A recent Comics Reporter article by Ng Suat Tong on “Writing, Collaboration, and Superheroes” (and a rebuttal to it from Chris Allen Online) got us to thinking: Do modern writers give sufficient instruction to artists? How much of what you see on the page came from the writer, and how much from the artist? Are some artists not carrying out the writer’s suggestions, and is that because the artist had a better idea, because the writer’s instructions were impractical, or because the artist is simply, um, not that good?

To explore these questions, Kumar, Mulele, and Tim chose four scripts from the Comicbook Script Archive site, and read them alongside the finished comics that resulted from them: Punisher Max #39, by Garth Ennis and Leandro Fernandez; Y: the Last Man #18, by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra; Daredevil 28, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev; and (the ringer of the lot) Batman: the Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Here’s the resulting discussion!

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