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From Strip To Script – Secret Wars: Secret Love #1

Published Wed, 23 Sep 2015 17:00:47 -0500

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.

Ah, Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. Of course, it's fall now, but there's always time for love, and comics about it.

Last time, I went with a more text-driven, informative work; this time, I figured I'd tackle a comic more visually driven and emotionally based. Specifically, this charming little insectoid roman—no, no, wait, trust me, it's fine, it's not weird—insectoid romance that shows up via Katie Cook (artist/writer) in Secret Wars: Secret Love issue 1.

PAGE ONE (SIX Panels)

P1. ANT-ANT (the Hank Pym Ant-Man as an actual-but-cartoony ant) peeps in the window of a wasp's nest, holding a flower. WASP (Wasp as an actual-but-cartoony-wasp, natch) is sleeping in her bed. There's a framed picture hung up with a nail and string showing the two of them holding hands…well, appendages.

CAPTION Happy Ant-Iversary

A Scavenger Hunt With Bugs

ANT-ANT (pictograph) [A circle cycling from Wasp, to a love note, to the flower flower, to a present, back to Wasp]

WASP ZZZZ…

P2. ANT-ANT smiles at us, holding the flower and the love note from the pictograph in P1.

ANT-ANT (pictograph) [a heart]

P3. ANT-ANT'S butt shows as he dips from the window. The noise wakes WASP up.

ANT-ANT Loud rustling!

ANT-ANT (pictograph) [a rooster crowing at the rising sun]

SFX (WASP) STARTLE!

WASP ?

P4. WASP holds the love note and the flower, look pleased. The love note has a pictogram on it: a wasp, with an arrow pointing to a carosel horse.

WASP !

P5. Exterior of the wasp's nest, on a branch in Central Park, WASP leaning out the window with the flower.

CAPTION Earth 0.616. Bug World.

P6. Pull out further as WASP flies off into the background.

WASP (pictograph) [a heart]

CAPTION Don't bug me! The story continues on the next page!

So, What'd We Learn?

I can't help but feel that I'm doing the page a disservice by trying to find a full-script for it; the finished page has enough emoting and non-traditional panel breaks and borders that trying to meticulously parse it loses the je ne sais quoi.

At the same time…parsing it as hard panels makes me focus on the beats of the page. Here are the six actions, there they are in six panels; if I turn that in to an artist, and they loosen the panel-definitions from there, that's all to the good.

I don't know that I'd ever script something like the ribbon from the first clue/love note being part of P2's border, or the branch being the cut off from the interior to the exterior, unless I really got a wild hair up my starfish that that was the effect I needed the artist to But most of the time? That's why you give the beats to the artist and let them do their job.

Unrelated to all of the above: throwing a little "hey, let's keep going" caption to the reader at the end of the page is a nice tool. In the context of this issue, nothing says "Marvel" like gently egging your reader on to read more comics.

Philly-based comic writer Josh Hechinger [joshhechinger.tumblr.com] 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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