The Marvel Method is a form of comic book writer-artist collaboration in which the artist works from a story synopsis, rather than a full script, creating page-by-page plot details on his or her own. The technique takes its name from its widespread use at Marvel Comics beginning in the 1960s, primarily under writer-editor Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko.
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Creation and implementation
When Marvel Comics became popular and expanded in the early-1960s Marvel's editor and chief writer, Stan Lee, needed to write several titles a month. So he gradually began to provide his primary artists, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, only with the essential beginning, middle and end of a story. Lee did that often in person or via telephone.
The artist would then plot and pace the specific scenes, often adding secondary characters, and turn in the penciled pages, often with margin notes to help Lee follow the action. After approving the artwork and having either the artist or the production staff make any mandated editorial changes, Lee would then add dialog, captions and sound effects.
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."[1]
As comic-book writer-editor Dennis O'Neil described, the Marvel Method, "perfected by Stan Lee and his early Marvel Comics collaborators, 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".[2]
Later adaptations
By the 1970s, the artist was sometimes given formal co-plotter credit, as with The Uncanny X-Men #108-143, by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne.
Currently most American comics writers write full script,[citation needed] but the Marvel Method is still occasionally used, especially when the artist is a co-plotter. The comics Kingdom Come and Marvels, both painted by Alex Ross, were created this way.[citation needed] Similarly, Keith Giffen creates plots and rough art, leaving the dialog to writer-collaborators who have included as Alan Grant and J. M. DeMatteis. Gødland not only evokes Jack Kirby's work but was also created using the Marvel Method.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Evanier, Mark. Kirby: King of Comics (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2008), p. 112
- ^ O'Neil, Dennis. "Write Ways: An Unruly Anti-Treatise," chapter in Dooley, Michael, and Steven Heller, eds., The Education of a Comics Artist: Visual Narrative in Cartoons, Graphic Novels, and Beyond (Allworth Communications, 2005, ISBN 1581154089); p. 187
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