Foley at 2011-05-18 11:50:07:

I have a few minor quibbles with the presentation, and one major one"

"But a key difference is that comics can also express a subject's inner domain."

I don't feel that that's a key difference between comics and film. I'm not sure it's actually a difference at all--seems pretty dismissive of the medium's capacities. Comics have captions and thought balloons; movies have voiceovers, if they're needed. Comics and movies both have flashback sequences, and an evocative image intercut between two panels isn't so different from a smashcut to and back to a scene. And films have the added advantages of sound and motion.

To my mind, the key difference between the two media is that one's static and one's dynamic. In a screenplay one can write "He knocks on the door, opens it. Enters, closing it behind him." In a comic, that's at least three panels on a page that in North America has roughly 3-5 panels on it. You could maybe cut one or two of those panels out using text, but then you have to account for the space the text takes up on the page. Or if you don't, someone will--doing something like that stands a chance of making your artist, letterer, and/or editor's life unnecessarily difficult.

That said, the program's formatting doesn't seem out of line with industry standards, such as they are. The creators are correct in stating comic script formatting varies much more dramatically than is typically accepted for screenwriters. Personally, I use a Microsoft word file an editor gave me years ago that has several macros programmed into it, and I've never heard any complaints about it.

As for how the comics industry is doing...it kind of depends on your perspective. Using the traditional metrics things are almost apocalyptically terrible, with sales for the bestselling comics plummeting from millions in the early '90s to frequently less than 100k now. The Big Two publishers (Marvel and DC) are sustained less by their comics product and more from merchandising and licensing. A second tier of companies seem to be surviving, if not thriving (Dark Horse just laid off a bunch of folks). Manga publishing has slowed down dramatically from the high point in the early aughts--TokyoPop just ceased publication to focus on licensing. And at the bottom of the pool there are several predatory "publishers" whose business model is built around taking advantage of creators desperate to get a comic in print to acquire as much IP as possible in the hopes of scoring a Big Hollywood Payday.

The industry is slowly, if not surely, moving more towards a digital model, in part because comics retailers scream bloody murder every time any major publisher does something they perceive to be pulling people out of their stores. It seems likely to me that we'll eventually end up at a stage where small or self-publishing operations can make a go of things using the 'net in various ways, which to my mind is probably a good thing for creators, who will have greater ownership and control of their work. Top-heavy corporations with loads of management types are going to have a harder time of it, simply because acceptable profits for a cartoonist publishing his own work may not be good enough for a business exec. Simply put, there are much easier ways to make money than by making OR publishing comics--it's really something that ought to be pursued only by those who love the medium.

Andrew Foley

-If anyone cares, I wrote the comics PARTING WAYS and DONE TO DEATH (coming to shelves in trade paperback form for the first time this September), and co-wrote Cowboys & Aliens. The graphic novel, not the movie, more's the pity. (And as far as onscreen credit goes, the WGA refuses to acknowledge I wrote anything.)