings us to Part 4…

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Shortly after this year's Comic-Con, I read a post online — I'm not sure where — where someone accused Comic-Con of failing to "evolve." And at the same time, the same person was accusing the Con of changing and wishing it was more like it used to be. I didn't quite understand the post so I bookmarked it so I could go back and spend more time with it…and now I can't find it.

As someone who has now been to 55 of these, I am well aware that Comic-Con has changed over the years…and guess what? The comic book industry has changed, too. DC Comics and Marvel are now companies that are largely about the exploitation of their properties in films, on TV, in videogames and various additional forms other than printed-on-paper comic books. There are also dozens of new companies, some with very different business models and hundreds of small publishers or creators who self-publish.

Something else that has changed: The ways in both new comic books and old ones are sold. One reason there aren't more dealers selling old comics there is that many vendors now find it easier and/or more lucrative to sell via online sites like eBay or online auctions. Why lug around crates of old books when you can (often) get a better price without shlepping them great distances, carrying them into the convention center, setting up a booth, carrying the crates back out to a van, driving them home, taking them back inside wherever you store them, etc.?

Also, here are two basic rules of conventions: The greater the attendance, the more they charge for exhibitor space. And the more they charge for exhibitor space, the less likely dealers are to bring cheap comics. That's not just Comic-Con. That's all conventions. If you're looking for real inexpensive old comics, a big convention is not the place to find them.

Finally: A core part of Comic-Con has always been the comic book creators. Over the years at these events, I had the honor/privilege/duty (call it what you like) of interviewing people like Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, John Romita, Gene Colan, Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Joe Sinnott, Will Elder, Al Williamson, John Buscema, Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, Murphy Anderson, Chuck Cuidera, Irwin Hasen, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Dan DeCarlo, John Broome, Gardner Fox, Julius Schwartz, Russ Heath, Joe Giella, Chase Craig, Roger Armstrong, Jim Mooney, George Gladir, Sid Jacobson, Irv Novick, Ric Estrada, Jack Davis, Frank Kelly Freas, Nick Cardy, Victor Gorelick, Kurt Schaffenberger, Stan Lee, Sam Glanzman, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Vince Sullivan, Dan Barry, Lee Ames, Fred Guardineer, Joe Simon, Jack Kamen, Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, Martin Nodell, Dick Ayers, Paul Norris, Bill Lignante, Denny O'Neil, Dan Spiegle, Frank Springer, Mel Keefer, Tom Gill, Herb Trimpe, Leonard Starr, Stan Goldberg and Allen Bellman.

That's 61 names and I could probably list 61 more.

Comic-Con no longer has people like that around. I can't put together a Golden Age Panel or a Silver Age Panel like we used to do and some critics seem to be blaming the convention for this instead of the passage of time. (In case you didn't realize it, the 61 people in the above list have all passed away. In some recent years like this one, I have been unable to even assemble a panel of folks who worked on comics in the seventies. There are many still with us but they either aren't at the con or don't want to leave their tables, where they're making money, for even an hour.)

There are panels about the newer writers and artists. Those of you who are interested in hearing creators talk about their work should try attending some of them. Some of them are very interesting but they're no longer about the birth of the industry…or when folks in my age bracket first discovered comic books and began collecting.

I just don't understand the "Comic-Con needs to evolve" criticism. It seems to me that it has evolved because the world and the industry have evolved. But then I also don't understand when some of the same complainers insist that "Comic-Con needs to get back to its roots" because that's a wish that it would devolve.

If you would like to influence the direction in which Comic-Con goes, I have two suggestions to make. There are two ways you can influence that. One is by showing up and supporting the kind of programming you would like to see more of. No convention programs for empty seats.

A pet peeve of mine back when I was doing all those panels with the above 61 is that there were attendees who would tell me there should be more such panels…and then when we did them, they didn't show up for them. I told this story here before a couple times about one such no-show…

[He] was upset that so much of the Comic-Con wasn't about comics and he felt, I guess, that I'd concur and would rush off to do something about it…maybe throw Robert Downey Jr out of the hall or something. Instead, I told him about that great panel we did on the Golden Age of Batman with Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff and Lew Schwartz. If you're interested in the history of comics, it doesn't get any more historical than that. I then said to this fellow who was complaining about the con not being about that kind of thing, "I didn't see you there."

