01x07 - The Marvel Method

[bunniefuu]

[man] All right. Here we go.

Issue 1.

2020 is almost here.

Like, twelve weeks
until our first issue comes out.

Arno Stark is Iron Man,
and the robots are rebelling.

[sighs] Where do I start? I mean,
I don't even have to make this stuff up.

We're living in science fiction.
We are in the future. Future. Future.

Hmm, okay. Focus. Focus.

The minute the ball drops, it's 2020.
Arno Stark is officially Iron Man!

The future is now.

And... [stammering] what next?
What-- What else?

Um... [clicks tongue] Ah, come on, Dan.

You've written comics for almost 30 years.
You can do this.

-[Twitter alert whistles]
-Ooh! Tweet!

[man] When Stan Lee
would talk about Marvel,

he would call it
the world outside your window.

Fantastic Four
and Peter Parker and The Avengers,

they didn't live in some city with a
made-up name that you can't find on a map!

They lived in New York City!

I have written Silver Surfer,
She-Hulk and a lot of Avengers.

But most people know me
for my ten years on Spider-Man.

I aimed for this.

I wanted this more than anything.

Doing everything you've ever wanted
is awesome!

[no audible dialogue]

-Hey. Oh, man.
-[cashier] Hey, Dan.

-[Slott] New books out yet?
-Yeah.

[Slott] Ah, cool.

Nowadays, my new assignment is

Iron Man 2020,
the adventures of Arno Stark.

I get to be the guy who's writing
about Iron Man 2020 in the year 2020,

and they picked 2020
because it was a strange future year

we would never ever reach.

But here we are now,
and that is a little crazy to me.

[elevator bell dings]

Hey.

[mutters]

Hey!

Wouldn't it be funny if it broke?

-It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
-I love the new digs!

So, ultimately this is a big,
crazy action-adventure story

with a new Iron Man
and a crazy big threat.

You know, all that goodness.

-The Mighty Marvel Manner.
-Yes.

I started reading comics when I was six,

and now as an executive editor,
I've got my hands in half to a third

of everything that we're putting out
to some degree.

You-- We've been planning this for ages.

We've been seeding this
for a very long time.

So I know you've got a lot of ideas
and very little actually put together.

[laughs]

-And you need more time to get it done.
-I would-- I-- You--

Because it's not good enough
and you need more time.

I think I could make it better.

[Brevoort] We use the term "work" loosely
when it comes to Dan.

Dan's terrible with his deadlines.

But no--

You'll be the famous writer
of Iron Man 2022.

-God!
-[laughs]

No pressure at all or anything!

-No problem!
-Oh, oh!

[both laugh]

[Brevoort] I've worked with Dan
for a quarter of a century.

And fortunately, he's good enough at this
that those strengths help

to counterbalance the fact
that he is his own worst enemy

when it comes to being able
to produce things

on the schedule that they need to be done.

[laughs]

[Brevoort]
Absolutely, I want [indistinct] Yeah.

[Slott] You sound like my parents.

[both laugh]

In the 1980s, there was a famous
comic book story called Machine Man,

which featured the Iron Man of the future.

With iconic shoulder gears,
he was Iron Man 2020.

Both Dan and I were aware
that 2020 was coming up.

We thought about,
"What if from that story 40 years ago,

we'll introduce a modern-day version
of that character?

A modern-day version of Iron Man 2020."

-[typing]
-[Slott] Issue 1: "The Future is Now."

Starts like this:

Arno Stark,
Tony's smarter and sociopathic brother,

does not see himself as a...

does not see himself as a futurist.

For most of his life,
he has seen himself as the future,

and that future is here.

And that future was 2020, and it's here.

Hmm.

He is the one
who will unite man and machine

against this extinction event / threat.

The one who will unite--

The one who will u--

[grunts]

The one who will unite...

The Marvel style of writing has changed
and evolved over all the decades.

Everyone gets to add to the tapestry,

but very much at the foundation,
right at the start,

you're looking at some of the greatest
comic book creators of all time.

Stan Lee, Steve Ditko
and Jack "The King" Kirby.

[man 2] At that time,
in the '50s and '60s,

the big schism in the industry was between
the DC Method and the Marvel Method.

