The Comic Book Script Archive

Quick note: This one does deal w/ Adult themes, so y’know: beware.

If you’re an aspiring artist/writer, Tony Fleecs is a guy you should get to know. I’ve had the pleasure of being buddies with Tony for a few years now, and I can honestly say he’s one of the nicest, funniest, and talented mo’fos I know.

Tony has been working for a number of years now and lucky for us, his body of work just continues to grow– if you’ve been reading Phil Hester and Andy Kuhn’s Firebreather, you’ve seen Tony’s work in the ‘Lil Firebreather backups. Additionally, Tony recently provided one of the variant covers for Archie’s 600th issue. He’s also currently working with Tumor’s author, Josh Fialkov on a book for Oni Press.

But that’s just the artist side! In addition to his award winning Autobio comic “In My Lifetime,‘ Tony has also written a book for Terminal Press called Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here.

Wadd is an adaptation of the 70s porno movie starring John Holmes as Johnny Wadd, Private Investigator (or, Private Dick, if you will)– Naturally, this was back in the Boogie Nights days when porn was filled with ham fisted plots (note: maybe they still are?)– Tony’s challenge was to present the story without the porno/sex element.

Any work of adaptation takes research– and Tony found himself with a very strange set of circumstances in regards to Wadd:

“I watched [the movie] strangely opposite the regular way you watch porn, because I fast forwarded through all the sex and went straight for the plot. In other words, fucking is not the motivation to the story.”

Obviously, changes were made to the story as well “I don’t want to be the guy who says [‘Johnny Wadd’] is a bad movie to start with, but the point of the movie wasn’t to have a cohesive plot; it was for [Holmes] to have sex a lot.” By removing the porno aspect, it’s up to Fleecs to ground the plot as a dusty/gritty crime story–It’s a simple, but unique concept– and it really works.

The book was illustrated by Guns of Shadow Valley artist Dave Wachter– who does a great job evoking the sleezy 70s.

I had talked to Tony about getting the Wadd script, and I was stoked that he actually sent over his original pitch for the comic as well– The Pitch is REALLY worth checking out– Our previous examples (Costa’s Hawksmoor and Warren Ellis’ Planetary) don’t fit the typical mold of what you should be writing in a pitch doc– Tony’s Wadd pitch is much closer to what you should be aiming for.

Additionally, since Tony has done it all (Art, Lettering, Coloring, etc,) his script is well worth checking out– Because he’s worked in various positions on other writers scripts, he knows how to call attention to certain details that might be overlooked. In particular, I really dig how he highlights notices for the colorist.

If you’d like to do a script to page comparison (or, would just like to pick up the book) you can order it direct from Terminal Press here.

Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here – Pitch

Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here – Script

You can follow Tony’s comic book adventures on Twitter @Tonyfleecs

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Not a script, but an worthy entry that I think CBSA readers will find enjoyable and enlightening. This little piece has been making the rounds post-SDCC, but on the offhand chance you haven’t caught it, you really should check it out.

Friend to the archive, Matt Fraction, has a little performance piece he’s been doing at wOOtstock called The Batman Dreams of Hieronymus Machines– it’s funny, informative, inspiring, and touching…really, what more can you ask for?
I’m not going to say much beyond that– it’s about 17 minutes long, but you won’t feel it for a second. Enjoy:

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You likely know Chris Yost’s work from his Marvel X work, where with co-writer Craig Kyle, he blew the on the doors on the House of Mutants wide open– hell, they even blew up the House…
Chris started at Marvel back in 2002 as an intern at the West Coast office, but quickly rose up the ranks after impressing a few execs with his spec scripts. It wasn’t long before they’d hired him to write on the animated series, X-men: Evolution…from there you can chart a rising line of awesome comic book work with a career that looks like it’s just getting started.

In 2009, Chris and Atomic Robo co-creator, Scott Wegener published a three-issue, Image mini-series called Killer of Demons.
…and it’s awesome.

I had been tracking Killer of Demons fairly early in its development, when Yost popped by a message board I frequent with some pre-release artwork– being a fan of Scott’s work, I was instantly hooked.
Killer of Demons is one half Army of Darkness/Constantine and one half Office Space– with a lot of decapitations in between.

