A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program teleplay or a film screenplay.
In comics, a script may be preceded by a plot outline, and is almost always followed by page sketches, drawn by an artist and inked, succeeded by the coloring and lettering stages. There are no prescribed forms of comic scripts, but there are two dominant styles in the mainstream comics industry, the full script (commonly known as "DC style") and the plot script (or "Marvel style").[1]
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In this style, writer breaks the story down in sequence, page-by-page and panel-by-panel, describing the action, characters, and sometimes backgrounds and "camera" points-of-view of each panel, as well as all captions and dialogue balloons. For decades, this was the preferred format for books published by DC Comics.
Writers who write in the full script method include Peter David.[2]
In a plot script the writer breaks his story down into individual pages. The writer may include some dialogue but does not fully script the story until the artist has drawn the story in pencil. Since Marvel Comics giants Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko preferred this method, this approach became commonly known as the "Marvel method" or Marvel "House style."
Comics historian Mark Evanier writes that this "new means of collaboration . . . was born of necessity—Stan was overburdened with work—and to make use of Jack's great skill with storylines. . . . Sometimes Stan would type up a written plot outline for the artist. Sometimes, not".[3] As comic-book writer-editor Dennis O'Neil describes, the Marvel method ". . . requires the writer to begin by writing out a plot and add[ing] words when the penciled artwork is finished. . . .[I]n the mid-sixties, plots were seldom more than a typewritten page, and sometimes less," while writers in later times "might produce as many as twenty-five pages of plot for a twenty-two page story, and even include in them snatches of dialog. So a Marvel Method plot can run from a couple of paragraphs to something much longer and more elaborate".[4]
A variation of the plot script, attributed to Harvey Kurtzman, the writer breaks down the story into page roughs or thumbnail sketches, with captions and dialogue jotted down inside the roughs. The artist (who is often the comic's writer as well), then fleshes out the roughs onto full-size art board. Some publishers, such as De Geïllustreerde Pers, who produce the Dutch Donald Duck magazine, demand that scripts be in the form of rough page sketches. Writer/artists Frank Miller and Jeff Smith favor this style; as did the late Archie Goodwin.[1]
Attributed to William Gaines (Kurtzman’s publisher at EC Comics), the EC Style is similar to the Kurtzman Style, except the writer submits a tight plot to an artist, who breaks it down into panels that are laid out on the art board. The writer writes all captions and dialogue, which are pasted inside these panels, and then the artist draws the story around all of this paste-up. This laborious and restrictive way of creating comics is no longer in general use; the last artist to use even a variation of EC Style was the late Jim Aparo.[1]