Most comics were done full script.

There was a panel description
and then the dialogue was written out.

All the artist did was fill in the blanks.

And that led to storytelling
that was codified

into this, sort of, plot-heavy structure.

And Marvel just completely revamped that.

[Slott] For a long time, Stan was one
of the only writers working in Marvel.

Everyone talks about how Stan
created the whole Marvel universe.

The X-Men, the Fantastic Four,
Spider-Man, Hulk.

One thing after another.

But the only reason he could do that
is because he had such talented artists

who could really do the heavy lifting.

He would write up very brief descriptions
of what he wanted in the comic.

And then the artist
would lay out the whole page

and come up with the way
the whole story unfolds.

And then Stan would get the art back
and add all the dialogue.

And that all became the Marvel Style
of writing. The Marvel Method.

Nowadays, Marvel Method
isn't really used at all.

Everyone goes full scripts.

[typing]

I'm one of the dinosaurs.
I'm one of the people,

one of the last people,
doing Marvel Style.

I want the creators to have fun.

I want the creators to jump in
and give you these gifts on the page.

You're gonna have an idea for a story,

but it's always gonna play out
a little differently as your co-creator,

your artist, starts to play with the idea.

Normally in a comic book, you have
multiple people working on the art.

You have a penciller,
who lays out the whole book.

And then you have an inker,
who comes in and embellishes it.

And then the colorist comes in
and adds all the color.

But our artist for Iron Man 2020
is Pete Woods.

And what makes Pete Woods different
is Pete Woods does everything!

Pete Woods is the penciller and the inker
and the colorist, all in one!

In his van driving around the country.
[laughs]

[Brevoort] These days, our writers
and artists live all across the globe.

People in every time zone
and every place around the world

are working on Marvel comics
and Marvel stories.

All the time, I hope.

That's what they tell me they're doing.
I choose to believe them.

In the days of Stan in the '60s,
even if you weren't working

in the mythical Marvel Bullpen
of the office,

you had to be local to Manhattan
in order to bring your work in,

but the Bullpen these days is the world.

Moving into Iron Man 2020,
we had to bring a new artist in.

So, we tapped Pete Woods.

[Woods] If there's a character out there
in the comic book universe,

I've probably drawn him at least once.

With the technology we have available,
I can draw wherever I need to draw.

The opportunity presented itself,

so I decided to just buy an RV
and move around the country.

I communicate in pencil and ink
and colors.

It's my favorite part of the process.

It's great finally seeing
a fully realized page

that has the emotion and the impact
that I've imagined it would.

Some artists prefer not to have
the weight of telling the story.

But I like to have some stake
in the storytelling.

For the first cover,
I wanted to do something that pops.

Tom had an idea that he wanted
to do a more character-focused cover.

So, I'll noodle around
with some character ideas

while I wait
for a panel-by-panel breakdown from Dan.

[Slott] One of the things I have to do
is I have to make sure

that when all these comics
stitch together,

it tells one big epic story.
Bah, bah, bah.

[typing]

Every individual chapter needs
to be great.

It needs to be edge of your seat.
"What's gonna happen next? Whoo!"

But when you get to the whole big picture,

what's the bigger story we're telling?

And I've got some crazy ideas.

I need to know
all these different characters

and what they're doing in their worlds.

Riri Williams, Iron Heart,
is gonna get her own adventure.

Machine Man, who is a key character,
he's crucial to the main story.

Ooh. Dr. Shapiro is too.

Where does it all start?
Where do we start?

So, Arno's been around for a while.

What's he been doing?
Why does he wanna be Iron Man?

But the real brains
behind the outfit is Mark.

Wouldn't say Machine Man
is running this whole operation.

There's also Machinesmith.

If it blows up and now,
"Oh, no. I can't help Iron Man."

Not that that's going to happen.
But it could.

I think we could pull this off.

[typing]

But every idea that I've put in the plot
is going to be painstaking labor

from Pete Woods
as he has to make it all reality.

Page 1, panel 1:

We open on Arno Stark's recurring dream.

He's a small naked figure floating
in space above the Earth,

the only thing standing in the way

between our planet
and an unstoppable colossal creature,

something larger than the Earth itself...