And so help me, he replied, "I couldn't be there. I had to get in line to see the 24 panel with Kiefer Sutherland."

That kind of thing happened a lot more often than you might think. So what I suggest is that you support the kind of programming you want to see by actually attending it when it's offered…and this next point is so important, I'll put it in all caps: TALK IT UP ON SOCIAL MEDIA. That helps, people. It really helps and not just for Comic-Con. If you see a great presentation, write about it on Facebook or Instagram or Tik-Tok or whatever alias Twitter is going by this week. You have some power to influence the programming at conventions. Use it.

That's about all I have to say this time out. There will be at least one other part in this series soon but they all go to my main point, which is that you can't just show up at Comic-Con and have the best possible time. You need to understand the event you're attending and understand what you want to get out of it. Once you do both those things, you can indeed have the best possible time. In that next part, I'll tell you some of the many mistakes I made before I learned what the hell I was doing there.

I'd forgotten, as I do every year, that the 4.5 days of Comic-Con come with several days of prep and several more of recovery…and time expands and compresses. Right this minute, I feel like Saturday of this past Comic-Con was months ago…but seven days ago as of this moment, I was scurrying to meet an editor for Breakfast at 8:30 to discuss a project I may or may not write.

That was followed by being on the Dungeons & Dragons panel at 10 AM, hosting Quick Draw! at 11:45 which led to the Cartoon Voices 1 panel at 1 PM, followed by being on Maggie Thompson's panel at 3:00, hosting the History of Cartoon Voices panel at 4:30, doing an interview at 6:30 and meeting friends for dinner at 8. Today, I just exhausted myself typing that last sentence.

Before I forget: Yes, I heard that several folks, including a few I was around at the con, came down with COVID. I tested. I'm fine. I wish them only the easiest of full recoveries.

And yes, I know that I can print out the convention souvenir book PDF myself but that does not result in a book that in any way resembles the book that would have resulted if they'd printed it out like the others on my shelf. That would just give me a lot of 8½ by 11 sheets that were not bound in book format. I'm not faulting the convention for saving money on this. I just would like the option of ordering a printed/bound version of the souvenir book.

Getting back to the hectic pace of the con: It's one of the things I like about it. I wouldn't/couldn't live that way all year but it's fun as an occasional change of scenery and schedule. It's fun to be around so many people having such a good time and some of those people are friends I don't get to see except at conventions. I especially enjoy living for a few days in an environment where it's utterly impossible to be bored; where everywhere you turn, there's someone interesting to talk to or something interesting to look at.

If you went and you didn't have the time of your life, I'd like to give you the following advice: You need to learn how to "do" Comic-Con.

In the summer of 1969 when I was 17 years old, I went to Disneyland for the first time. I'm not sure I can explain why a kid born and raised in Southern California hadn't made it there before then but I hadn't. That year, my pal Dwight Decker and I went for a day and we made just about every possible mistake starting with the erroneous assumption that you could experience Disneyland in one day. We took a bus there and back. I think we were on that bus (and some connecting buses we had to take to get to and from that bus) for more hours than all the collective time we spent on Disneyland rides.

We didn't know where to eat. We didn't know where to go. There were things we knew were somewhere in Disneyland that sounded like fun but we didn't know where they were and we certainly hadn't plotted out any sort of route that would take us from one to the other. I remember experiencing Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, "It's a Small World," The Carousel of Progress, the monorail and not much else before we had to catch the bus home. We both slept most of the ride back.

Years later, I learned how to "do" Disneyland and had some much better times there.

In the Summer of 1970, one year after Dwight and I didn't "do" Disneyland the right way, my friend Steve Sherman and I didn't "do" New York the right way. We had some great experiences visiting the offices of DC Comics, Marvel and MAD magazine. We spent a day with Steve Ditko. We attended our first comic book convention. So much of it was wonderful and exciting…

…but we didn't know where to stay or where to eat or how to get around. We let the cab driver from the airport into Manhattan swindle us out of some cash. There were great shows playing on Broadway — shows I wish I'd seen — but we somehow didn't allow for that in our schedule. (The original production of Company was in its third month. Was I smart enough to go see it? No, I was not smart enough to go see it. I was also not smart enough to go see the original production of 1776 or several others then playing. James Coco in Last of the Red Hot Lovers or Maureen Stapleton in Plaza Suite might have been nice.)

