In comics, a script may be preceded by a plot outline, and is almost always followed by page sketches, drawn by a comics artist and inked, succeeded by the coloring and lettering stages. There are no prescribed forms of comic scripts, but there are two dominant styles in the mainstream comics industry, the full script (commonly known as "DC style") and the plot script (or "Marvel style").

In this style, the comics writer (also comics scripter, comic book writer, comics author, comic book author, graphic novel writer, graphic novel author or graphic novelist) 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. For decades, this was the preferred format for books published by DC Comics.

Peter David described his specific application of the full script method: "I break down each page on a panel by panel basis and label them as PANEL A, PANEL B, and so on. Then I describe what's in each panel, and then do the dialogue, numbering the balloons. I designate the panels with letters and the word balloons with numbers so as to minimize confusion for the letterer."

But for the “main” art—there’s the penciller & inker. These are usually two separate people. Following those are the letterer (me) & the colorist.

To produce a monthly comic book of 22 pages of comics, we generally need to create one page per day each—IF we want weekends off.

As a long-time letterer who was an early user of computers in comics creation, I can do a whole issue of lettering in about 4 or 5 hours. This morning I did 18 pages before lunch. Obviously lettering is much less time-consuming than drawing each panel, though. And I’m very fast.

But even that time-frame is aided by a particular workflow that I’ve designed over time to speed up the process. Other letterers may take 2 days to do a whole 22-page issue.

If you think about the process on a particular Tuesday, the penciller may be pencilling page 7 of Super-Guy #321. That same day the inker is inking page 6—that he got from the penciller the night before. The same day the colorist may be coloring page 5—that the inker had sent the colorist the night before.

The production chain isn’t really that tight—a penciller may deliver the art to the inker in 5-page batches—but they are staggered by only a week or so in a well-run schedule.

So once a penciller is done, within a week or so everyone else has completed their job.

By the time the issue is in the comics shop—the next issue should be about half-done or completely done already…and in the shop complete in another month.

The penciller creates a drawing, the inker outlines, interprets, finalizes, retraces this drawing by using a pencil, pen or a brush. Inking was necessary in the traditional printing process as presses could not reproduce pencilled drawings. "Inking" of text is usually handled by another specialist, the letterer, the application of colors by the colorist.

As the last hand in the production chain before the colorist, the inker has the final word on the look of the page, and can help control a story's mood, pace, and readability.

A good inker can salvage shaky pencils, while a bad one can obliterate great craftsmanship and/or muddy good storytelling

Comics historian Mark Evanier writes that this "new means of collaboration . . . was born of necessity—Stan was overburdened with work—and to make use of Jack's great skill with storylines. . . . Sometimes Stan would type up a written plot outline for the artist. Sometimes, not." 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. . . .[I]n the mid-sixties, plots were seldom more than a typewritten page, and sometimes less," while writers in later times "might produce as many as twenty-five pages of plot for a twenty-two page story, and even include in them snatches of dialog. So a Marvel Method plot can run from a couple of paragraphs to something much longer and more elaborate."

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.

I'd dream up odd fantasy tales with an O. Henry type twist ending. All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he'd be off and running. He'd take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect.[12]

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.[13]

Advantages of the Marvel method over the full script method that have been cited by creators and industry professionals include:

- The fact that artists, who are employed to visualize scenes, may be better equipped to determine panel structure
- The greater freedom this gives artists
- The lower burden placed on the writer.

Cited disadvantages include:

- The fact that not all artists are talented writers, and some struggle over aspects such as plot ideas and pacing
- It takes advantage of artists, who are typically paid for art alone even though they are essentially working as co-writers

Because even without taking into account the fact that it was drawn to allow the colorist more latitude, it seems pretty detailed to me. And Porter’s background buildings here don’t look CG at all, just, well, detailed.

I think what you’re noticing is that artists often don’t use line shading these days as much. When I first began collecting comics in the latter half of the silver age, inkers were also called embellishers. Right around the time Jack Kirby was making the New Gods, the first hint that this would fall out of style took place.