[Woods] There's this huge
terrifying creature

that's half organic and half machine.

This creature is huge.
It's gigantic and it's imposing.

So I wanna have it
break the borders of the page

and really give an impression of size.

I like the Marvel Method
because it's liberating. It's exciting.

As the writer and the artist,
we work together more in tandem...

and that gives me a chance
to choreograph things

and have a little more input
into a story...

and maybe give my own little twist on it.

People have expectations
for character creation.

And I wanted to meet those expectations,

but I also didn't wanna make it look
like something we'd seen before.

But sometimes, when I'm behind schedule,

a nice tight script
lets me get things done quickly.

The Marvel Method definitely can be
more work for the artist

as they're helping write the story.

[Brevoort] All right.

The reason Stan started doing
the Marvel Method, quite frankly,

is he didn't really have time
to write those full scripts.

This is what I was looking for.

And so, he was leaning very heavily
on his artists

to do a lot of the heavy lifting
of figuring out all of the incident.

They were as much the writer as Stan was.

There's a classic story in the 1960s.

Stan and Jack Kirby met to talk
about their next Fantastic Four story.

And when Jack sends the first issue in,

Stan goes through it,
and suddenly there's this page

where there's this guy on a surfboard
flying through space.

He calls Kirby up and says,
"What's the deal with this guy, Jack?"

And Kirby tells him,
"Well, a demigod like Galactus

would have a herald to go before him
to scout out planets for him to consume.

I put him on a surfboard.

Kids are into surfing these days.
It's a contemporary thing."

And the character took off from there
and became the Silver Surfer.

It was not something that was
in the original conversation,

but it was something
that grew out of Kirby's imagination

and the Marvel Method process.

But this is, kind of,
where the larger historical question

of who's responsible for what comes in,
and those lines are all very blurred.

These are Pete's initial sketches
for the first five pages of Iron Man 2020.

This was my first time seeing Pete's take

on what the extinction event creature
was gonna look like.

And, oh, my God, it's gorgeous.
Pete Woods nailed it.

That's what's gonna destroy us all,
and I totally buy it.

Half of the fun in comics is,
you're the writer, write.

Let the artist draw.

Let their imagination go to crazy places.

But then, I saw his initial sketches
for the suit designs of Iron Man 2020.

He said, "Here's my first thought
about Arno and his suit.

I hate the gears."

[laughs]

Every visual of Iron Man 2020
in any comic book,

it's his most defining thing.

But Pete's like, "I don't like the gears."
[laughs] Well, it's--

So, I wrote back to him,

"There's no sidestepping the gears.
There's no downplaying the gears.

They're his one signature look.

Doing Iron Man 2020 without the gears

would be like doing a Thor book
without the hammer!"

Or just a tiny hammer.

"We only get one chance
at doing Iron Man 2020 in 2020.

We've already hinted at the foundation..."

[Woods] I was talking to Dan about it,
and he said,

"You gotta have the gears.
The gears are iconic."

Originally, I wanted to do something
a little different, but I said,

"You know what? I'm just gonna go for it."

I made them even bigger.

I have these big,
massive gears on his shoulders.

It's him. It's Iron Man 2020.

He's big, he's bad,
and he's got these massive gears,

and you better not laugh at him. [laughs]

[Brevoort] Every once in a while,
my e-mail box will ping,

and some new piece of art
or some new script will show up.

There's a constant push
and a constant pressure

to produce material
and get it out the door.

And so, I'm not necessarily editing
all of our books.

So I'm overseeing the work
of other junior editors

on all of the various titles
that they work on.

As an editor,
I help with the productions of the books

from their inception to when
we get them out the door to the printer.

When we get a script turned in,

that's never the first time
we're hearing about this story.

It often starts as a conversation.

Someone out there goes,
"Hey, what if we did a story about this?"

And then everyone just starts spitballing,
and the snowball gets bigger and bigger.

I love being an editor
because I love taking a story and saying,

"How can we take it to the next level?"

This is an outline for Iron Man 2020.

It's really crucial to give notes
in the layout stage

because once we move past that
and the pages get a little more finalized,

it's harder to go back and make tweaks.

And so the story is just this dramatic
thing that evolves in each process.