Again: Years later, I learned how to "do" New York and had some much better times there.

And I had to learn to "do" Comic-Con. This is Part One of a two-part article. In a day or two, I'll tell you what I learned and how I learned it and why, though it might not apply at all to you, what I learned might help you figure out how you should "do" Comic-Con.

This was my fifty-fifth Comic-Con and one of the most enjoyable. A lot of folks felt that way and I see some online debates on whether that was because of the dearth of Big Stars or in spite of the dearth of Big Stars. Here's my take on it…

The Big Stars didn't matter. And to most of the 130,000+ attendees each year over the last decade or two, they never really have.

Here's an excerpt from Hollywood Reporter that, I think, gets it all wrong…

This was the year that San Diego Comic-Con was supposed to collapse. After all, with Hollywood studios pulling out and stars not able to promote their work, all due to the double whammy of the actors and writers strikes, why would people even bother to attend?

Well, about 150,000 attendees did, indeed, show up. There were no mass hotel cancellations nor mass refunds issued for badges, which were purchased months in advance. And an interesting thing happened on the way to the Comic-Con apocalypse. There was a renewed focus on comics and other graphic arts, even as Hollywood showed up in a diminished capacity.

Who said this was the year the con was supposed to collapse? Answer: The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets that don't seem to understand the event they cover every year. A more correct lede to the story would have acknowledged that all the talk about the con possibly being some kind of disaster was baseless and way off-target.

Comic-Con is one of the hottest tickets in this country. Each year when badges go on sale, they're snatched up faster than you can say "Clark Kent." People fight over them. There was never going to be a flood of mass refunds and if there had been, every one of those tickets would have been resold immediately.

Why do all these people want to be there? If you think it's just the previews of new movies, you don't "get" Comic-Con. It's that but it's also about comic books and comic strips and animation and gaming (video or otherwise) and fantasy art and cosplay and Star Trek and Star Wars and all kinds of collectibles and a dozen-or-so other things. Some don't interest me in the slightest just as some don't interest you in the slightest…and the beauty of Comic-Con is that they don't have to. You can just go for one or two of those interests and there's plenty about them there to keep you interested.

The strikes that kept the TV and movie promotions away were never going to doom Comic-Con. There are too many other things there for the absence of Hollywood to leave much of a void. The confusion is easily explainable: When the mainstream press covers Comic-Con, that's all they really care about. (Well, sometimes because the cosplayers make for good photo and video opportunities, the press cares a little about them. But that's about it.)

The "Comic-Con apocalypse" was, just like John F. Kennedy Jr. turning up alive to become Donald Trump's running mate, a wild fantasy. How ironic that it was about an institution than embraces and welcomes wild fantasies. But as far as I'm concerned, the lesson to be learned from the 2023 Comic-Con International is that the movie previews and TV personalities never mattered that much. Truth to tell, I'd be more worried for the future of Comic-Con if some year, there was no one in the building selling Funko Pop figurines.

The 2023 Comic-Con International in San Diego commences with Preview Night from 6 PM to 9 PM on Wednesday evening, July 19. This is basically your chance to walk around the main Exhibit Hall with slightly fewer folks clogging the aisles. The real action starts the next day and here's what I'll be up to…

Thursday, July 20 — 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM in Room 32AB
SPOTLIGHT ON BARBARA FRIEDLANDER
Fresh out of high school in the sixties, Barbara Friedlander got a job at DC Comics and quickly ascended to a job in the editorial division working with or alongside, among many others, Carmine Infantino, Jack Miller, Robert Kanigher, Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz, and Joe Orlando. What was it like to work in that office on DC's romance comics and on her creation, Swing With Scooter? Comic-Con Special Guest Mark Evanier will be quizzing her — and on Friday evening at the Eisner Awards, he'll be presenting Barbara with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.

Thursday, July 20 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a new and important book that is raising funds to aid people whose lives have been devastated by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Some of the top names in comics have donated their time and artistry to this book, which is debuting at Comic-Con. Come join several of those folks as they talk about their stories and why this project is so important. Mark Evanier, John Layman, Stan Sakai and Billy Tucci will be on hand, as well as Richard Walden, the founder of Operation USA, the charity that is funneling funds to help the struggling people of Ukraine. Moderated by book organizer Scott Dunbier.