Namely Kirby stopped working with Vince Colletta over changes he would make to the artwork. Colletta, one of the fastest inkers in the business, had a habit of erasing elements he felt were superfluous. Parts of architecture, people, whatever simplified the process. He did it a lot. Colletta took liberties, and became an example of what not to do if you’re an inker.

What inkers were doing began to be looked at more closely, and eventually embellishment was discouraged altogether. Now inkers are expected to simply ink what’s there and nothing more. Which is sad because it means comics have less character.

However, the trade off is that today coloring is far more sophisticated and embellishment is the colorist’s job. It can look what some call Photo-shop-y, but when done well looks fantastic.

And because of improvements in resolution, inking is actually more detailed these days, not less. Those fine lines detailing the architecture in the background would have been invisible using the old process.

Concerns were raised in late February 2010 that Nick Simmons had plagiarized character designs, fight scenes, plot segments, dialogue, poses and expressions from both professional and amateur artists, from both several published manga, the most notable being Bleach, and from art communities such as DeviantArt.

Evelyn Dubocq, Senior Director of Public Relations at Viz Media, the American publisher of the Bleach manga, was quoted as saying "We appreciate all our fans bringing this matter to our attention, and we are currently investigating this issue". Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach, one of the manga specifically named, made two Twitter posts on the situation, to comment on the number of people outside Japan commenting on the accusations, and noting that he is more interested by the fact that Gene Simmons' son is a comic creator than he is concerned about any of his work being copied.

On February 25, 2010, the publisher of Incarnate, Radical Comics, announced on its official blog that it would be halting distribution and production of Incarnate until the matter is resolved between all concerned parties.

On March 1, 2010, Nick Simmons released the following statement regarding the accusations of plagiarism:

Like most artists I am inspired by work I admire. There are certain similarities between some of my work and the work of others. This was simply meant as an homage to artists I respect, and I definitely want to apologize to any Manga fans or fellow Manga artists who feel I went too far. My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium. I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles. And I am certainly sorry if anyone was offended or upset by what they perceive to be the similarity between my work and the work of artists that I admire and who inspire me.”

In 2011, The New York Times stated that Radical Publishing was "forced to stop production" of the comic after the allegations of plagiarism.

Take a look at this climactic scene from The Watchmen lettered by Dave Gibbons…

Look at how much work the letters are actually doing. From Rorschach’s droning rise in intensity to Doctor Manhattan’s attempt at humanity to the final cry in the last panel.

The penciller, inker, colorist and writer are all contributing to that scene in definite ways, but Gibbons is really carrying the pace and intensity of that scene.

This scene from Doctor Strange #171 lettered by Artie Simek shows the broad range of tools in a letter’s toolbox.

This page simply could not be digitally lettered. So much iconic Marvel style would have been lost in the process.

Imagine “Dormammu!” and “Next: The Prize Is…. Earth!” in stock digital lettering. That would just be wrong.

Anyway, hand lettering is slowly becoming a lost art. When I see a properly hand lettered comic these days, I think it just adds so much.

Color was transferred from a colorist's work by transcribers with wide interpretive latitude, through a bizarre technical process in which these transcribers would actually color four versions of the same page - only in red.

That is, one version of the page would have red colored into all the shapes where the colorist suggested a color that included blue. Another would be a page colored red wherever a color containing yellow appeared. And so forth. These pages were photostated successively, with the eventual product coming out in approximately the pattern the colorist suggested. This was never very effective, and severely limited the colors available. And then the low cost pulp stock invariably bled colors and lines.

So there were few options available when determining the hair and eye color of a main character who was supposed to reflect an Anglo-Saxon ideal. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all had black (actually dark blue) hair and blue eyes. Barry Allen's hair was yellow and no one is quite sure what color his eyes were. Batman is the only one of these characters whose origins actually suggest this ethnic ideal. Superman is an alien and probably should have something eccentric about his physicality besides the super-powers. Wonder Woman is Greek/North African and should probably look kind of Sicilian at the very least.

