2.  The more specific, the better. “John has adventures” says much less about the art you want than “Haxley is a barbarian that has to mangle his way to the throne.”   If you have a two-sentence synopsis, use it.  For more advice on doing two-sentence synopses, please see this.

3.  What exactly do you need from the artist? If you’re doing a color comic with just one illustrator, you need pencils, inks, colors and letters.   How many pages do you need?  If you’re looking to put together a sample for publishers, you’ll probably want around 5 pages and possibly a cover.  Check the submissions guidelines for each publisher, of course.  If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need the entire issue, which will probably be 32+ pages per issue.

4.  Describe the sorts of characters and creatures you’ll need illustrated. Just regular humans?  A superhero whose power sets him on fire?  Supersoldiers in powersuits?  Fantastical creatures like griffins and dragons?  Werewolves and vampires?  Angels and demons?  Hydras and Zeus? Eldritch horrors?  Eldritch horrors tanning on the beach? Before you hire an artist, make sure he’s comfortable with every major character and the mood of the work.

5.  Will you need unusual props? For example, if you’re writing military sci-fi set in the 23th century, your artist will do a lot of exotic vehicles and weaponry.  If you’re writing a romantic comedy starring me, probably not so much.   Except for the Pimpmobile.

6.  Describe the visual style you’re going for. Are there any books that look like what you have in mind?

7.  Who’s your target audience? This ties into style–a comic for kids will probably be illustrated differently than one for adults.

8.  How mature is your comic?  I’d recommend mentioning if your comic will entail major gore, sexual content, on-panel drug use or notable creepiness.  Otherwise the artist might get skittish when you ask him to decapitate someone during LSD-fueled sex.

9. Payment information. Do you have a set amount of money you’d like to offer?  Or would you like artists to submit bids?  If you announce how much you’re paying, you limit your negotiating position and will probably end up paying more but you’ll probably attract more serious applicants.  How much are you willing to pay upfront?

10. What sort of commitment will you need from your artist? If your plan is to get the comic professionally published, make sure that your artist will be available for a suitably long period.  ”If we get published, you’ll be available to do each issue, right?”  I’d recommend making sure that they’re available for at least one month per issue.

1. Check for continuity. Are the dimensions of the room consistent? Are the characters consistently portrayed? Are the characters as tall and wide as they’re supposed to be? Also, in the toning and coloring stages, please make sure that the lighting sources are consistent.

2. Character placement. Does the placement of the characters make sense? For example, if two characters are walking somewhere but only one of them knows the way, he should probably be in front. Does each character have enough space to perform his later actions? For example, we once had to redo a page because we were boxed in by the walls–it was impossible to have a superhero drop behind a character that was leaning against a wall.

3. Are the character expressions consistent with their lines of dialogue? One particularly tricky area here is when the character’s emotions change dramatically mid-panel. If your script goes something like this, you’re screwed.

Panel 1.
WIFE, annoyed: Your boss kept you late tonight. What gives?
HUSBAND: I got a promotion!
WIFE, excited: Hooray!

Since it’d be very difficult to show the wife being annoyed and excited at the same time, this panel is pretty much doomed.  This is a problem that you need to solve before the page goes to your artist.  For example, you could break this into two panels so that she can emote her annoyance and excitement separately.

4.  Is the amount of dialogue consistent with the panel’s pacing?  For example, if you’re doing an action panel of someone leaping at an enemy, giving them 25+ words of dialogue will damage the pace.  No one can plausibly say that many words in the span of a jump. Too many words will make the action feel slower and less exciting than it should be.   As a rule of thumb, the more intense and involved the action, the fewer words you should use.

5. If something changes, like a character drawing out a prop or something, is it clear where the change came from? For example, if John is unarmed in panel 1 and wielding a gun in the next, readers might wonder where the gun came from.   You could solve that by adding an intermediate panel of him reaching for the gun, or by using motion lines to show that his hand is moving from where his gun used to be.  Alternately, just show time passing or the scene changing.  For example, if panel 1 shows us a police officer driving with his gun holstered, it’ll make sense if his gun is drawn when he gets out to storm a building in panel 2.  We didn’t see him draw the gun, but the situation has changed–now he’s in a much more dangerous situation.