Thursday, July 20 — 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM at the Dark Horse Booth
I will be signing stuff, especially copies of Groo in the Wild #1 along with colorist Carrie Strachan at Booth 2416.

Friday, July 21 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
The brilliant newspaper strip Pogo was created, written and drawn by one of the great geniuses of comic art, Walt Kelly. It's currently being reprinted in full in a series of books from Fantagraphics, one of which is up for an Eisner Award tonight. Meanwhile, fans of Mr. Kelly and his zany swamp denizens can gather to discuss him, his work, and what it was that made his cartooning so very special. Come hear from artist Steve Leialoha, scholar Maggie Thompson, Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, and the co-editors of the current reprint series, Eric Reynolds and your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Friday, July 21 — 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 10
THE GROO PANEL
For 40+ years, the irrepressible (and ignorant) barbarian Groo the Wanderer has wandered the land and through comic book shops making good things bad, bad things worse, and all things hilarious. What's it like to work on this comic with master cartoonist Sergio Aragonés? Since Sergio isn't attending the con this year, these three people can speak freely about the experience: letterer (and creator of Usagi Yojimbo) Stan Sakai, colorist Carrie Strachan and a guy named Mark Evanier who does something on the comic but we don't know what. Also, they'll try to phone Sergio, which will be great fun if it works and probably funnier if it doesn't.

Saturday, July 22 — 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM in Room 6DE
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: AN ANIMATED ANNIVERSARY
Mark Evanier (show developer), Katie Leigh (voice of Sheila), David M. Booher (writer, IDW's Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures), Frank Todaro (voice actor, Netflix's The Cuphead Show), and Luke Gygax (son of D&D creator Gary Gygax) discuss the legendary tabletop game's 40th anniversary as a Saturday morning cartoon from the perspective of the talent who worked on the show and today's creatives who grew up on it. The session will be moderated by TJ Shevlin (2023 Eisner Awards judge).

Saturday, July 22 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
No matter when you're reading this — hopefully before the event — run and get a seat for Quick Draw!, the fastest and funniest presentation at Comic-Con. Your Quick Draw quizmaster Mark Evanier will be putting three of the swiftest cartoonists in the business to the test, inventing well-projected humor on the spot. Competing this year are cartoonist and Comic-Con co-founder Scott Shaw!, MAD magazine's Tom Richmond, and Disney legend Floyd Norman. As usual, there will be no wagering on the outcome.

Saturday, July 22 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Once again, Mark Evanier has assembled a roster of some of the most-heard performers in the world of animation, and they're here to tell you what they do, how they do it and then demonstrate it. The dais includes Adam McArthur (Star vs. the Forces of Evil), Elle Newlands (Lego Marvel's Avengers), Keith Scott (Bullwinkle Moose), Bill Farmer (Goofy, Pluto), Dave Fennoy (Batman, Transformers) and Jessica DiCicco (The Emperor's New School, Muppet Babies). And as usual, the actors will mangle a classic fairy tale for your enjoyment.

Saturday, July 22 — 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM in Room 4
MAGGIE THOMPSON SPOTLIGHT: Wrangling History (How to Preserve the Past So We Can Read in the Future)
As we lose creators, memories fade, and collectibles are lost or damaged, what can be done to hang onto the creations and establish the facts? Maggie is joined by writer and producer Mark Evanier, Columbia University comics and cartoons curator Karen Green, and Abrams ComicArts editor-in-chief Charles Kochman.

Saturday, July 22 — 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE HISTORY OF CARTOON VOICES
Keith Scott is one of the top voice actors and impressionists in Australia, and he's also an expert on cartoon voices for theatrical cartoons in this country. He's making a rare visit to America this year and he'll be talking about Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Walt Disney, and many you've never heard of. Don't miss this rare chance to hear all about how cartoons learned to talk, with not only Keith but also historians Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin and your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It's a Comic-Con tradition to assemble on Sunday morning to remember the man some still call, and with good reason, The King of the Comics. His life and career will be discussed by folks who knew him or wish they did. They include writer Tom King, Jack's grandson Jeremy Kirby, Kirby experts Bruce Simon, Mark Badger and Jon Cooke, attorney Paul S. Levine and your moderator, former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Cartoon Voices I on Saturday will be so wonderful that we'll need another such panel on Sunday with other top actors in the animation-voicing profession. This time, moderator Mark Evanier will welcome Maurice LaMarche (Futurama, Pinky and the Brain), Anna Brisbin (Final Fantasy VII Remake), Fred Tatasciore (Team America, The Hulk), Frank Todaro (The Cuphead Show, Transformers), and Courtney Lin (Monster High, Rainbow High).