1) Price.
The Japanese manga magazines are phonebook-sized (Harry Potter-book sized for the younger-set who've never seen a phonebook) weekly magazines that do their best to allow even elementary-school kids to buy it without breaking their allowance. So the magazines use very cheap, recycled paper and only one color of ink. So you get some 300-600 pages of manga for under $5.00. And although they have some advertisements, it's relatively few. Again for the most popular magazines, they come out every week.

US comics tend to run about 22 pages of artwork with quite a few advertisements every month. And those run $2-$5.

2) Distribution of work
Manga are essentially done by one person. That means for most manga, you have to draw and ink 30-40 pages of manga in a month* all by yourself. Any colored pages are also done by the artist alone. The artist also does sound effects themselves. (The artists working on weekly manga may have assistants, but they are mainly for grunt work of filling in black areas, background details, and laying down tone. It's the artist who usually still draws and inks the characters and also does the coloring for the rare colored pages.**)

In comics, there is usually a separate writer, penciler, inker, letter (who not only does in-balloon lettering but also sound effects), and colorist. If the work of the other artists is done far enough ahead of time, the colorist has plenty of time to do his/her work.

3) Time before deadline
The system for US comics starts the process for each comic months in advance, giving each person in the process enough time (theoretically) to complete their work.

Manga artists tend to work right up to the printing deadline. There are many stories of editors waiting on the artist's couch, then rushing the finished pages directly to the printer.

4) It's art
Have you ever seen a really well done black-and-white movie? If not, try it sometime. They convey a certain mood, especially in the use of stark shadows, much better than color can. Manga, as an industry and artform, have built up plenty of excellent techniques for how to use black-and-white art, and in some cases (as exemplified by Marvel's and Viz's early experiments with colorizing manga in the late '80s and early '90s), the color actually lessens the impact of the artwork.

There are probably other reasons that I'm forgetting, but I think those are the most major reasons.

*Although the most popular manga are weekly, most manga artists in the industry work for monthly magazines, and don't make enough to afford regular assistants.

** There are reports of certain very popular manga artists who basically have their assistants do all their work for them. I'm sure there are examples out there, but as far as I can tell, this is not true for most of the manga artists.

A writer will write a script. Most scripts I've seen are written like a short story or a play, with the dialog broken out from the action. This gives some idea of the pacing of the story.

The writer and artist will then compose a storyboard, which is a very simple version of the comic. Not a lot of detail, maybe arrows drawn to signify the direction of movement or where to focus the reader's eye. This is almost exactly how movies do it. This stage is not necessary, but I find it to be the best process for allowing the writer to get some of their vision of the action into the visuals of the page

property SMR-Comics on deviantART

Then the artist, at this point we call them a Penciller
, will start drafting out the sketches of the page that will be the final product. Some comic creators use this as an extension or replacement of the storyboarding phase. The penciller is responsible for defining the cell boundaries (called "gutters"), and the word bubbles.

property Carl Peterson

Traditionally, the penciller creates space for the word bubbles, and allows for a Letterer

(literally someone who writes in the speech bubbles) to fill in the words.

More frequently now, this process is being performed digitally; with a typed font replacing the lettering and the bubbles being added 'on top' of the original artwork. Either way, room for the bubbles must be accounted for.

When the pencil art is finished, it is handed over to an Inker
who, you guessed it, inks over the pencils. We love making the old 'tracer' joke in the industry, but even someone who inks their own pencils knows that there's a great deal of finality that happens to the art in this process. Line thickness, blackened space and depth are all solidified during the inking phase.

property Joe Weems

Next comes the Colorist
, who adds colors, shading, shadows, and effects to the artwork. Sometimes the colorist will take advantage of definitions created by the inker, and overlay colors to turn black space into a more vibrant area. Again, this process is getting more complex with the introduction of digital coloring tools.