Сценарий комикса: структура и стили написания

Document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail

A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program teleplay or a film screenplay. In comics, a script may be preceded by a plot outline, and is almost always followed by page sketches drawn by a comics artist and inked, succeeded by the coloring and lettering stages. There are no prescribed forms of comic scripts, but there are two dominant styles in the mainstream comics industry, the full script (commonly known as "DC style") and the plot script (or "Marvel house style"). The creator of a script is known as a comics writer.

In this style, the comics writer breaks the story down in sequence, page by page and panel by panel, describing the action, characters, and sometimes backgrounds and "camera" points of view of each panel, as well as all captions and dialogue balloons. For decades, this was the preferred format for books published by DC Comics. Peter David described his specific application of the full script method: "I break down each page on a panel by panel basis and label them as PANEL A, PANEL B, and so on. Then I describe what's in each panel, and then do the dialogue, numbering the balloons. I designate the panels with letters and the word balloons with numbers so as to minimize confusion for the letterer". In addition to writing the scripts, Jim Shooter drew layouts for the artist in his early work for DC.

In a variation of the plot script, attributed to Harvey Kurtzman, the writer breaks down the story into page roughs or thumbnail sketches, with captions and dialogue jotted down inside the roughs. The artist (who is often the comic's writer as well) then fleshes out the roughs onto full size art board. Writer/artists Frank Miller and Jeff Smith favor this style, as did Archie Goodwin.

Attributed to William Gaines (Kurtzman's publisher at EC Comics), the EC style is similar to the Kurtzman style, except the writer submits a tight plot to an artist, who breaks it down into panels that are laid out on the art board. The writer writes all captions and dialogue, which are pasted inside these panels, and then the artist draws the story to fit all of this paste up. This laborious and restrictive way of creating comics is no longer in general use; the last artist to use even a variation of EC style was Jim Aparo.