[a] In this style, the comics writer breaks the story down in sequence, page-by-page and panel-by-panel, describing the action, characters, and sometimes backgrounds and "camera" points-of-view of each panel, as well as all captions and dialogue balloons.
[9] In addition to writing the scripts, Jim Shooter drew layouts for the artist in his early work for DC.
[12] As comic-book writer-editor Dennis O'Neil describes, the Marvel method "requires the writer to begin by writing out a plot and add[ing] words when the penciled artwork is finished.
[13] The Marvel method was in place with at least one artist by early 1961, as Lee described in 2009 when speaking of his and Ditko's "short, five-page filler strips ... placed in any of our comics that had a few extra pages to fill", most prominently in Amazing Fantasy but even previously in Amazing Adventures and other "pre-superhero Marvel" science-fiction/fantasy anthology titles.
[14] The October 2018 issue of DC Comics' in-house previews magazine, DC Nation, featured a look at the creative process that writer Brian Michael Bendis and artists Ryan Sook, Wade von Grawbadger and Brad Anderson employed on Action Comics #1004, which included pages of Bendis' script that were broken down panel by panel, albeit without dialogue.
[15] Advantages of the Marvel method over the full script method that have been cited by creators and industry professionals include: Cited disadvantages include: In a variation of the plot script, attributed to Harvey Kurtzman, the writer breaks down the story into page roughs or thumbnail sketches, with captions and dialogue jotted down inside the roughs.
The writer writes all captions and dialogue, which are pasted inside these panels, and then the artist draws the story to fit all of this paste-up.
This laborious and restrictive way of creating comics is no longer in general use; the last artist to use even a variation of EC style was Jim Aparo.