The Comic Book Script Archive

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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If you’ve been reading comics for any length of time, I’d wager a pretty penny that you’ve read a few by Ron Marz. A quick glance at his biblography showcases Ron’s work with almost ever major comic book publisher, and on a personal note, his Silver Surfer run was epic.

Lately, Ron has been sandboxing in the Top Cow universe with an acclaimed run on Witchblade– a title that may have been fairly criticized as a cheesecake book eight years ago, Ron has been working hard to shake that preconception off the book by grounding it in character.

In a CBR article from awhile back, Ron says: “I get so tired of hearing of the sniping comments about “Witchblade” being a “T&A” book; always from ill-informed dopes who haven’t looked past the cover of the book in, say, the last five years. Books and characters evolve. Batman isn’t a grinning boy scout fighting space aliens anymore.

When I took over writing “Witchblade” with issue #80, I said I wasn’t interested in writing stories that were excuses for Sara’s clothes to fall off. My intention was to do what I always try to do: tell stories that make you care about what happens to the characters. Top Cow was absolutely supportive, and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.”

The stuff I’ve been catching up on (I actually am planning a larger piece on the Top Cow U in the near future) has really impressed me and Stjepan Sejic is quickly rocking his way up my list of favorite artists.

Ron was generous enough to pop us over 4 scripts to study and learn from– It’s very interesting to note that his script style remains consistent throughout all four titles. I asked him where he picked up his format and he had this to say:

“This is the format Jim Starlin showed me when I started. It’s designed to make it easy on the artist — each story page is contained to one or two script pages; each new story page starts a new script page. That’s so the artist can look at one page at time at his board or at his screen. No confusion, and once a page is drawn, that script page can be discarded.

It’s also designed to make the process easier on letterers, by numbering each balloon/caption for placement.

Too many writers just produce a document that’s like a screenplay, without any thought to the people who follow in the creative chain.”

Long-Time Script Archive fans will remember the usage of the “mysterious numbers” from the Panel One column awhile back. What I’ve found extremely useful is Ron’s big/bolded page numbers at the top– It’s helpful as a quick/silly check and avoids the problem of “missing” a page– on both the writer and artist side of production.

For the process junkies out there, you’ll really want to take a look through the Dragon Prince script and compare it to the full issue which Top Cow has graciously made available for free online.

On the subject of comic plotting/scripting, Top Cow publisher Filip Sablik recently conducted a great interview with Mr. Marz over at Geekweek. In it, Ron discusses comic storytelling technique with some really helpful gems–

“Comic storytelling is really an exercise in fitting your story into the available space, in both the macro and micro sense. Your overall story has to fit into the 22 pages of a standard comic, or whatever page count you’re working with. That’s the macro. The micro is the individual page, how much information you put on each page, how you plan the page turns so they pull the reader through the story. So the pacing of the storytelling is paramount”

I highly recommend you read the full article here–and actually, keep a keen lookout for Filip’s “I Thought You’d Never Ask” series on Geekweek– it’s a great read!

Ok, so that’s enough rambling from me, let’s get down to what you all came here for: The Scripts!!

ANGELUS #1

Script
Taking flight from the pages of “War of the Witchblades”! Danielle Baptiste returns home to New Orleans to come to grips with her new role as the Angelus, the human bearer of the primal force of Light. To complicate matters she must sort out her undefined relationship with Finch while maintaining control of the Angelus host, some of whom covet her power.

Preview Pages if you’d like to read along with the script.

BROKEN TRINITY: WITCHBLADE

Script Here
In the aftermath of BROKEN TRINITY, there’s a somber visit to a gravesite as Witchblade bearer Sara Pezzini is left to sort through her feelings for her baby’s father, Jackie Estacado, wielder of The Darkness. Meanwhile, The Angelus watches and plots, waiting for a chance to strike.

Preview Pages if you’d like to read along with the script.

DRAGON PRINCE #1

Script Here
Like a lot of teenagers, Aaron Chiang feels he’s never fit in, though he’s never known why. But all that changes when he learns the truth of his heritage: He is the Dragon Prince, last of his kind and heir to the bloodline of all dragons. Hunted to the brink of extinction by a secret society of wizards, dragonkind’s survival is now in Aaron’s hands.

Read the FULL ISSUE here!!

