JimShooter.com – Page 9 – Writer. Creator. Large mammal.

The Great Cover After the Best Cliffhanger Ever

At the request of Lincoln G, here’s the cover of the Amazing Spider-Man #33. Not surprisingly, the best cliffhanger also made for a terrific cliffhanger cover.

Long Term Teases, or This Better Be Good….

The best long term tease, the best tease of any kind is consistently great entertainment. Publishing compelling issue after compelling issue is the best way to keep people interested in what comes next. Build up enough momentum, enough reputation and even if the stories are not as good as usual for a multi-issue stretch, the audience will stick with a series for a while. It’s like a ride in a hot air balloon. You stay aloft for a while even after the burner is turned off.

Mark Twain’s Rules of Literary Art

By JayJay Jackson

On November 3, 2011

In 04 Storytelling Lecture, 13 Guest Posts

Excerpted from “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” by Mark Twain.

JayJay here. Over the years Jim has had a few classic sources of advice on writing that he would refer writers to. Here is one of them. Good things to keep in mind.And I recommend reading the essay that these guidelines are taken from even if you have never read any Fenimore Cooper. It’s very funny. Over the years Jim has had many people ROTFL when he performed dramatic readings of it. Makes my sides hurt to even remember.

The rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale and shall help to develop it.
3. They require that the personages of a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit sufficient excuse for being there.
5. They require that when personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand tooled, seven dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it.
8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest” by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages in his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.In addition to the large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
Use the right word, not its second cousin.
Eschew surplusage.
Not omit necessary details.
Avoid slovenliness of form.
Use good grammar.
Employ a simple and straightforward style.

How to Do Continued Stories and Next or Future Issue Teases – Part 2

By Jim Shooter

On November 2, 2011

In 04 Storytelling Lecture

The Best Cliffhanger Ever

I remember buying this comic book at Churchill’s Pharmacy, corner of South Park Road and Brightwood Road, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. It was October, 1965. I had just turned fourteen.

I read the book in the store, after paying for it. They were nice at Churchill’s but like everywhere else, if you read the books before buying them, they’d remind you “this isn’t a library.”

The issue contained the second chapter of a three-part story, fondly referred to around Marvel in my day as the “Master Planner Sequence.” This chapter, “Man on a Rampage,” features Spider-Man on a desperate quest to recover the only thing that can save his beloved Aunt May’s life, a serum called ISO-36, the only supply of which has been stolen by the Master Planner’s thugs.

How to Do Continued Stories and Next or Future Issue Teases – Part 1

By Jim Shooter

On November 1, 2011

In 04 Storytelling Lecture

Continued Stories

I was taught that if a story continues in the next issue, end with a climactic cliffhanger.

Well, duh….

And yet….

And, as I learned on my own, that “rule,” taught to me by Mort Weisinger, like pretty much all rules applied to creative work, is far from absolute. There are plenty of ways to go about continued stories. More on that later.

But first, the end-with-a-climax/cliffhanger way:

In the first issue, introduce the characters and establish their situation. Introduce the problem, threat, opportunity, whatever that generates the conflict. Develop the conflict to an intense climax/cliffhanger, and end there.

Second issue, elegantly, succinctly introduce the characters. Re-establish the climax/cliffhanger situation from the end of last issue. If possible, intensify the situation. Resolve the climax/cliffhanger—that is, brilliantly get Batman out of the death trap or whatever. Do it in such a way that A) the overall conflict is not resolved but is in fact increased, or B) a related-but-new, greater conflict arises to succeed the resolved conflict. Develop that new or increased conflict to an intense climax and bring the story to a resolution.

My Final and Eeriest October Tale

By Jim Shooter

On October 31, 2011

In 09 Reminiscences and Tributes

Dire Premonitions

Sometime in early February of 2001, in the middle of the night, I woke up from an intense dream. I dreamed that my father was gravely ill. Dying. Just a dream, I told myself.It became a recurring dream. It happened five more times before March 14th, my mother’s birthday.I hadn’t been keeping in touch the family back in Pittsburgh much, hadn’t been home to visit for a while. Long story there. But I called my mother on her birthday, of course.

Fateful Phone Conversation

While I was on the phone with my mother, in the background I heard my father grumbling to himself about stomach pains. “I hurt,” he said.

My father, Kenneth Shooter, was a man in the way you were supposed to be a man in his generation. I knew of many times when he’d been hurting. I’d never heard him admit it.

It was troubling enough so that I e-mailed my brother-in-law and my cousin, the two most responsible relatives I had who lived in the Pittsburgh area. I told them that they should get my father to a doctor, pronto.

The next morning, I got an e-mail from my brother-in-law saying that Ken was an old guy, old guys normally had aches and pains, and I was making a mountain out of a speed bump.

