Gotham Adventuers #20: Swing

Reason #739381 I love working with Tim Levins

Compare and contrast the script page I wrote:

Page Five

Panel One

Batman and Robin swing as only they can. Starry, starry night behind them, Gotham all a-twinkle. It’s poetry, really.

     ROBIN: Wow. I knew Eden’s Own was popular, but I had no idea it’d gotten this big. 

     BATMAN: So you’ve heard of this cereal before? 

Panel Two

Swing.

     ROBIN: Are you kidding? Eden’s Owns is the hottest thing on the market. There’s a lot of people who won’t eat anything else.

     ROBIN: I first heard about it from Batgirl--it’s only sold through health food stores, so college kids were about the first to pick up on it. 

Panel Three

They land on a rooftop.

     ROBIN: These days, though...

Panel Four

Robin gestures to the street down below. We can see a row of stores, all of which are closed; well, it is four o’clock in the morn, for pete’s sake. Then how come there is a huge queue, at least two dozen deep, forming outside the Blossom’s Health Foods store? Ah, mysteries... If we can see it, the store’s got a big sign in the window: “We Have Eden’s Own!”

     ROBIN: Well, just take a look.

     ROBIN: The store won’t even be open for five hours and people are already lining up to buy the stuff.

 with what Tim then drew:

Swing.

I wrote "swing."

That was the total of my shot description. And that big panel is what I got in return.

Look at the characterization there: the Batman all big, bold, aggressive, assured, sheer power yet graceful, whereas Robin is more, well, kid-like, albeit a kid who's got the ability and nerve to swing from a line hundreds of feet above the city streets. Awesome.

I was fascinated to look at my page of script today, as it'd been 15 years or so since I'd last looked at it. This was only the fourth issue Tim and I had worked on together, and yet looking at those minimalist shot descriptions, very clearly I'd already internalized just what he was capable of and willing to bring to the table as an artist, and trusted him completely. As well as I should. That big dramatic panel, bookended by the smaller yet still visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing panels, with the final panel pure storytelling? That's like Comic Book Storytelling 101 right there.