Twitter comics rant: More "dev time" vs. "JUST GET STARTED!"

Been a while since I've done one of these, folks!

Stumbled across this reworked Twitter rant as a series of Empowered webcomic commentaries t'other day. Since this rant ties in to the failure of recently discussed defunct project Cannibal Sun, thought I might as well collect it in a Patreon post. 

Shall we begin? Let's!  

An artist friend of mine recently commented that many comics look like they could use more “dev time”—meaning “developmental time,” a term from videogame design.  Sounds good in theory, but “dev time” in a comics-creating context can be a wheel-spinning waste of worktime for us undisciplined types.  A little extra time for design work is one thing, but too much “prep time” can be disastrous for the easily distracted creator—like myself. Instead of getting any comic pages underway, you can plunge yourself down the rabbit hole of endless, ultimately unproductive preparation.

I had multiple, highly ambitious comics projects come to naught because I wasted time with too much design work and—ughh—“worldbuilding” wankery.  Could’ve had Cannibal Sun published as a Cliffhanger mini published by Wildstorm—if I hadn’t frittered about with wildly excessive “dev time” for the book, that is.  Instead, by the time I was finally ready to start drawing actual pages for the series, the entire Cliffhanger program was shut down.  Oops!

(BTW, every “floppy” issue under that 2000-era Cliffhanger contract would’ve paid me as much as my entire advance for an Empowered volume. *bitter sob*)

So I have no comics—or paychecks!—to show for that project, but I sure do have ream upon ream of notes and designs that amounted to nothing!  Ah, but I was utterly convinced that these ambitious, sprawling, epic projects required every precious minute of “dev time” I sank into ’em.  What was I gonna do, just wing it?  No, no, I had spend at least another few days working out this one culture’s transhumanist underpinnings!

Cut to the sprawling ruins of a entire series of overdesigned, overprepped projects, none to ever see the light of print.  But what’s this?  Hark!  The wee sapling of a completely unambitious and wholly spontaneous series—Empowered, natch—sprouts amidst the epics’ tumbled wreckage!  No preplanning, no design work, no developmental notes—I just jumped right into writing and drawing the stories that would become Empowered.  Of course, nowadays the series really does feature preplanning and design work and developmental notes aplenty, but it didn’t start out that way.

Empowered wound up with fairly rich—ughh—“worldbuilding,” but little of it was done ahead of time, as I fleshed out the Empverse on the fly.  BTW, I put “ughh” before “worldbuilding” because the term often heralds a poorly written story slathered down with pointless background detail.  “The characters are flat, the prose is clumsy, the narrative’s dull—but, ooh, check out all the effort the writer wasted on worldbuilding!”  Vivid characters and a strong story are dramatically—pun unintended!—more important than nattering about with noodly worldbuilding detail.

So, after the experience of overprepped projects failing and heedless spontaneity succeeding, I now err on the side of “JUST GET STARTED.”

One thing I’ve definitely noticed over the last decade or so is that I need much less preparation than I think I do before starting a story.  Extreme example:  When I began laying out a certain well-received Empowered one-shot, I hadn’t yet figured out the ending—but “broke” it by the time I was on page 12 of the layouts.

So, here’s my modern comic-creating credo: “Quit futzing around with developmental work and GET ON THE G-D COMIC PAGE IMMEDIATELY, DUMBASS.”

That advice?  Intended for lazy, shiftless creators like me, who’ll wheelspin for weeks if given the chance.  Sternly disciplined creators?  Feel free to ignore it.  Then again, if you were that sternly disciplined a comics creator, you wouldn’t be wasting time online by reading this, would you?

I understand the idea behind wanting more “dev time” for comics work, given how many books could charitably be described as “undercooked.”  I have my doubts, though, as to whether more time for developmental work would increase the quality of modern comics all that much.  A lazy, unimaginative writer isn’t likely to become any less lazy and unimaginative if you give him a few extra weeks on a deadline.  Most artists would love more generous deadlines, but many wouldn’t care much about allotting time for prepwork before starting their pages.

