Page Six

Okay, this is a long one. Hopefully interesting, though.

As I described previously, I wrote the first version of SHADRACH STONE in teleplay form. Here’s page 6 of that initial script, which features ten-year-old Shadrach Stone pulling some shit on his father and on Mr. Carly, the owner of the local five-and-ten-cent store:



When I converted the story to comic book form, most of this action wound up, coincidentally, on page 6 of the first issue. Here’s what that page looked like:



Note the differences in pacing. In the teleplay, we briefly see Mr. Carly right before Shadrach’s father starts speaking. In comics, that would be too awkward a beat; it would draw too much attention away from the confrontation between Shadrach and his father. Of course, on film, an editor would have to make the decision whether or not to show the minor character at that point. In both media, a script is a guide to the finished project, not a set of unbreakable dictates.

Here’s the first version of the art Jon Proctor did for this page:



As you can see, Jon was employing a high-contrast, very designy approach to the art at this point. He did intend to color it, but with the photographic backgrounds, it almost seems intended for black and white.

As part of our presentation to publishers, I lettered this page. Sometimes when I did this, I would make changes as I went along; but this time, I stuck pretty close to the original dialogue.



After we contracted with Penny-Farthing Press to publish the book, Jon got started immediately redrawing pages, using a much more traditional-comics look. This was his own choice, though both Penny-Farthing and I gave him a few notes. Behold the new page 6:



Meanwhile, I received some notes from Penny-Farthing and revised the script slightly. Since Jon had already redrawn that page, I was able to match it to his art. For instance, I moved one of Shadrach's lines from panel 2 to 3, mostly for space reasons.

The blue text is changed from the previous version. (That’s not industry standard, but I like to keep track.)



I decided we needed to, uh, get to know Shadrach a little better in panel 5.

We all liked Jon’s new version, but I asked him to revise panel 5 so we could see Shadrach’s face. He did, and the page was then inked by Jeff Dabu and colored by Jon.



And just this morning, I did a polish on the script and created balloon-placement guides for the letterer. Balloon guides are time-consuming; sometimes the writer draws them up, and sometimes the editor, but I like doing my own when I can. It shows you things you might not otherwise notice, even just looking at the script and art together. Balloons don’t fit the way you think they will, or dialogue just looks wrong with a face or body language.

The numbers on the dialogue correspond to the balloon indications on the guide.





As you can see from the different script versions, I changed my mind a few times about Shadrach’s father’s dialogue in panel 4. On film, I would have trusted an actor to get across the emotional effect without any words; but that’s tougher to pull off with still images. Looking at it this time, I decided I’d overwritten it somewhere along the line, and that something shorter and more suggestive would work better.

One of us will probably change it again before it’s done.

And that’s The Saga of Page Six so far. When it’s lettered, I’ll post an update.