Writing this script was a huge deal for me on a few levels. Obviously, it was yet another project from Marvel Comics, after the Spider-man short I was able to sell in the wake of my Marvel/Epic experience, and my first official full length mini-series. So because of that, I imagined that I could have a higher level of influence over the final product, having gotten my feet wet scripting over other writers’ plots and writing shorter stories. Technically, the first three issues of this FF mini were based on the plots of others, but as long as the original intent of the narrative was preserved, I had a lot of freedom to lay out and structure the stories in my own way. The mini-series also marked the very beginning of a long, mutually beneficial relationship with Apple products, as I used the check from this script to buy my first iBook, replacing the old Compaq my parents bought me for graduating high school.
The biggest thing is that the experience completely changed the actual process I used for writing scripts. Because I was a little green, my editor encouraged me to write out these incredibly detailed outlines, which broke the entire issue down into its 22 pages, and had important lines of dialogue and central visuals noted throughout. I did keep notes before this, but they were usually much less specific, focusing on the major beats of a story, overall dramatic themes, character arcs, etc. Doing things this way allows me to easily jump in and out of the story, while preserving the big picture at all costs and always keeps me moving forward. So when I get stuck somewhere in the story, the outline allows me to shift into another scene entirely, work that out, and usually by the time I come back, everything makes a little more sense. And when I’m doing the actual scripting, if that bit of inspiration strikes, I know exactly how everything around it will be affected. Great tool to make the process go a little more efficiently, and make sure all those deadlines got met. And it’s something I still use to this day, especially with some of the more complex Miranda scripts.
Did a little digging in the crates and found an excerpt from the outline that I sent my editor for this issue, and Google helped me find another little treat that is discussed at greater length further below. Enjoy.
(1) We start with Johnny Storm sitting at an outside table at a Manhattan restaurant, bragging to one of the waitresses about one of his recent adventures with the FF. He’s waiting for his friend Wyatt Wingfoot to show up, so they can have lunch. Someone screams for help, and Johnny asks the waitress to stand back.
(2) The Human Torch takes to the skies and closes in on the scream, finding a teenaged girl hanging precariously off the side of a building. He tells her to hold on, but she falls.
(3) Torch scoops her up, and brings her back up to the roof, but the “rescue” was a trap. The Black Panther emerges from the shadows and takes out Johnny, apologizing while he’s doing it, claiming that “it’s the only way.”
(4) Meanwhile, at the Baxter Building, Reed is in his lab, working on one of his many experiments, until his wife Susan tells him to get up to the roof. He and Ben Grimm burst onto the scene, and find the girl from the previous scene, telling them that to get Johnny Storm back, they’ll have to face the Black Panther. Then she leaps off the building.
(5) A high tech glider swoops in underneath her and she speeds off. Reed keys in on the small device she left behind, containing a holographic map to a place called Wakanda.
Originally published as “Due Process (FF Tales Commentary, pt. 1)” on June 6, 2005-
Stories got re-sequenced in the collection, but we’ve gotta kick this off with the first issue, featuring my man the Black Panther. My unconditional love for the character has been well documented, so you know I was incredibly excited with being tasked to adapt Lee and Kirby’s original introduction. There was an intimidation factor of course, because I mean, this was my first full length Marvel comic, and I wasn’t quite sure how much of myself I’d be allowed to inject into it. I’ve heard the arguments on both sides of whether the Marvel Age material should’ve launched with these “remixes,” or went for completely original stories, but honestly, from what I’ve seen, the adaptations adhere to their source material on a very basic cosmetic level. My Black Panther issue was the one script that stayed the closest to the original, because I wasn’t trying to overreach at that point, which definitely happened in later scripts. But for now, I was playing everything by the numbers.
Photocopies of the original story hit my mailbox, and they gave me my first, and usually last major concern, which was lack of space. I haven’t written one script that I thought couldn’t use an extra page here or there to give things further room to develop. And with my creator-owned stuff, I could kinda cheat and sneak a couple extra pages into it, but Marvel wasn’t gonna let me pull that trick. Page 22 was like this door that kept slamming on my foot, before I could get out properly, and even though I’d been approved one extra page in this case, because I was collapsing two issues (FF 52 & 53) into one, things were still at a high premium. Lee & Kirby devoted at least 10 pages to the Panther’s origin, and my notes looked like I’d have room for maybe four pages. Maybe.