[Slott] Page 5, panel 1:
In the foreground...

In the foreground...

[chuckling] This will never get finished.

[softly] I don't know
what I'm doing. Help me.

When you have writer's block,

a lot of times it's more about
your inner critic going,

"Ooh. I don't think this is good enough."

One of the things that we have now today,
which kinda hurts, is social media.

Back in December of 2012...

I k*lled Peter Parker.

I was the guy who k*lled Spider-Man.

When that story came out...

fans lost their minds.

It got scary fast.

Social media went insane.

That's what social media is now.

It's an instantaneous way for you
to be mad about anything.

More often than not,
you're telling the story

that will create some kind
of visceral reaction

because someone is that invested.

And you wanna blow their minds.
You wanna freak them out.

It's easy to say that in theory,
but we're talking about Iron Man here.

Fans could say,

"This is terrible.
Oh, my God. What are you doing?"

I want everything to come out
and be perfect

as it leaves my fingers onto the page.

[Brevoort] Dan is behind where I need him
to be on his various assignments.

I can't really start on issue 2
until issue 1 is solid enough.

I'd needed another writer
to do the dialoguing on the book.

So we made the choice
to bring Christos Gage in.

Chris Gage is half of my brain. [laughs]

I love plotting stories,
but Chris likes scripting.

[Gage] Hello, sir.

-Hey, Chris. How are you, man?
-[Gage] I'm doing all right.

[Slott] If deadlines are crunching,
Chris is gonna get me across.

[Gage] Tom Brevoort approached me
and asked if I could come onboard

and co-write with Dan.

We complement each other well.

The only reason to have co-writers

is when the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.

But, really, you know,
I'm Dan's deadline helper.

[laughs]

[Slott] Chris, great you're onboard.

Let me send you the overview
for Iron Man 2020.

[typing]

Starts like this.
Issue 1: "The Future is Now."

Arno Stark,
Tony's smarter and sociopathic brother,

does not see himself as a "futurist."

[Gage] "For most of his life
he has seen himself as the future.

And that future was 2020. And it's here."

My job is to come up with dialogue

based on the art that I have here
from Pete Woods.

Pete's great with facial expressions,
body language.

He's a great storyteller.

[printer whirring]

The approach to dialogue really varies.

I always like to immerse myself into

what the characters sound like,
what they've done before.

But with new characters,
like Dr. Shapiro, the genius talking cat,

we agree that he should sound
like a genius talking cat,

but what exactly does that mean?

Is he talking in complete sentences?

Well, he's a genius,
so yeah, probably he is.

But would he be into cat things?

But sometimes I've gone
a little too catlike.

[Slott] Chris loves cats.
Chris and his wife have tons of cats,

and he lives for cats, and he was writing
all these funny cat puns,

and that's not the way
I've been writing Dr. Shapiro.

I had to explain to Chris
how talking cats work in my mind.

They're not making silly puns
or jokes about their fur.

It's selfish. It's self-centered.
It thinks the way a cat thinks.

It's one of the times
that I end up rewriting Chris,

and then Chris looks at what I rewrote
and maybe he'll rewrite it again.

And I'll go,
"Okay, now we're on the right path."

Now we're both thinking like a cat,
instead of thinking about cat things.

[Gage] You're basically creating the voice
for this character,

and you're making it up as you go along.

It's a tightrope to walk, but it's also
the fun part of the challenge.

[Woods] It's great to have Chris
on the creative team.

Chris is sharp.
He communicates a lot with a few words,

and it's always gotta nice little
wry twist to it, that I really enjoy.

So after the inking stage,
we're ready to move on to color.

The coloring process
has evolved over the years.

I like to think of this
as a more final step.

When I'm coloring,
I like things to look realistic.

I want there to be a familiarity.

And with modern tools,

we can create depth and create effects
that we could never have created before.

So we're trying to up our game
whenever we can

and make things look
as realistic or as fun as possible.

As time's gone by, comics have become
less by the seat of your pants.

There's a lot more editorial direction
to stories and character creation.

There's a plan
that covers the whole Marvel Universe.

[Hama] I started out drawing...

and because of the Marvel methodology,
I could barely do a page a day.

It's really difficult
to format the storytelling,

draw out the action, and make it work.

