There is not one and only proven way that every cartoonist follows to make comics. In mainstream comics, it’s common for a writer to produce a full script that the artist follows to produce the illustrations—then the inker, colorist, and many more people add to it.
This was not the standard for a long time at Marvel Comics. There, writers and artists worked together by following what is commonly known as The Marvel Method.
How is the Marvel Method working?
First, the artist receives the writer’s rough synopsis of the plot. Compared to a full script, the synopsis is less thorough, allowing the artist more leeway to interpret and develop the scenes. The plot could be as simple as a synopsis or as complex as a full account of the main events and plot points.
Based on their interpretation of the story, the artist takes the synopsis of the story and divides it into pages and panels to create the whole comic book. In a way, the artist is also a co-writer, choosing the panels, timing, and visual storytelling.
After the cartoonist completes the artwork, the writer goes over the final pages and adds the dialogue, captions, and sound effects to complement the artwork. This enables the author to modify the language to fit the artist’s visual storytelling.
Once writer and artist have finished their parts, the colorist applies the colors, and the letterer adds the dialogue and captions to the comic book pages. The editor keeps an eye on everything to guarantee quality and consistency.
Faster production and more creative participation from the artists were two benefits of the Marvel Method. However, it could also result in difficulties, including misunderstandings between the author and the artist or inconsistent narrative. Notwithstanding these possible drawbacks, the Marvel Method had a big influence on how dynamic and visually striking the storyline developed, which made it a signature of Marvel Comics.
What are the Origins of the Marvel Method?
The Marvel Method was a system adopted by Marvel to produce comics during the late 1950s as Stan Lee became known for outlining his stories and only including the most crucial details. He embraced this approach when he realized he could heavily rely on artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to do most of the work.
Once Lee gave them his general ideas, Kirby and Ditko started working on their own. Once they finished the art, Lee crafted dialogue for the stories. At first, other Marvel writers were still working with full scripts, but it quickly became apparent that readers preferred stories produced using this method. Lee decided to use it even more and became the main writer on most of Marvel’s books, pushing all of his artists to follow the method.
Stan Lee’s name became synonymous with the Marvel Method, but like with a lot of things Lee put his name on, he didn’t invent it. A decade before Marvel adopted the Method, Jack Kirby developed a similar system while working with Joe Simon at National Comics (DC Comics).
This previous version came to be because Kirby worked faster than Simon did. To stay on schedule, it was easier to have Kirby plot and draw with Simon scripting after. Once Kirby went to work for Marvel, Lee saw the potential of working that way and developed a similar collaboration with Steve Ditko.
Readers became familiar with the Marvel Method as Lee started to reference it—one of the earliest examples is the featurette published in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 from 1964. This three-page meta-story follows Ditko and Lee as they work on the very same issue readers have in their hands.
The Authorship Problem of the Marvel Method
While the Marvel Method allowed Stan Lee and many artists to mold the Marvel Universe into what we know today, this collaborative technique was also problematic. Since it was created to help with Lee’s excess load, he gave most of the work to the artists who often had to figure out how to make the stories work in addition to drawing them.
Given that the Method was Marvel’s primary working process for many years, it created many of Marvel’s iconic characters. For example, the Silver Surfer, who debuted in The Fantastic Four #48 wasn’t a part of Stan Lee’s idea. Instead, Kirby added him while using this collaborating technique.
This is a well-known fact, but it’s also an exception as giving credit where it’s due was not the tradition in the comic book industry for a long time, and the method didn’t help in that regard. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created many characters together such as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor, The Inhumans, and Black Panther, while Lee and Steve Ditko co-created Spider-Man. It became hard to know where Lee’s ideas started and where Kirby and Ditko’s contributions ended. The artists had a long-standing feud with the writer until their death.
Nowadays, the Marvel Method is not commonly used, but a few writers like Dan Slott, Pete Woods, and Christos Cage are still occasionally (or often for some) using it–See the Disney+ docuseries Marvel’s 616. Famously, Matt Fraction and artist David Aja used it to create their celebrated run on Hawkeye.