Are Novelists Better At Storytelling than Comic Book Writers?

-->

Some people say that writing novels is better than writing comic books. That being a novelist is better than being a comic book writer.

I don’t know about that.

I’m a novelist. And I’m a screenwriter. And I’m also a blogger. And over the last 25 years as I’ve written and published over eight novels, six nonfiction books, two screenplays, scripts for two seasons of a TV series, three series of novelettes and hundreds of articles I always held out hope that one day I’d finally get the opportunity to write a comic book.

I never thought it was a step down writing comics like some elitists in the literary crowd believe them to be. I never thought that novels were better than comic books.  For me, comics, novels, and movies were all the same thing: stories.  

As I see one medium isn’t better than another. It’s how a writer tells a story in that medium that makes it great. A great writer can use the same storytelling approaches in comic books that they use in a novel. And they can utilize many of the great story elements like irony, foreshadowing, symbolism and in a comic book the same way they do when they’re writing a novel. It’s the skill of the writer that makes the story great, not the medium they tell that story in.

A bad novelist like E.L. James can give us the Fifty Shades books. While a great comic writer like Alan Moore can give us Watchmen.

When I was four years old, my brother’s comic books were my gateway to reading. And as I got older they were my motivation to start writing. The main reason why I started writing when I was nine because I couldn’t draw the pictures in comic books. So I made the pictures with words. And as I learned how to translate the pictures I imagined in my head into words on a page I always wondered what they’d look like on the page of a comic book.

When I couldn’t break into the comic book industry in my twenties I spent over two decades refining my craft writing novels, screenplays and blogs working towards the goal of writing comics one day. The way I see it writing novels, nonfiction, screenplays and blogs over the last 25 years doesn’t make me a better writer than a comic book writer. It doesn’t put me in higher position than a comic book writer. It’s just how I learned the craft of storytelling.

What most people don’t know is most of my characters like Isis, John Haynes and E’steem were originally supposed to be comic book characters. But because I couldn’t get work in the industry I wound up turning them into characters in novels instead.

Over the last four years I got a chance to see what my words would look like as pictures in a comic book on all the covers that Bill Walko designed for the Isis series and the covers Mike Williams designed for The Legendary Mad Matilda and JohnHaynes: A Conversation With Death. The story for those covers came from the words I wrote (and crappy drawings) I drew. And those stories got comic fans and everyday people paying attention to my stories and buying my work.

Seeing the stories being told on Bill and Mike’s covers showed me that I could use all the skills I learned from working on novels and screenplays to tell a story in the comic book medium. And I believe could be part of a team that told a great story in a comic book if given the chance. As I was writing Isis: All That Glitters novelette I took everything I learned from screenwriting and writing novels and started working on my first comic script. And with the Isis: All That Glitters Graphic novel I wanted to give readers a comic that was like an Isis series book come to life in pictures. I studied everything I could about comics as I worked on that script so that it could be as well crafted as one of my Isis series books.

What I’m working towards now with the upcoming Isis indiegogo is the opportunity to finally see how one of my stories would be told from comic panel to comic panel.  With the reimagining of the oldschool bank robber comic book story in Isis: All That Glitters I want to give readers the action-packed all-ages comic book I used to read when I used to go to the grocery store in Junior High and the newsstand at Times Square when I was 14. The kind of comic that turned me into a lifeflong comic fan. And the kind of comic I hope will make readers longtime Isis fans.

The way I see it, a good story will translate from one medium to the next. And with the Isis Indiegogo I’m hoping to finally see Bill Walko turn my words into the pictures I couldn’t draw. I’d love to see this project gets funded next year so I can finally share one of my stories in the comic book I wanted to write ever since I was nine years old.