Sunday, July 23 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 7AB
COVER STORY
There have been comic book publishers who believed that what they put inside the comic didn't matter much — that readers decide to buy or not to buy because of the cover. It's arguable, but a great cover never hurt a book. On this panel, your host Mark Evanier welcomes four artists who have drawn great covers: Todd McFarlane (Spawn, Spider-Man), Becky Cloonan (Batman, Gotham Academy; this year's Comic-Con Souvenir Book cover), Joe Quesada (Daredevil, Spider-Man), and J. Scott Campbell (Danger Girl, Amazing Spider-Man).

Sunday, July 23 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
Are you interested in a career in the highly competitive world of voiceover? There are plenty of folks who will take your money to advise you, but you can get a ton of information for free with no strings attached at this panel. Two very busy voice actors (Vanessa Marshall and Gregg Berger), a top agent (Cathey Lizzio of C.E.S.D.), and a voice director (your moderator, Mark Evanier) will tell you how one goes about learning the craft, breaking into the business, staying in the business, and maybe even making a living in the business. This panel is not for entertainment. It's for enlightenment.

Each and every item above is subject to change for reasons that even I may not be able to explain. The entire programming schedule can be found and studied on this page.

Last year in this space, I wrote — and this is a quote, you can go check it — that "as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much." Clearly, they're well on their way to doing that but they haven't yet…so this year I will only be writing my name on things at the Dark Horse booth from 2 PM until 2:45 on Thursday. Other than that, you may be able to catch me before or after panels. Please don't try it before or after Quick Draw!

We are 33 days from the opening of this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Yes, I know you can't believe it because you just got back from last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and haven't even unpacked yet but it's true. I have a calendar that proves it.

I will be hosting or appearing on 13 panels this year. None of them will have my partner Sergio Aragonés because he is not attending the convention this time around. He's in fine health. He just isn't attending the convention.

I cannot help you if you're searching desperately for lodging during the convention but perhaps this page can be of assistance.

I cannot help you if you're searching desperately for badges for the convention but if you're willing to shell out Big Bucks, there are these auctions on eBay. They are legit but they will be over soon so don't dawdle.

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The San Diego Convention Center is located on Harbor Drive in that town. This year, as they have done with the last few cons, the city will be closing Harbor Drive between First Avenue and Park Boulevard during convention hours and for a few hours before and after each day. If you have purchased parking at the convention center — or I guess if you're driving an ambulance with the siren blaring and someone bleeding in the back — you can get in but otherwise, no cars, bikes, scooters, skateboards, etc.

I suppose this is a wise idea but last year, it made it very tough for my lady friend and myself to get from our hotel to the Bayfront Hilton where I was a presenter for the Eisner Awards. We took an Uber and even with the driver's GPS and me consulting Waze on my phone, we could not figure out a route from Point A to Point B. I even suggested he drive us to the airport on the assumption that once you were there, a GPS had to be able to find a path between the airport and a Hilton.

We didn't try that but we should have. As it was, the best our driver could do was drop us off almost (it felt) as far from the Bayfront Hilton as I am now, sitting in my home in Los Angeles. Ubering back was easy later since they reopened Harbor Drive after 10 PM. But getting there was such a long walk that I was considering turning back to our hotel and presenting the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing to one of the parking valets there. Don't laugh. It would have been cheaper than tipping.

Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego in 40 days. The Writers Guild (the WGA) is on strike. The Actors' union may go on strike. How might these strikes affect the con? The show biz news site Deadline has an article up that says, among other things…

The most immediate place where a possible SAG-AFTRA strike will be felt is at San Diego Comic-Con, which runs July 19-23. Already, the WGA strike is preventing TV creators from heading there and sitting on panels. The prospect of a starless geek fest would gut a conference that annually attracts 135,000 attendees and which fully returned to an in-person event only last year after a two-year Covid hiatus. Many studios and networks are in a wait-and-see-mode as to how they'll trumpet shows and movies. Some such as HBO are skipping because there aren't any immediate fanboy series on the horizon. At the bare minimum, a filmmaker or producer can venture down to Hall H with footage in hand to show off.

