Kirkman says he shares a comic writing attitude with Todd McFarlane (creator of “Spawn” and co-founder/current president of Image). For Kirkman, writing a comic is an issue-by-issue task.
“You worry about the month, you worry about the week, you worry about the day. I’m doing ‘Void Rivals’ now with Lorenzo de Felici and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, issue 18 is out? That’s crazy. I can’t believe we’re already at issue 18.’ And it’s just because you keep your head down and you just keep those issues coming. It seems like a pretty monumental task to get two books over a hundred issues, but like I say, it’s just doing those little pieces and then you don’t notice that so much time has passed as you go.”
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Kirkman gives a lot of credit for making that time pass productively to his artists: Ottley (who replaced “Invincible” co-creator Cory Walker as the book’s primary artist from issue #8) and Charlie Adlard (who drew “The Walking Dead” from volume 2 after Tony Moore drew the first six issues). Kirkman says that Ottley and Adlard, “kept those books coming out like clockwork.”
“You write a comic in three days usually, and so you’re talking about six days of the month, sometimes 10, sometimes 15, depending on if an issue gets hard to write, but at worst you’re talking about half of a month focused on those two comics. For me, I got 15 full workdays to do other projects, and I did ‘Outcast’ and ‘Astounding Wolfman’ and all kinds of other stuff while I was doing that, but Charlie and Ryan, [they were both] nose to the grindstone, day in day out making those books happen. It’s definitely a team effort when it’s all said and done.”
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Kirkman and Ottley tell me they have a strong working relationship to the point that they write and draw, respectively, with each others’ strengths in mind. They’d have to since they stayed partnered on “Invincible” for 15 years, and the reason “Battle Beast” is happening at all because they wanted to work together again.
“There’s not a lot of writers that are as interested as visuals as [Kirkman] is,” says Ottley. “Most writers do not sketch or draw anything. And so occasionally I’ll get a sketch from Robert about a certain layout or a design, that kind of thing, and it’s always helpful.” Kirkman too says he is able to “edit” his writing to best prepare for when Ottley draws it.
“I do know what Ryan likes to draw, so I know if it’s something that I need for the story but is not going to be something Ryan enjoys, that’s a one-page scene,” says Kirkman. When Ottley once wanted to “punch up” an “Invincible” fight scene, they worked together to fit two more pages of that fight into Kirkman’s script while trimming other parts. “I’m very meticulous about page turns and keeping everything exactly where it needs to be.”
