Comic book writers as novelists; Mystery Scene

Really interesting piece on Booklgasm today about comic book writers and artists who've turned on some solid toextra fine novels.


CAPES, COWLS & COSTUMES >> Comic Book Writers Without the Comics
Author: Paul Kupperberg

Books with no pictures in them? What would comic book writers know about those? More than you might think, at least in the last quarter century or so. Sure, there’s always been the occasional comic book writer who broke out of the funny book ghetto and made the move to writing prose (Mickey Spillane, William Woolfolk, Gardner Fox, Alvin Schwartz, to name a few), but for the most part, comic book writers stuck with the medium what brung ‘em. If they did write prose, it was likely to be a novelization or adaptation of some comic book or other media property.

These days, those boundaries have pretty much disappeared. Successful novelists such as Greg Rucka, Brad Meltzer and Jodi Picoult routinely make the switch between prose and comics. And comic book writers such as Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are doing work that gets them shelved in the literature section instead of graphic novels or science fiction. With the advent of respectability for the art form (THE NEW YORK TIMES says we’re art, so there!), comic book writers are finally being taken seriously as writers.

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---------------MYSTERY SCENE

I'm writing an inroduction to Richard Neely's novel Shattered. I did a Mystery Scene interview with him in 1990 or 1991. Unfortunately I don't have any copies form that era. I'll pay somebody the smashing figure of ten bucks for either a copy of the magazine or for faxing me a copy of the interview. I'm getting desperate here. I've tried several sources and have had no luck. Thanks. Ed