A Comic-Con spokesperson tells Deadline: "With regard to the strike and its possible effects on Comic-Con, we tend to refrain from speculation or forecasting. I will say, our hope is for a speedy resolution that will prove beneficial to all parties and allow everyone to continue the work they love. Until then, we continue to diligently work on our summer event in the hopes of making it as fun, educational, and celebratory as in years past."

Okay, first off: SAG-AFTRA may not strike or a strike could easily be settled by July 19. I'm not sure if a strike matters if the studios are opting out of presenting at Comic-Con for the promotional value. So maybe there could be very few appearances at the con by superstars of TV and the movies. So what? The badges are sold. They'll be used. Some of the folks who camp out in Hall H for most of the con might just wander over to other parts of the building and discover other things that merit their attention. A few of them might even go into the Exhibit Hall and buy stuff.

And no one who is disappointed that their favorite celebs aren't there this time is going to hold it against the convention. Nor will they hesitate to buy badges next year when all this will (presumably) be long-settled.

Remember: 135,000+ people flock to Comic-Con each year. Hall H only holds 6,000 of them and the other big rooms wherein Hollywood panels take place hold less. That may be the only part of the whole shebang that interests Deadline but the sheer numbers tell you that most people who go to Comic-Con don't go to those presentations. The star-fueled promotions make headlines but the con is and always has been about so much more than just the hyping of new movies and new TV shows.

I know it doesn't feel that way because that's all the press cares about. But we shouldn't let that spoil our fun.

Remember too that if there is a SAG-AFTRA strike, it will be about the contract that doesn't cover animation or videogames. There will be no strike this summer in those areas. There may be some WGA-covered projects that won't have actors at the con to promote the product but there will be plenty of cartoons 'n' games that are unaffected. I may be missing something but I don't see the problem with maybe not having stellar media celebrities on the premises this one time. I even think the con would remain at capacity if they left and never came back.

As I have said several times on the blog, there are many different ways to write a comic book…and here I'm talking about page format and the way a writer conveys what he or she wants the artist to draw. Let me repeat that and put it in boldface for emphasis: THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT WAYS TO WRITE A COMIC BOOK. It has been my experience in 50+ years of working in this industry that most writers and editors know a grand total of two, if that many.

In this article, I'm going to tell you about one method but first, an anecdote: One day in the eighties, I was at a comic book convention and I happened to have a copy of a script that Carl Barks (i.e., The Great Carl Barks) had written for Gold Key's Junior Woodchucks comic book. I showed it to Julius Schwartz, who most of you know was a longtime editor of comic books for DC. It was in the format that I'm about to describe.

Mr. Schwartz looked at it and said, "Hey, that's an unusual way to write a comic book!" I said, "No, it isn't. Thousands of published comic book stories have been written this way, especially funny comics, especially of the 'funny animal' variety." Julie looked at me like I'd just told him I was from the planet Twylo and was here to enslave mankind with walnuts. He said, in an incredulous tone, "Really?"

This is Julius Schwartz, who then had been editing comic books since the original lungfish crawled onto dry land. And he had no idea a lot of comic books were ever written that way.

Most everyone in or around the field knows of The Full Script Method in which the writer types out a script which specifies how many panels go on each page and then describes what is to be drawn in each panel and he or she supplies the captions, word balloons and sound effects. Within this format, there are many variations of how this information is arranged on a page but it's basically one method. Zillions of great comics have been done this way along, of course, with some not-so-great.

There's also The Marvel Method, which most of you know about. In this method, the comic starts with a plot which may be very detailed or fairly loose or it could even be one sentence like "[Name of Hero] fights [Name of Villain]." It may even be verbal.

This "plot" may have come from the writer, it may have come from the artist or in some cases, it may have come from a third, perhaps uncredited person or a committee meeting. The penciler draws the comic before dialogue and captions are written and may, depending on how detailed the plot is, make up a little or some or most or even all of the story. The writer composes the words later to fit what the penciler has drawn. Again, this system has yielded countless great comics along with the not-great.

