Crisis Weekly, the fourteenth.

Crisis Weekly #14.

I realize that sometimes these scripts are hard to read, as they don't seem to give enough visual description, or seem overly repetitive.  This week's script has a series of repetitive images, and yes, it was deliberate.

Even if it's disappointing as a reader, as the writer I'm picturing generally what the illustrated page looks like, what the intended visual effect is supposed to be.  I can't make readers of a script see the same thing I do, but as the writer, the result is what matters, even if these pages are never drawn.  I'm not writing these to be read solely as an elaborate way to read a story, but as an exercise in comic book scriptwriting, easily the longest I've yet attempted.

The funny thing I learned, some time ago, is that in writing comic book scripts, I become a lot more interested in the visual progress of a story.  I become a lot more interested in what characters are doing.  When I write prose, I'm more interested in what they're thinking, in explaining their internal journeys.  This may be unusual and perhaps even disorienting for readers who are far more used to popular writing that relies on action to build momentum, moments that build on each other whether they're mysteries or similar stories.  But personally, I'm a little bored by writing that spends most of its time distracting the reader, that expands a story past the story so far that the story all but disappears behind narrative gloss.

My opinion, anyway.  But comic books are inherently a visual medium, and it would be unnatural to try and approach them any other way.  So, too, with film, which is why most visionary directors are known for, well, their visuals.  Some are known for their dialogue, too, but that's because they've spent a good amount of time developing how their characters talk.  A lot of writers, in any medium, mistake the ability to write with merely presenting the bare essentials, and not the ability to do it interestingly.

Again, perceptions will vary.  You might look at what I did this week and say I wasted my time, and your time.  But I had a character (the Caballero) who finally found himself in the spotlight, and there was a lot to accomplish in very little time, and there are bigger things yet to reveal about him, and so I had to be very deliberate in my approach.

So I made some creative decisions.