And I said, "What's wrong
with this picture?" [chuckles]

I think the days
of Jack Kirby creating Silver Surfer

out of whole cloth are probably over.

It was done out of necessity,

and that did, to some degree,
create some resentment from the artists.

Today, an editor wouldn't accept
that loose a plot.

They'd say,
"This isn't fair to the artist.

You're asking them to come up
with half the story or more."

Dan is one of the few who still does

what we think of today
as traditional Marvel Method...

because he learned to write comics here
in the early '90s

when that was still
the prevailing process.

As Marvel has become
a multifaceted media company,

everybody in every other area
works full script.

There's a common language that is now
spoken throughout all of these divisions.

But as long as there's still strengths

that are associated
with the Marvel Method,

people will still be interested
in what it can bring

to the creative medium of making comics.

[Gage] Working with Dan in the
Marvel Method has made me a better writer

'cause I'm more apt to say,
"You know what?

Here's an interesting approach
that the artist has taken with this

that maybe I can riff off of
and do something differently."

On the very first page,
where this cosmic being is coming

and Arno Stark is waking up
from this nightmare of it,

for dialogue,
Dan didn't specify what to do.

So I was thinking,
"How should I approach this?"

Initially, I was gonna be a little bit
classic Stan Lee cosmic story line,

with narrative captions.

Dan was like, "That's kinda cool,

but I also want to give a voice to the
monster 'cause it's so cool looking."

And he had a great suggestion, which was,

"What if the monster is speaking,
and its dialogue,

instead of being in a balloon,
is just giant letters across the page."

He didn't tell me what to write,
so I wrote my own thing.

"I come. It is time.
You cannot k*ll the ultimate life.

Your destiny means nothing.

You and your world
are forfeit, Arno Stark.

Accept your fate."

You think of it as this booming voice
that you feel as much as you hear.

It's supposed to convey the overwhelming
power and omnipotence of this being

and this overwhelming obstacle
that Arno Stark has to face.

With the Marvel Method,
it becomes more of a collaboration.

[Slott] The great unsung hero
of comics is the letterer.

The last person who's gonna have to make
the last changes to the very last second

before the book has to leave house,
is Joe Caramagna.

It rhymes with lasagna.

[chuckles]

You're like, "Oh, no."

The way they lay out
the lettering balloons

forces the eye to flow through the page
the right way.

It should feel very intuitive
whenever you pick up a comic,

if they know what they're doing,
and Joe knows what he's doing.

Joe is fantastic.

[Caramagna] Because Dan works
in the Marvel Method,

I'm usually waiting longer
than I am from everyone else.

If I have no script, I'm just looking
at art and there's nothing I can do.

Oh, yeah. Joe is the person
I feel most guilty about.

By the time I get the script from Dan,

it's usually about two days
before the book has to go to press.

I'm always sending a text or e-mailing,
begging and pleading,

"Someone please send me some script."
[chuckles]

[Slott] Pages 18 and 19, panel 1:

Big panel stretching
across the entire top half of both pages.

This is an establishing shot, a big reveal
in our introduction to the 13th floor.

It's a futuristic landscape,
meeting place,

hangout, and safe harbor for all robots.

[Woods] Humans exist in an organic world.

What if these non-organic beings
built in a way that was more nature-like?

[Gage narrating]

[Slott] Panel 4: Mark One turns around,

and we can see that it's our newest
version of the Mark One Iron Man suit.

He says that he goes by the name
Mark One now.

Mark One's voice sounds like Tony Stark.

Wait. [babbles] Okay, wait.

The problem-- The problem is,
this isn't meant to be read aloud.

It's like IKEA instructions.

It tells you how
to build your Fjordenbach.

Close up on Mark One. We see Stark...

[Gage] Humans might have created us,
but they can't restrain us.

[Woods] It's a source of drama
to me and excitement.

Anything like that
just makes the page more fun to do.

-[lights buzzing]
-[machine rattling]

[man 3] There aren't many print shops
in the United States

that can handle the quantity of work

and the quality of work
that Marvel requires.

Cyan, magenta, black and yellow.

They're all printed on top of each other
to get this imagery.