But in all my years of writing about comic books or discussing them with others, I've seen precious little mention of what I am calling here The Sketch Method. That's the name I've given it because, like I said, very few people ever discuss this method and so I've never heard of a commonly-used name for it. It is most easily explained by showing you an example. Here is the script for a page from a Bugs Bunny comic book. It's on the left and next to it is the printed page that was drawn from that script. If you click on the image below, it will get much larger on your computer screen…

Let me get some credits out of the way here. The finished page was penciled by Tom McKimson, who I wrote about in this message. I'm not sure who inked it but there's a good chance it was a gent named Joe Prince. The editor markings on the script were done by Chase Craig, who was the Senior Editor for many years at Western's Los Angeles office and most of the time I wrote for them, he was my boss. The lettering was by Bill Spicer, who was the main letterer for that office for a long time.

The script on the left was by John Brady…and I'm afraid I don't know much about Mr. Brady other than that he was a cartoonist, he sometimes drew comics instead of just writing them and he was amazingly productive. I can't back this up with any hard numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if he belongs in a list of The Ten Most Prolific Comic Book Writers of All Time.

He sketched his scripts out like you see…on 8-and-a-half by 11" typing paper and he often partially colored them with colored pencils. This puzzled me when I first saw his scripts in the Western Publishing office since those scripts were never seen by the mysterious people who colored Gold Key Comics. (I'll tell you about them one of these days. Wanna know their names? So did I but even Chase didn't know.)

I asked Chase why Brady's scripts were colored like that and he said, "John enjoys doing them that way." That, he assured me, was the only reason.

Anyway, as you've no doubt figured out by now: In what I call The Sketch Method, the writer just draws out the comic page in rough form. An awful lot of the writers who wrote Dell and Gold Key comics for Western Publishing worked this way. It was more common on the "funny animal" comics but it was done on adventure titles, too. There were issues of Magnus, Robot Fighter done this way. It was used a lot at Archie and Harvey…and even sometimes at DC, though apparently not often enough for Julius Schwartz to notice.

With The Sketch Method, the artist who pencils the page for publication is free to follow the writer's staging or ignore it. My observation, seeing pages go through the Western office, is that most artists would use some of the writer's staging but not all.

McKimson, for example, decided to draw Bugs in a walking pose in the first panel, which I think was a good change. It suggests the idea that Bugs and Porky have just arrived and that we are not coming in on the middle of a conversation. On other pages, he may have deviated a little or a lot.

Tom McKimson also drew Bugs Bunny stories that I wrote. When I was selling scripts to Western, most of them were typed, though in a format I've never seen used elsewhere. In some future post, I'll show you that format. I did do a few Sketch Method and sometimes, I'd type a script but also sketch out what I saw in my head for a certain panel or sequence. Looking just at the published comics, I do not think it would be possible for anyone to discern which stories were drawn from which method of script-writing.

This method, like the two described above, has its good points and bad points, and they have a lot to do with the skills of the writer and artist involved. Of course, one big consideration is whether the writer can draw or whether they can type. If the writer can do both, then you have to ask how good is that writer's staging? Can the artist improve on it? There's also the matter of time…

When I did scripts via The Sketch Method, it took me twice as long (or longer) to finish one as opposed to typing it out. Don R. Christensen, who wrote in both formats for Western Publishing, told me that sketching was usually faster for him than typing. And Roger Armstrong, who drew scripts for Western by both Don and myself said that he preferred working off typed scripts. He said that once he saw a writer's staging of a scene, it inhibited his ability to "tell" the story his way.

Roger's view reminded me of certain actors who like their scripts to not tell them how a certain line should be read, or of some directors who like minimal description from the writer. Some in both job descriptions like to know everything the writer had in mind and some like to feel free to react to the material however they react.

Another very prolific writer for Western was Vic Lockman, who certainly belongs on that imaginary list I mentioned of The Ten Most Prolific Comic Book Writers of All Time. Lockman might be in the Top Three. He wrote his scripts via The Sketch Method and often complained when the artist changed his staging. But Chase told me that sometimes, Vic would write a script and then be assigned to pencil the story also…and he'd change the staging the writer (that is to say, Vic Lockman) dictated.