YOST: ‘Killer of Demons’ is the heartwarming story of junior account executive Dave Sloan, who wakes up to see that there are actual literal demons from hell among us and a heavenly cherub angel is telling him to kill them all. Which he does, with swords, axes, guns and even a pen. But Dave starts to realize that things aren’t necessarily as they seem.
“As Satan points out to him, pretty much all the good serial killers think they’re doing God’s work. And given that everyone Dave sees as a demon is someone he works with–he works in advertising, about 10 to 1 hellspawn–or people that annoy him–gardeners with leaf blowers, the drive-thru window guy–it doesn’t look good for Dave’s sanity.
“So the question is ‘Dave… insane? Or hand of God on Earth?’ The answer may or may not surprise you.”

Killer of Demons was quite well received amongst the audience that picked it up, but like many great Image books, it got a bit lost in the shuffle of the monthly rack. Still, I’m a big champion of the book and a when I do run across people that have read it, I’ve yet to hear a negative review.
Recently, (up really late one night on Twitter) Yost mentioned that he’d started thinking about Killer of Demons 2– which, I instantly (and perhaps over-excitedly) responded to…ultimately, that led to a quick email in which I asked Chris if he’d be willing to shoot over a KOD script– and being the awesome guy he is, he didn’t give us one. He gave us all three!

This is a really good script for you writers out there- take note of the page space of Yost’s script– I don’t think that any one page of final comic goes over two pages of script. That’s important. You don’t want to overload your artist– unless you’re Alan Moore…but you’re not, so don’t.
I also think this is a really good script for you artists to practice on. Scott is a stylized artist, so it would probably be neat to see how you might interpret the script and then go back to look over his artwork to see how he did it.

You can pick up the first Killer of Demons trade at Amazon for about ten bucks– It’s a fun read! Highly recommended!

For those who do, here’s a quick message from Letterer extraordinaire, Thomas Mauer:

(Keep an eye out for) the joke on Creationism on the double page spread in issue 3 where Dave stands before the building and you can read when the ad company was created. I threw that in there but no reader’s ever mentioned anything about it to me afterward.

– and indeed, we can consult the script and see that Thomas put that in there himself! Just a little amusing flourish that even I overlooked on my first read. That just goes to illustrate the power of having an awesome letterer on your side!

Wrapping up, let’s have a big round of applause for Mr. Chris Yost for kindly donating his Killer of Demons scripts for us to read and study! You can find Chris on twitter @Yost, where you too can let him know that you’d love to see Killer of Demons 2!

THE SCRIPTS:

KILLER OF DEMONS #1
KILLER OF DEMONS #2
KILLER OF DEMONS #3

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Hey! We’re back!!

The Archive has successfully survived it’s migration to WordPress 3.0 (finally!) You’ll also note that I changed themes, so after suffering about a year and a half of tiny gray text against black, we’re now legible! No more trips to Lenscrafters for you!

I also moved all the advertising off to the right sidebar– I’d love to run the archive ad-free, but well…the site costs money, and I gotta offset that somehow. We’re using a lot of Project Wonderful slots, because most of the time the ads featured there are independent creators– so, please consider giving them a click if something catches your eye!
I also added in a donate box– so, if you ever feel like buying me a cup of coffee, it’d be much appreciated. That said, I’m working on some incentives to generate a buck or two to keep the site running…

So, yeah- it’s still a work in progress. You can still find the bulkload of the archive in the “Scripts” section, which is now located on the sidebar.

I also added the snazzy “Social Bookmark” widget, so you folks that like to Stumble, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc, can now do so with ease.

I’ve still got a little more cleaning up to do, mainly in the category and tags sections. Like I said, work in progress!

Oooh, and TAGS! We’ve got TAGS now! That’ll come in handy for you guys who want to find specific publishers or authors. If you’re wary of Tags, we’ve even got a snazzy Search up at the top!

So, I’ll be poking around and doing some minor site stuff over the next week– All of the Scripts and Content seem to have made the transition smoothly– but if you do happen across something that isn’t working, please drop me a comment and let me know!

Ok, back tomorrow with a BRAND NEW SCRIPT!

(or– maybe 3…)

Oh, I almost forgot: Does anyone out there subscribe to us via RSS? Just curious, I’ve recently gotten into using RSS– actually, I should apologize to you: I generally do “Live-edits” of these write ups, but apparently the RSS feeds don’t update! I’ll make sure to proof before posting from now on!!

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