Not to mention that Marvel Age books were engineered to be repackaged as digests, which meant fewer panels, and less dialogue, so the pages could eventually be reduced, without losing their clarity. I took my dialogue quotient to its limit every month, but it took some doing to cut enough scenes, and accelerate enough passages to create a really tight walkthrough. After that page-by-page breakdown got approved, then came the fun part. When I start the actual scripting, I want to have as many notes as possible, because it makes it harder to get lost in the story, when you can duck in and out, and write things completely out of sequence. Dialogue usually comes first, then I jump back in and frame it into panels, though if I’ve planned for a really strong central image, I’ll jot it down in tandem. The construction of every scene is slightly different in regards to what came first, which is why I try to keep good notes, cause it gives me that mark to hit, and lets me know where every page begins and ends.
Very first scene I wrote was the capture of Johnny Storm, which was by far the easiest thing to manage, because everything was just right there and framed around the “spotlight panel” of Johnny ignited in flame, and flying up towards us on page 2. Tried to give every main character some poster-worthy rendition, that would jump out and grab the kids by the throat, but some of them worked much better than others. The ones that didn’t work were entirely my fault, because of space constraints, and the frantic clip the story was moving at, calling for more and thereby smaller panels. Visually, Sue and Ben got a bit squeezed out, but I’d make up for that later.
Second scene also went down nice and smooth, and contains probably my favorite page of artwork, which is page 5 where Tasmin plummets down the side of the Baxter Building. Think it was Michael O’Hare’s idea to give her the futuristic bodysuit to match her glider, which totally vibed with the 22nd century “black utopia” feel I wanted for Wakanda and its technology. Looks very Evangelion to me, the only anime I followed passionately in younger days, so I was really feelin’ that. And oh yeah, the whole idea of Tasmin is a very obvious nod to Priest’s work, as she’s filling the role of the Dora Milaje. If you don’t know what that is, please go ask somebody before it’s too late.
Panther himself got his big reveal on page 7, along with the credits, and my editor was nice enough to let me keep this, since it was preferred that the Marvel Age stuff have their title pages a little more frontloaded. Somewhere in here, with Panther throwing down with the FF, I found myself developing a very noticeable affinity for Sue Storm. Maybe it’s the Alba thing, but every time I looked up, I was giving her another line or another cool maneuver, and easily, she and the Panther have all of the really nice stuff in the story. I had planned to give her a “spotlight panel” where she was in the middle of turning light visible, half of her body viewable, with the rest melting into the background, but there just wasn’t room. Again, I’d try to make up for it in a later issue.
Next major thing was the origin of the Black Panther, which was the absolute last thing I handled. The notes had it settled in with three pages smack in the middle of the issue, but technically I only used two, bleeding some of the explanatory dialogue into the pages before and after the main flashbacks. Wish I could’ve shown more of Wakanda, but the brief shot of Panther’s glider flying over the main city is really nice, and gives it that sci-fi gloss.
From here, there were only seven pages left, and everything just starts crashing into everything else. I could’ve nailed this with another page, rocked it with two, but the door just slams. Monsters attack the main gates, Panther and the FF engage them, Panther runs off to confront Klaw, and it’s just cut back and forth until the last page. The Four’s defense of the gate isn’t too bad, but the fight between Klaw and Panther needs some room and was much more complicated in the earlier notes. Thought it would be cool to have Klaw taking shots at BP with the sonic cannon, while he flips around the room, barely a half step ahead of the blasts, until the hero uses some gadget to incapacitate the weapon. A frustrated Klaw tries to get the thing back online, and then notices there’s little charges placed all over the room wherever Panther touched the ground, and faces T’Challa, horrified. The hero presses a button on his gauntlets and everything detonates. Hell, that’s two whole pages right there, but I had to settle for a split screen, where once again, Panther and Sue get the cooler beats.
The final page isn’t too bad, bringing the heroes together, seeing Klaw carted off to some dark, Wakandan dungeon, and hitting that humorous conclusion we’re used to seeing in Saturday morning cartoons. My editor seemed to love the final pass at the script, and sent me this really nice, incredibly encouraging e-mail that had me feelin’ pretty good about myself for at least a couple days. Which was actually good for more than one reason, because I’d need that initial burst of approval to power me through the near disaster the Dr. Strange issue almost turned into…
While doing a little Google search last night, I found a particularly ancient Mile High Comics link to a preview for almost this entire issue. Think this is from the time Marvel was still doing its First Look program for retailers, but check out some pages from the first issue of my first Marvel Comics mini-series—a re-interpretation of the Black Panther’s first appearance.
http://www.milehighcomics.com/firstlook/marvel/mafft1/
{The Fiction House} 
Creator Commentaries (Tales of the Thing #2)
So, I’ve got this kind of obsession/fascination thing going on with the Moon and I honestly don’t know where it all came from. I wasn’t even born when we landed on it and I’ve probably only seen the actual footage once or twice in my entire life. Despite that, there’s always been something especially mysterious and intriguing about it to me, and you know, even though we’ve been there, it seems that there’s a lot about it that we don’t and probably never will know. As the planetary body closest to us, and as something whose gravitational influence has a direct effect on our ocean’s tides, isn’t there just something inherently cool and kinda scary about the whole thing?