Watching all of this at the various companies for which I've worked led me to a conclusion which I'd kind of like to sell to anyone who works in comics or is interested in how best to create them. It's not only that there are many ways to write a comic book — including ways unmentioned in this post — but that the method should be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of the creative personnel.

Even if the writer can't draw or can't type, there are many variations within what they can do. John Brady and Vic Lockman and all the other folks who worked via The Sketch Method did it the same way, no matter what the assignment was or who was going to draw it. In those cases, they had absolutely no contact with the artist (unless they were the artist) and I think that may not have been the ideal way to make good comics.

I've worked for 40+ years with a brilliant artist named Sergio Aragonés who possesses a flair for visual humor that, to put it bluntly, most other comic book artists do not have. It would be such a waste of that talent to handcuff him into working via a method that did not take advantage of that or his great facility with plots and storylines.

For a few years of my life, I was simultaneously working on Groo with Sergio, a book called The DNAgents with Will Meugniot (and later, other artists) and also on Blackhawk — and later, Crossfire — with Dan Spiegle. Sergio, Will and Dan had a few things in common. They were all excellent artists. They were all friends of mine so we talked a lot and had lunch together when we could. Day or night, they could get me on the phone and ask, "What the hell is this thing I'm supposed to draw on page 8?"

They were all guys who turned in work that never disappointed me in any way…but they were all different people with different skills.

Sergio came up with (and still comes up with) almost all the storylines for Groo. Will contributed lots of storylines and ideas for characters in the comics we did together and would sometimes take a sequence I'd figured out and then figure it out a different, better way to handle it.

Dan would have told you he contributed absolutely nothing to the plots of the comics on which we collaborated. He kind of took the "it's not my job, man" attitude about that and put all his attention into drawing what I wrote as well as he could. When Marvel called and tried to get him to draw for them, they usually wanted him to pencil (only) from a loose plot and that was not the way to use him best. He had to have a full, complete script and he had to ink the comic himself. That's if you wanted to get the best work out of him.

The method I worked with each of these three artists — and also many more including Scott Shaw!, Gene Colan, Erik Larsen, Jack Manning, Roman Arambula, Pete Alvarado, Doug Wildey and dozens of others — varied to suit the artist and, of course, the material. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that great or even good comics were always the result because I don't think that way and I also don't want to sound like one of those YouTube Chefs who insists that everything they cook is The Most Delicious Thing Ever. But I will tell you that I think better comics resulted from custom-fitting the way I worked with each of those creative partners.

In some future piece here, I'll talk about still other ways writers and artists have collaborated and how I think it impacted the end product. Mostly, I'd like to encourage other writers and artists to come forth with ways they discovered to work as a team…or even ways they wished they'd been able to work as a team. It has always bugged me that when people write books or essays about how to write comics, they so often talk about the only way they've done it, the only way they know. That might be fine if every story had the same creative elements and every artist had the exact same skill set.

There's a saying that when all you have is a hammer, every job you have to do looks like a nail. I think better comics might result if some people had a larger toolbox. It doesn't have to be huge but it should have more in it than just one hammer.

Here is the schedule of panels with me on them at Comic-Con International in 2003. You'll note that most of these panels are in 90-minute time slots which means the panel itself generally ran 75 minutes to allow for the changeover to the next panel. Since sometimes, the next panel in that room was hosted by me, I could go a bit longer…and in 2003, for example, the Sal Buscema panel didn't really end. It just kind of morphed into the Stan Goldberg panel.

Over the next few years, there were so many people who wanted to do panels — mostly to promote business enterprises but some that didn't — that 90-minute panels became scarcer. I began doing more panels in one-hour slots, which usually meant wrapping things up after 45 or 50 minutes as people began wandering in to claim seats for the next panel in the room.

The exception to this would be any panel in a room with a number that started with a "6." Those panels were and still are spaced on the schedule to allow fifteen minutes for changeover…so the announced end time was or is actually the time we would usually end. Once in a while, I end them a bit earlier if it feels right.

In 2003, they finally gave me big rooms for Quick Draw! and the Cartoon Voices Panel and I did something dumb with the latter: I invited lots of people to be on it…more than twice as many as I should have had up there. It was fun in a way but some panelists didn't get to say very much and there was much scrambling for microphones. I had earlier made that same mistake with the Golden Age Panel so I should have known better…