Dixon: ‘I’m strictly a writer. I write the scripts that the artist works from. It’s a format much like a screenplay, broken down panel-by-panel with descriptions of what should appear in each panel. And all the dialogue and captions in place. I wrote quite a few Simpsons comic book stories over a ten year period.’
Q. Was that a challenge to switch to a novel format and ‘point-of-view’?
CD. Mostly it was the intimidation factor. In comics, my chosen medium, the bench for writing talent is pretty thin. But in prose fiction I’m up against thousands of years of awesome writing. I mean, who the hell do I think I am going to work in the same shop as Alexander Dumas or Jane Austen?
And now I have to actually write descriptive text that evokes images in the minds of casual readers. In comics my descriptions are utilitarian. I simply tell the artist what needs to be in the panel. It’s not artful in any way. In prose fiction I need to be more subtle; more circumspect. More of a wordsmith which is something I have never considered myself to be. But pacing, plotting, characterization and all the rest are the same for comics as they are for prose. Continue reading “More With Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Icon (part 2)”