It's not until Marvel prepares the files
and then sends them to my team,

that we're ready to print the Marvel work.

[Ballesteros] We're in the final stage
of the process.

We go through and we check it
against the script,

making sure that the story makes sense,

and if there's anything
that's lacking clarity, adding it in.

So it's really important
in the lettering stage

to catch these kind of mistakes
for clarity.

Well, I just got the notes back.

So, let's see what needs to be done next.

If my deadline is 6:30 p.m.
to deliver a book to the printer,

I could still be getting notes at 6:15.
Like, that's how close we cut it.

After that's all done, I export a PDF
and send them to the printer.

[Slott] Hey!

-[Slott] Hey, hey, hey, hey.
-[fans cheering]

-How's it going?
-[fan 1] Hello.

[Slott] Hello.

Come on in. Right down that aisle.

That works too.

[fans chattering]

[chuckles]

-[Slott] Thank you very much.
-Thank you so much.

-Thank you.
-[Slott] Thanks. Bye.

-Hi.
-[fan 2] Nice to see you again, Mr. Slott.

The big event today is a signing
of Iron Man 2020 with Dan Slott,

a comic writer that I have long admired

and never had a chance
to actually meet in person until today.

-[fan 1] Can I get a picture with you?
-Yeah, sure.

Yeah, ready? Whoa!

[fan 1] I started reading comics
with Dan Slott.

-[Slott] You got it? All right.
-[fan 1] Awesome.

I'm just gonna be honest.
The comic book community

is one of the most welcoming communities
I've ever been in.

[Slott] ...with other characters
and see if any of them...

[fan 1] These superheroes
are so inspiring to me.

They show us that we can be the very--

Like, the human race can be
the very best we can be.

Mr. Slott, that's all I needed to hear.
Thank you so much.

-Have a wonderful day, my man.
-You too.

-[fan 3] Hi, Mr. Slott.
-Hi, how's it going?

I promised my son to meet him
because he's the author of the Spider-Man,

when he was growing up, that made him
fall in love with Spider-Man.

I just wanted him to have that experience.

[laughs, chattering]

-[fan 3] Thank you for coming, man.
-Aw, thanks.

I hope you like Iron Man 2020.

Part of the fun of working in comics,
is we're all telling our own stories,

and we're all getting to play
with these great toys.

This is like the greatest medium
in the world.

It's pictures and words together
to tell a story.

You get to imagine.
You get to dream for a living every day.

We escaped into this world
and these characters were our friends.

[Ballesteros] When I was introduced
to the world of it,

I just fell in love so quickly.

And it's been amazing seeing people
engaging with what we put out there

'cause that's what it's all about.

[Woods] We just, kind of, gelled.
We, kind of, came together on it.

We ended up with something,
hopefully unique, that readers will like.

[Brevoort] We had the best
of what everybody's doing,

all at once,
onto the page, and into this comic.

A lot of that is an outgrowth of the way
in which this book was done.

[Slott] What came out of it was an energy.

Very few comics are done
using the tried and true Marvel Method.

[Lee] I love working
with these talented artists.

It was a collaboration
that was so exciting,

to discuss a story and, a few days later,
to see it all drawn on boards,

then a month later to see it in a book

and to know that kids are reading these
and enjoying them.

[Hama] Marvel always felt
like a small town and a family...

[cameraman]
This is Jim Boyle on the phone.

-He's off the phone.
-Hi.

[cameraman] As you can see,
this is all the artwork.

[Hama] ...that overlaid
on basic story elements

within the Marvel Universe
and made it all click, you know.

You can't manufacture that,

and it shows in the work.

[Slott] So the first issue's done.

So now we just need to do it
five more times.

[chuckles]

And all of our lead time is done, is gone.

-But that's part of the magic of comics.
-It is.

That, you know,
it takes pressure to make diamonds.

[chuckles]

Come with me.

This is cool. You're gonna like this.

It's a new comic day. [gasps]

Ooh. Peter David Hulk.
Want that. [chuckles]

[gasps] Tini Howard is doing
amazing stuff on Excalibur.

[groans] What else we got?

Aw, look at the cute little
Fantastic Four book. I want that.

Ah! There's something here for everybody,
as long as it's Marvel. [chuckles]