6. If a character has a prop or accessory, does it appear consistently? It’s really easy to lose track of what each character is holding.  Be careful.

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1.  Will the panels have enough space to comfortably fit the content? As a rule of thumb, I think it’s especially important to check this if if the page has 7+ low-action panels or 4+ action panels.  (Low-action panels, like most dialogue, usually require less space because they don’t need to show as many things happening.  For example, a dialogue panel might just have a person’s head, whereas an action shot of two boxers going at it will probably include at least the upper bodies of two men).

2.  Will the panel’s perspective portray everything you want to show? For example, if two characters are facing each other, it can be quite tricky to show their expressions, particularly if you’re trying to focus on one.  90 degree side-shots get boring fast and have trouble emphasizing either subject.

Another perspective problem is that the writer may script the page thinking that he will be able to show several things in a panel that just can’t be shown well in a single shot.  For example, check out this sample panel.

Panel 4.   Mary looks down at Brian’s shoes, which are spattered with blood.  Brian grins sheepishly at her.

It would be quite difficult to get Brian’s face in a panel that shows the shoes in enough detail to capture the blood, particularly if you’re trying to squeeze eight panels onto the page. I’d recommend either splitting this into two panels or using an insert panel.

3.  Is each character emotionally coherent in each panel? An artist can only give each character one expression per panel.  Your artist would be completely screwed if you gave him a panel like the following.

Panel 1.
JOHN:  I love you.
ALISA:  I think it’s time to start seeing other people.
JOHN:  You filthy whore!

Obviously, there’s no way to make John look both doting/loving and outraged in the same panel.  You need to split this into two separate panels or at least use an insert panel to separate the two emotions.  It’s better to figure out whether your panels are emotionally coherent before a rewrite will blow your schedule.

A parting thought: once you’re convinced that the script is physically possible, I’d recommend giving your artist a lot of latitude to set up the panels on his own.  You might have envisioned it one way, but I’d recommend deferring to the guy that’s actually a visual professional.  (If you actually know more about art than your artist does, you are screwed). Writers aren’t quite as good at setting up interesting poses.  In particular, I think we tend to over-rely on shots that are head-on and level or 90 degree sideshots.  A head-on shot is almost never the most interesting way to portray something.   See this article for more details on staging interesting panels.

6. Don’t make your heroes too powerful.

Characters should be weak enough that the writer can easily challenge them.  For example, if your character is as powerful as Superman, you’re going to run out of potential adversaries because only a supervillain can challenge him.  In contrast, Batman can have dramatic fights with regular humans.  For example, can Batman rescue hostages before a gunman can shoot them?  That’s an interesting scene.  It wouldn’t be interesting for Superman. He’d just fly in superfast and save them.  That’s boring.  There’s no challenge.

As a rule of thumb, I highly recommend against giving any character superstrength and superspeed.  Either one could be problematic, but together they will probably cripple your story. I’d also recommend putting some limits on their powers.  If your character is so ridiculously strong that he can push the moon out of its orbit or fly so fast that he can go back in time, he will probably make readers roll their eyes.

7. Please avoid rewinding the story, particularly bringing back dead characters.

If something in your story happens, you should not make it unhappen. Revealing that something was “all a dream” or a hallucination or a computer simulation is more likely to confuse your readers than intrigue them.  Readers are also likely to feel annoyed that you jerked them around.  Instead of wasting their time with a fake story, why not tell a story you’re actually willing to stick to?

The worst kind of rewinding is when the writers undo a character’s death (usually with gimmicks like a deal with the devil or time-travel or resurrection).  If death is just an inconvenience, then readers won’t care whether the characters die or not.  If your story is action-heavy, that’s probably game over.   The fear of death is usually one of the primary reasons that combat is interesting.

8.  Go easy on the catchphrases, particularly if the audience is older.

Catchphrases are very cheesy (Hulk smash!  Flame on!  It’s clobbering time!  Dragon up!). If your target audience is mostly older than 13, I’d really recommend downplaying the catchphrase or at least making it a bit sober.

9.  Please don’t let the hero solve all of his problems in the same way.

If your hero uses the same solution every time, it’ll probably get tedious.  Force him to mix things up a bit.   For example, if your character is a hardboiled tank, try putting him in a situation where he can’t go in with both guns blazing.  If your character is like Ironman, try separating him from his powersuit for a scene.  Etc.