WITCHBLADE #132

Script Here

A quiet, romantic weekend in New England turns into a terrifying mystery when Sara and Gleason are pulled into an investigation of missing children. But is this a simple missing persons case or has the Witchblade been drawn to another supernatural crime?

Preview Pages if you’d like to read along with the script.

Wrapping up, let’s have a HUGE round of applause for Mr. Ron Marz! If you enjoy his scripts and want to check out even more behind-the-scenes goodness, check out the Deluxe Slipcase edition of First Born & Broken Trinity; which, in addition to the scripts, also feature the accompanying layouts by Stjepan Sejic and Mr. Phil Hester.
You can find out more about the Deluxe Slipcover edition here.

Finally, if you do find these scripts to be helpful, please go out and support the industry by picking up and reading some of these titles!

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A big thanks to Stephen Christy at Archaia and Josh Fialkov for the scripts to Tumor!

Josh is a writer you should be following- if you aren’t familiar with his stuff, I highly recommend going out and getting Elk’s Run (more on that in a second). Seriously, it’s only a matter of time before this guy is HUGE and you’re gonna want to say you read him back in the day.

Y’know how Bendis was doing Fire, Jinx, and Goldfish before becoming the architect of the Marvel U? That’s Josh right now. His range is pretty remarkable too, from stuff like Punks to Cyblade . He’s one of those guys you should read because he’s a better writer than you are (or, I am, at least)– and when you read one of his comics, you’ll walk away with a strong desire to up your game.

Don’t believe me? Well, I got good news for ya:

Thanks to Archaia, Josh’s book “Tumor” is available for your Kindle! The first comic (I believe– I don’t want to get all Tyrese Gibson, here) to be available on that platform.
Don’t have a Kindle? Hey, just like me! Well, you’re still in luck: You can head here and read the first four chapters– free. No strings attached. Just click and start reading.
(mind you, the whole thing is going to be available to you– they’re just at issue 4 in the release schedule now)

Go now:

Frank Armstrong has an inoperable brain tumor that’s killing him. In his final days, with his body, senses, and mind failing him, he’s going to do the one thing that he’s never been able to do before… save the girl.

Great, wasn’t it? And only halfway though, it’s one of my favorite comics of the year.

A flawed hero, a ticking clock, the chance of redemption, tricky narratives–  I’m flippin’ out on it.

And now, thanks to the gang, we have the scripts for Chapters one through three here:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Nice clean PDFs, too!
– I usually prattle on with some tid-bits that I noticed while reading, but Josh has been running a commentary of sorts over on the Tumor blog. You can check it out here.

Lastly, I’ll say that it is HIGHLY worth picking up the bumper editor of Elk’s Run. The story itself is worth the price of admission, but Josh also includes the original series pitch in the back– which, I shamelessly stole from for my last pitch…which  got picked up– what’s that say to you?
What it says to me is that you should be reading everything that Josh Fialkov puts out. So you can say you did after he’s all famous and stuff.

AWESOME EDIT:

And just to prove that Mr.Fialkov is not only talented, but awesome, he’s put up the proposal/pitch for Tumor!
Here’s the pitch as a PDF document

Also, you’ll want to read Josh’s intro for it here

GOOD INFO!

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The beginning of the end of Garth Ennis’ MAX Punisher run.

The format is pretty much the same as Garth’s other Punisher script (which you can find on the back page), but this one is kind of cool given the text pages that appear through the script.

I only briefly scanned the script because the actual comic is still sitting in my read pile– sad, I know– But it looks to be a pretty great arc.

“VALLEY FORGE, VALLEY FORGE: THE SLAUGHTER OF A U.S. MARINE GARRISON AND THE BIRTH OF THE PUNISHER,” PART 1
Garth Ennis concludes his seminal run on PUNISHER — in style. Thirty-five years ago, the Fifth Cavalry disgorged their troops on an isolated Vietnamese hilltop and was met by a scene of utter devastation. The final body count ran to well over seven-hundred — almost 200 hundred of them American soldiers. Standing alone amidst the carnage, a sole survivor: Captain Frank Castle, who years later would be known as the most fearsome vigilante to walk the Earth: The Punisher. Now the Punisher is about to face his stiffest test: He’s hunted big game in his day, but none as big as this. Five men with unlimited resources. Men who’d put anything between themselves and the Punisher’s bullet. Men who know exactly who he is…and how to fight him.

REMOVED BY REQUEST OF MARVEL

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