Or maybe it’s just me and no one else cares, but that question about what else lies beneath the Moon’s surface, or what else is going on up there while nobody is looking, is something that often creeps into my work. This particular issue of Tales of the Thing, for instance…
See, the first draft of the previous issue actually began on the surface of the Moon, with Dr. Strange and the Thing staring into this void where the Earth used to sit before it’d been completely destroyed. Though this script draft was an absolute train wreck, that image of The Thing standing on the Moon stayed with me until it was time to work on the next one. And since the issue featured a lengthy Hulk/Thing brawl, that took place in a number of locations thanks to a holographic projector Danger Room type thing, there was no way in hell that I was letting the opportunity pass without staging some of the big battle on the surface of the Moon. A holographic projection of the Moon, anyway, but there’s a shot of the Hulk falling down out of the stars right before the fight gets going that I’ll always grin about.
But this was a fun issue to write and where I started to really settle into the rhythm of writing a monthly comic. Didn’t lose focus and found more appropriate avenues for my personal obsessions and fascinations.
And yes, I have found a way to work the Moon into my current Voltron run…keep your eyes open for that.
Originally published as Due Process III- Leave No Idea Behind on June 21, 2005 –
Somewhere around the Hulk issue, I started to get it…
Confident that I couldn’t possibly write a more horrid script than the first draft of the Dr. Strange issue, heading into the Hulk one was actually more than a bit refreshing. My ever so patient and responsive editor had me back under control, Mike O’Hare’s schedule was going to allow him to contribute all of the artwork for the issue, and the prospect of a good old-fashioned Hulk/Thing battle is always good for the soul. When the smoke cleared, what we got, in my humble opinion, were some of the strongest moments of the series, and a comic I’m fairly happy with. Fairly. But I promised to ease up on some of the harsher self-criticisms, didn’t I? Straight to it then, a scene by scene walkthrough of all the unseen elements that combined to form the 22 page story, “Widescreen,” featuring that most incredible of Hulks.
My scripts seem to start one of two ways, either with an extreme close-up of a person or object, leading to an immediate pull back on the next panel or page, or the complete opposite, starting far and then coming forward. With this one I used the pull-in, right before my very obvious impression of the Danger Room from the X-Men flicks. You know the bit, where the giant door performs the retina scan, and then announces in that computerized voice, “Welcome, Professor.” Not anything really huge, but it was in my head when I was plotting out the scene, so I dropped it in there. No idea what a “quantum lock” is, but it sounds a bit cool, right?
The emotional thrust of this first scene actually came from a small cosmetic change made to the Dr. Strange issue. On page 4 of that one, Ben and Alicia are walking down a sidewalk, and in the original script, I asked that Ben appear without his typical disguise to give him a more “open” look. Put him in a more relaxed state, coming down the street with his girl on a beautiful day, not really giving a damn about whatever else might be going on. Mike was doing layouts and wanted the trench coat and hat, to make for a stronger visual, so my editor asked if that was cool, and we changed it. The whole thing ultimately worked better that way, especially when the little creatures showed up and tore into Ben, but that little alteration morphed into the background of this exchange between Reed and Ben. Cause it put that question out there, “How must it feel to have to wear a disguise every time you leave the house? To not have the luxury of just walking down the street with your girl, and ignoring everything else?”
Thinking about that gave me a little seam to dig into Ben’s character, along with his reoccurring anxiety about his appearance, and other people’s reactions to it, along with stealing another chance to write Reed. In the notes, this was called “Reed and Ben have a moment,” and the whole tone of it just makes me think about my own friends, and whatever bad mood they’ve ever talked me out of. Initially, the sequence was 5 pages, but my editor wanted it cut to 3, and then let me have 4. Still a tad cramped, and you can tell by the number of balloons I used, but it’s not too bad, and doesn’t feel any less sweet as a result.