10.  Don’t pad your pages.

Every panel should advance the plot and/or develop a character.  Otherwise, readers are going to get bored pretty quickly.  Would you pay to see people chatting?  “I’m doing well, Mary Jane.  How are you?”  If you’re not advancing the plot or the characters, the plot has probably stalled.

Also, please be especially careful about splash pages (pages that only have one panel).  They take up a lot of room, so comic book editors expect that splashes will advance the plot in a major way.

Did you find this article useful? If so, please read part 1 here.

2. The plot lacks urgency.

A character walking from his door to his car is not very interesting. Running to his car to make it to work on time is better. Running to his car to avoid gunshots? Even better. To make the plot more urgent, I recommend making giving the characters goals that are time-sensitive and high-stakes. If John doesn’t make it to work in ten minutes, he will be fired. If Captain Carnage can’t find and defuse the bomb in ten minutes, the building will explode. Etc.  The goal doesn’t have to be life or death, but it helps.

3.  The writers rely too much on exposition (particularly narration and dialogue) to tell the story.

Try not to tell your audience things that they should be able to see in the picture. For example, check out these two versions of one of our panels.

The first version tells us something that should be obvious:  this bystander is surprised.  Well, of course he’s surprised!  His expression already shows that.  The second version develops the story by adding humor and makes the mood more wacky.

Here are some signs that your story relies too much on text.

• You use more than 200 words per page.  As a rule of thumb, I wouldn’t recommend any more than 175 unless you have a really good reason.  If your audience is young and/or the series is action-heavy, you might want to set a guideline for yourself.
• You use big blocks of text, particularly if you use more than one on the same page.  Isn’t there any way to bring that information into action, body language or some other visual?
• Characters say how they’re feeling, either in exposition or thought-bubbles.  Try using body language and actions instead.

4.  The cast is gratuitously large.

If you’re writing a new series about a team of superheroes, I’d recommend using at most 5 teammates.  You probably won’t have enough time to develop many characters that are completely unknown to the audience.

Having a large cast will also probably complicate your fight scenes and action sequences.  When Green Lantern and Superman are fighting with a villain, what are the other five Justice Leaguers doing?  You’ll probably have to flit around to describe what’s happening.  That could put off some readers, particularly if some heroes are more interesting in battle than the rest.  (I want to see Batman and the Manhunter, not Superman or Wonderwoman).

5.  The series doesn’t have a clear audience.

There has never been a comic that appeals to everyone.  So you need to pick an audience and go for them.  Having an audience in mind will really boost the quality and marketability of your work.  For example, if you’re not sure whether you’re writing for 10-year-olds or 20-year-olds, your dialogue will almost certainly miss the mark.  It’s also extremely difficult to write comedy unless you know who you’re trying to amuse.

Finally, aiming for a particular audience will make it easier to find a publisher.  If you have a narrow, well-aimed audience, your publisher will probably conclude that you are competent and have at least a basic grasp of marketing.  If the work doesn’t have a clear audience, the publisher will probably wonder if this book is going to sell at all.  If the publisher isn’t confident the book will sell, they probably won’t pick up the series.

Here are some possible audience groups to consider.

• Males vs. females.  This should probably affect the proportion of the series that is devoted to combat rather than dialogue.  (Broadly generalizing, women usually dislike rolling slugfests like Dragonball Z but are usually more excited than men about romantic adventures).  Also, if you’re even thinking about women readers, try to avoid boob-shots and other cheesecake.
• Pre-teens vs. teens vs. college and above.  Among other things, this will probably affect how much text you use, the sophistication of the comedy and writing, how much of the plot you have to spell out for the readers, the mood of the story and the level of violence/sex/drugs.  Most comic book readers are 16-25;  most superhero cartoon shows are aimed at a much younger audience.
• Fans of a particular genre (sci-fi, horror, comedy, etc.)   This should affect artistic style, which plot devices are acceptable, origin stories, etc.
• Fans of a particular show or series.

Did you find this article useful?  If so, please read the other articles in this series.

• Part 1
• Part 2