GiffenCountdown

I'm pretty excited about this one... I like to have representative samples from books I worked on, and as might be clear from my galleries, Keith Giffen has always been one of my favorite artists. Keith wasn't involved initially when DC's Countdown to Final Crisis began. If memory serves, Paul Dini had written a detailed plot overview, and Sean McKeever, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, Tony Bedard and I were asked to serve as his 'staff writers," helping break that plot into individual chapters that we would then write and dialogue. When my turn came up in the rotation of staff writers, I'd get on the phone with Paul and the editor and maybe another person or two, and we'd hash out the chapter. Then I'd go off and write a full script.

Keith came in midway through, the plot was modified somewhat, and the working method changed, too. We'd still have the phone call, with Keith sitting in, but then Keith did breakdowns like the one seen here for each chapter. The writers would go off and dialogue from those breakdowns.

So it was kind of "Marvel Method," if you will. I'd never worked that way before, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Part of it was the sheer fun of knowing I was working with Keith, but part of it was the energy in the layouts. Though just rough sketches, they told you everything you needed to know about the action of a scene, and the facial expressions even suggested a lot of dialogue. I felt that working method really played to my strengths, and I'd work in that way again in a heartbeat.

So here's a memento of my "collaboration" with Keith. Carlos Magno did the finished art for the issue, and his version of the page, equally great, looked considerably different from the breakdown.