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From Strip To Script – Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter

By Josh Hechinger

Welcome to From Strip to Script, where I take a page of finished comic art and try to derive a script from it, to see what I can learn from the exercise.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she's a bit crap, and so are the monsters, and so is everything in life, really, but what are you going to do?"

That's essentially the premise of Marc Ellerby's Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter, where the titular monster hunter grumbles and gripes her way through keeping monsters peaceable, usually by hitting them with a bo staff, or bombs, or the like.

It's rather delightful, really.

PAGE SIXTY-THREE (SEVEN PANELS)

P1. THE KRAKEN tries to rub the irritation out of its eye as NOONAN jabs her finger into its tentacle.

– NOONAN      You monsters clearly have no respect for others!

P2. NOONAN screws her eyes shut and claws the air on either side of her face in sheer outrage.

– NOONAN      And ohmygod what is that smell!?

P3. THE KRAKEN sourly eyes its exit with a squint out of the good side of its eye.

– NOONAN (off)      Is that going to linger about all night? Ughhhh.

P4. A seething KRAKEN (eye going bloodshot where NOONAN poked it, face splattered in its own goop) starts lowering itself back into its hole while NOONAN, hands on hips, continues to give it a piece of her mind.

– NOONAN      And do you know what else you__

– NOONAN      Hey! Where do you think you're going?!

P5. THE KRAKEN'S dipping out of sight as NOONAN harangues it from the edge of the pit.

– NOONAN      I'm not finished with you just yet you big dumb…dumb head.

P6. NOONAN yells down into the pit.

– NOONAN      Oh that's it back to Bikini Bottom with yo__

P7. THE KRAKEN'S snaps a tentacle out of the pit and pops her one.

– KRAKEN (pit)      Oh give it a rest already!

So, What'd We Learn?

– When I was typing this all out, I had to keep stopping myself from adding commas to Ellerby's dialogue. But as a reader, it creates a neat effect, a kind of blurting/breathlessness to Noonan's ranting that feels very natural.

– The business in panel two is the sort of thing I always love to see in comics to break up the tedium of talking heads. Also, I myself talk with my hands kind of a lot, so my natural inclination is to have characters do the same. It can be tricky to describe, and even what I come up with doesn't quiiiiite capture the absolutely perfect gesture Ellerby drew there (the lines indicating that Noonan is shaking as she hits peak freakout is an especially nice touch).

– Bolding the second and last words in a line (like "And ohmygod what is that smell!?") is something I've been accused of overusing in the past, but *shrug* I like that cadence, the roller coaster up-and-down-and-up of it.

Philly-based comic writer Josh Hechinger is a Cancer, and his blood type is A+. You can find him being a loquacious dope on Twitter, and read his comic collaborations on Comixology.

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