Ah, but I do think a particular form of “dev time” would be valuable for comics creation—but I wouldn’t allot it to preplanning or—ughh—“worldbuilding.”  Rather, comics could be improved considerably if—in some magical alt universe—we could invest more “dev time” in the actual work stages.

Example:  Most artists spend maaaybe a day or two roughing out and/or thumbnailing their pages, then spend 30+ days drawing the damn things.  The layout stage is critical to both the quality of the final comic and one’s improvement as a storyteller, but we invest little time in it.  Spending only a few hours on roughs but hundreds of hours on penciling, inking and coloring finished pages shortchanges your layout skills.  Screw messing around with design prepwork or the like—sink any “dev time” you have into refining and experimenting with your page layouts.

I recommend, after you’ve finished an comic’s page roughs, investing your worktime into going back and “re-laying out” the book differently.  The 2nd—or even 3rd?—time around, thumbnail a story page using more panels—break up an existing image into smaller narrative elements.  Or, hell, if your comic page had a high panel count, try combining multiple teeny panels into larger, more cohesive layouts.  If your page is a bunch of disconnected close-ups, see if you can’t lay out a version where  multiple characters are visible in one panel. 

Imitate the layout style of your favorite artists, especially ones with bold and innovative approaches to visual storytelling.  Did you follow Eddie Campbell’s maxim that every comic page should feature a full-figure shot of at least one character?  Well, try that out.  The 2nd time around, try a fixed page grid—the Watchmen nine-panel (3X3) layout, or the “Kirby six” (2X3), for example.  Or go far away from grids with a “vignette” layout style—that is, try a page that uses free-floating images without fixed panels or borders.

The point:  Doubling up on the brief but critical worktime you spend on your page layouts is an easy way to “level-up” your narrative skills.  After a year’s work, you’ll have finished drawing, say, 10 issues worth of comics pages—but you’ll have laid out 20 issues of storytelling.  Your, ah, “mad storytelling skillz" will be twice those of Alternate Timeline Artist You, who couldn’t be arsed to mess with another draft.

Due to perceived time pressures, many or possibly most creators end up going “FDOD” with their comic-page roughs—“First Draft, Only Draft.”  And in truth, for some of us, just completing a first draft of a comic’s roughs can be a g-d ordeal.  “Phew! Thank goodness that's over!”  First-draft layouts rarely take very long—a few days, at most—but can be more stressful and taxing than a month’s worth of finished pencils.  But I say that comics creators are shortchanging themselves by not going back and “re-roughing” a story’s thumbnails differently. 

When I suggest multiple rough-page drafts, many artists—including lazy, shiftless sorts like me—whine, “Man, I don’t have time for that.”  Well, make the g-d time for 2nd drafts on your thumbnails, alleged comics creator!  Besides, let’s face it, you probably do have the time.  I’m pretty sure—in fact, certain—that your schedule isn't even remotely as hellish as this weekly manga artist’s nightmarish regimen. 

Are you a pin-up artist, or a comics creator?  If the latter, then invest your g-d drawing-table time in improving your storytelling.  Quit futzing around with fan art or “warm-up sketches,” and start futzing around with multiple drafts on your page layouts. 

I have other ideas for allotting “dev time” to comics’ work stages, but they’re “pie-in-the-sky” BS that would never happen in the real world.  As in, more “dev time” so editors could wrangle writers, artists & letterers into avoiding the lettering mishaps that plague modern comics.  That ain’t gonna happen, howeva, given how most editors are desperately juggling faaaaar too many comics edging waaaaaay too close to deadline disaster. 

Ah, but working up a second draft of page layouts is a simple idea that almost all comics artists could easily tackle on their own initiative. So, then, why not make it happen, fellow comics creators?