The Hulk intro was an idea I’d been waiting to put down, since finding out he was appearing somewhere in the mini. It’s really just a very obvious build-up to Banner’s famous “You’re making me angry,” line, which is right at home in this story, considering Alan Kupperberg’s original story used the Hulk TV show as its starting point. There, Ben, after finding out Hulk has his own show, stomps off to Hollywood to show everybody what a real hero looks like, and you know, one thing leads to another. But anyway, I gotta admit that I love the page turn between pages 6 & 7, transitioning from the smug bully telling Banner to “prove it,” to Hulk just erupting through the diner’s roof. One of many things that O’Hare really just smashed out the park, and we talked a little about the Hulk when I was still in outline stage, so I knew he was looking forward to drawing him. Had to give my man the chance to show off, and I knew he’d really dig this shot, which explains the big ass grin I was sporting while typing the description for this page. Came back even better than I hoped for, and that’s always good.
The “studio tour” section got a couple Mike O’Hare cameos, along the lines of sneaking Spidey into the background of the title page in Destiny’s Song. Wolverine’s hand is in the first panel (minus the claws which got removed from the raw pencils) and Rhino appears in the second. There’s so much dialogue that you can only make out the horn, but he’s there, and I suppose, it’s pretty obvious I dig little stuff like this, from a completely unapologetic fanboy perspective. Far as the dialogue itself, it’s actually Craig Brice (more on him later) reciting to Ben one of my earlier ideas for this issue, that got thrown out in favor of this set-up. With it committed to print there, it sounds pretty absurd, but honestly, it kinda was.
Soundstage 4, a more commercialized application of the Danger Room, was the story element that kept on giving. Initially, just a really cool “set” for the inevitable Hulk/Thing brawl, it evolved into something more complicated and integral. Just the idea of it provides Reed a stronger connection to the central story, gives Ben an “in” at the studio, all the while spotlighting the inherent coolness of Mr. Fantastic, and his constant drive to invent and/or discover that next big thing. A character who can’t stop thinking is always gonna be fun to explore, and like most of the ones that scroll through this mini, I really didn’t realize how interesting some of them were, until I sat down and started putting words in their mouth. From a mechanics standpoint, Reed’s soundstage makes everything better, and it was originally designed to be this big “thing” to spice up the fight, and satisfy this Moon obsession of mine.
Don’t know what triggered it, but after I had to slice the original opener for the Doc Strange issue, I had to find another reason, perhaps one more logical this time, to get Ben on the Moon. Will definitely settle for the holographic one, ‘specially when it got me that incredible shot of a completely pissed off Hulk, dropping out of a mass of stars. Again, credit due to Mike O’Hare (and colorist J Brown) for delivering that, because I know the panel description made it sound almost completely insane. Wish we’d had maybe one more page of space stuff, before moving on to the glacier, but the transition was very smooth, and really “sells” the visual of this holographic battlefield. Think that was all J Brown.
Wrapping things in the Old West was another nod to Kupperberg’s original story, and an opportunity to have a little “Matrix moment.” The layout for page 16, with Ben and Hulk charging at each other, before slamming together in a cloud of dust, is more than a little Revolutions. Mix that imagery with the idea of a superhero shootout at high noon, and you’ve got another of my favorite pages in the book. Really liked being able to halt this massive throwdown with the word “Sorry,” and the small convo. between Hulk and Ben got quite a few rewrites before it felt right. It’s a bit text-heavy, but really couldn’t be helped without losing the point, that both of the characters were drawn to this same place, over essentially the same thing. Story nearly ended up titled “One Word,” but that sounded a bit unnecessarily obtuse. “Monster” could’ve worked, but overstates things.
Page 20, which has most of the heavy exposition, was originally a short flashback that took us back into the diner where Banner turned, and showed there was a little “time delay” between pgs. 6 & 7, revealing that the TV is what ultimately sent Hulk to Miracle Studios. The editor thought it’d break the narrative and prove more confusing then clever (what I thought it was) so Bruce just relates the same info in a crowd of word balloons. Easily could’ve used an extra page here, but not having one doesn’t completely crash the scene.
Last page was probably my best ending of the whole mini-series, hitting that Sat. morning cartoon vibe real nice, and I think what got it working better than the others, was the possibility to have a little back and forth with Ben and Johnny. The relationship has such a natural sarcastic bent to it, that mining it for a wisecrack or two is pretty easy.
Overall though, I’m borderline proud of this one, and it gave me the confidence for the last issue, which set me loose on my first solo story of the series.
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Filed under Creator Commentaries
Tagged as alan kupperberg, all ages comics, brandon thomas, fantastic four, fantastic four tales, marvel comics, michael o'hare, randy green, tales of the thing, the hulk, the thing