I replied that I was only eight hours away, if he didn’t get Ken to a doctor that day, I was coming there and whether or not Ken was sick would be the least of his problems.

My sister and brother-in law took Ken to a doctor.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The Anti Gravity Room with Broadway Comics

By JayJay Jackson

On October 28, 2011

In 13 Guest Posts, 15 Video

JayJay Here. Back when Jim and I were working on Broadway Comics a Canadian TV show called The Anti Gravity Room came to film a segment with us. The episode is about how comics are made. I found an old video tape of the show a while back and got it transferred to DVD. It has Rob Liefeld and Ty Templeton. Jim and I are in the middle part (Part 2) of the show. The last part has an interesting bit about how comics are printed.

Superman Syndicated Strips

By Jim Shooter

On October 28, 2011

In 12 From Storage

Anyone aware of these?

More Tales to Astonish

By Jim Shooter

On October 28, 2011

In 03 Marvel Comics, 12 From Storage

Stan, Stan the Music Man

George Roussos, who was Marvel’s staff cover colorist during the time I was Editor in Chief of Marvel told me something about Stan. I told a tale involving George a while back which can be found HERE.George was a notable artist, and especially notable as an inker in his younger days. He worked for several companies, among them Marvel-precursor Timely Comics.

Stanley Lieber (who then used the pseudonym “Stan Lee,” which later became his legal name), a sixteen-year-old, comics-fanatic kid hired by his “Uncle” Martin Goodman (actually his cousin’s husband) was the entire editor of Timely comics.

Stan reportedly was always the first to arrive at the office. George was also an early bird. George told me that, occasionally, when he’d come some mornings to deliver work to Timely in the early forties, the only one there was Stan…

“…sitting cross-legged atop a tall filing cabinet playing the recorder.”

Now, there’s an image for you.

SUPERMAN – First Marvel Issue – Comments on Byrne’s Plot

By Jim Shooter

On October 26, 2011

In 10 Questions / Answers

When it seemed that Marvel might get the rights to Superman, John Byrne wrote an eight-page proposed plot for the first issue. My beat-by-beat description of Byrne’s plot yesterday generated a wave of very interesting, very insightful comments, among them these:

Marc Miyake said…

Dear Jim,

Thanks for summarizing Byrne’s plot. I wish you had reviewed it, but maybe it’s best that you didn’t because we readers can then give our own evaluations without being influenced.

I wasn’t terribly fond of much of Byrne’s published revamp, but in some ways I prefer it to this unused plot:

1. The “searing radiation”: This element is confusing and unnecessary. Could Lara have been poisoned by it? Maybe not, since Kal-El wasn’t. Did it mutate them, just as cosmic rays changed the Fantastic Four? Whatever changes affected Lara — if any — obviously weren’t enough to enable her to survive the crash … despite Jor-El’s prediction that the “additional factor […] that will help them [plural!] survive.” Maybe Byrne meant to introduce the “additional factor” in some later issue.

2. Lara dying on Earth. Byrne has mentioned this in an earlier proposal. This serves no purpose I can see other than to differentiate this origin from the classic one in which Jor-El and Lara die as a couple. I recall Byrne saying that Lara’s death would serve a purpose: she’d die from kryptonite and thereby prove that it was fatal. Maybe he came up with that after he turned in this plot.

3. Martha’s “pregnancy”: IIRC, in the published revamp, Martha had a cover story: she was pregnant when the Kents were snowed in (sorry if I got this wrong). No cover story here.

4. Jonathan’s death: In the late 30s version of the origin, the passing of both Kents marks Clark’s manhood. This death just seems random. I guess Martha has to survive to sew Clark’s costume.

5. The raid reminds me of Spider-Man’s origin: in both case, a failure to act led to terrible consequences. Would Byrne’s Superman have been perpetually haunted by this incident? Was this a conscious attempt to Marvelize Superman, to give him a psychological weak point? I don’t like the idea of associating Superman with failure.

6. The subway rescue is large in scale, but not as spectacular as the space plane rescue in the published revamp.

It’s still a decent done-in-one, though. I’m sure I’d have loved Byrne’s art, and the conclusion cracked me up: “Sorry, the caped man says, he’s already given his story to someone else, Clark Kent.” And I’m relieved to see that teenage Clark didn’t become a football star which I’ve long thought was out of character. (Maybe he did off-panel.)

I wonder how readers who have read the New 52 relaunches of the Superman titles would react to this plot.

(…)

October 25, 2011 5:48 PM

Marvel Layoffs – 1996

By JayJay Jackson

On October 26, 2011

In 03 Marvel Comics, 13 Guest Posts

JayJay here. Jim is taking care of other business today so I found another old news article for you. I thought it was an interesting aspect of Marvel history in the wake of some of Marvels’ most recent layoffs.