Film Courage: This is work you did you said 1979?
Donald F. Glut, Writer, Film Director, and Screenwriter: 1979, work-for- hire,
one shot story, done as kind of a joke.
Film Courage: Was this an opportunity that was an interesting thing where someone else
might have turned it down or no? This was something that you were doing on…
Don: Well, no this was just…I was at another party at Rick Oberg’s,
the artist house and the artist was there, I mean the editor Roy Thomas was there. Rick and
I was were just kind of coming up with all these crazy ideas for potential ‘what if’
stories. I don't even know who came up with the idea (I think it was me), I said What if Thor,
what if the hammer was found by Jane Foster? We had a couple drinks, we were a little bit loose,
coming with crazier and crazy ideas. We went up to Roy “Hey, what do you think of this?” Because
he turned down a bunch of the ones we came up with and he said “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,
run with it.” So the next day I was busy working out the story. See in Marvel the way you wrote a
story was different. Every company had their own method. When I'm working now doing these
Shudder and Vampiress Carmilla stories, you write a script like a movie script pretty
much. You describe everything and give everybody dialogue. When I worked at Gold Key Comics it was
more you got sat down with a sheet because they were used to working with cartoonists,
so you got a sheet of paper and you're ruled off with a ruler where the panels would go
and then you would write in each rectangle or square what was going on and if you and if you
went off beyond the line you got too much on the page. With Marvel you would talk to the artist,
you would write up a synopsis. The synopsis might be one paragraph or two paragraphs and you give it
to the artist and the artist would draw it up any way he wants and then you would get the art back
and you would get these penciled like a fight that would gone for four pages where in your synopsis
all you're write was they fight and artist kind of came up with all that and then you write all the
balloons and the captions and the sound effects over the artwork and then the inker and the
letterer would come and they would edit letter the artwork and and ink in the the artwork and then
then color it so it was like working backwards in a way. Each company had their own way of doing it.
Film Courage: With the dialogue that you submit is the artwork
then matched exactly page-by-page, frame-by-frame?
Don: Well that's a really good question and a lot of writers don't understand it or artists,
when you write a regular script in script form you don't know where… you don't see any artwork, it's
not done yet. When you do it the Gold Key fashion they would you would get the script and before the
artwork was even done. They would drawing balloons and the artists would have to work around where
the balloons were to fit the artwork. In Marvel style (which is the easiest way I thought) when
you wrote a synopsis and then they came they sent you the penciled artwork and there's no artwork,
there's no ink yet and there's no dialogue and there's no text at all, then you write
the text to fit the artwork and the art first of all the artist has to leave you room to put text
someplace. Then you've got to put the artwork the the the text so the reader reads it in the correct
sequence you can't have a question answer asked here and the answer asked someplace over here
with something in between where there somebody's talking. It's got to follow you got to follow it
like you're a conversation and then the are you you as a writer have to place taking all that
into account you have to place the balloons and things so it doesn't cover up an important piece
of artwork. You don't want to have a character who's talking have the balloon over his face it's
got to be from some dead space or whatever. That's a trick and it took me a while to learn that. A
lot of artists and writers don't know how to do that, it's just a knack you pick up after a while.
Film Courage: So you're seeing the artwork already laid out?
Don: Yeah, when you work for Marvel, except they have done on occasion script writing a
full script, generally at Marvel you write a synopsis and it might be Captain America fights
Dr. Doom for possession of a magic thing or some sort you know during the fight Captain America
loses as very general things like that then what you get usually in the old days it was in the mail
it came in the mail in a big envelope like this was the artwork penciled on big sheets of some
kind of board and then you would write your script you might see a panel that looks really great by
itself why ruin it with putting dialogue in let's just leave it as is and you don't know until you
see the artwork then they send it back it gets lettered and then an inker comes in and he inks
it and it's a different it's it's a way of being able to mass produce these things like an assembly
line while one person is lettering it the other person is writing it somebody else is drawing it
and you can do you can work a lot faster that way the only time in recent years me recent decades
actually that it was actually a thrill saying my name on anything for something I’d done. There's
a new movie just came out called Thor: Love and Thunder it's based on the idea that Dr Don Blake
who traditionally became Thor in the comic books didn't that that it was actually his nurse and
girlfriend Jane Foster who became Thor that was inspired by a comic book story that I wrote and
that artist Rick Oberg drew in 1979 for a Marvel comic called ‘What If’ and we coming up with all
these silly ideas what if Spider-Man had two heads or something you know and one of them was what if
Jane Foster found the hammer of Thor and became Thor there was a one shot never intended to go
beyond that one issue of what if and and thought of as kind of a half joke well in recent years
somebody picked up on that idea in the comic books in the Marvel Comics and it's become part of the
mainstream continuity to the extent where they decided to make a movie out of this hundreds of
millions of dollar movie well Marvel was really good Marvel remembered Rick Oberg and my and
myself for this, they invited us to the screen the world premiere Grauman's Chinese Theatre we
got to walk the red carpet and all that and they paid us I won't say how much but they paid us
very handsomely and they didn't have to do this remember this is a work for hire the storyline
was almost nothing of what what I came up with it except the ending was a little bit the same but it
was mostly they just took the idea of Jane Foster becoming Thor that was it and we're sitting there
at Grauman's Chinese Theatre looking at the IMAX screen and our name comes up at the end in the end
credits that was a big deal deal that was a really big deal so I'm grateful, I'm really thankful to
Marvxel for doing that people who worked for the companies like Marvel and DC always complaining
they were ripped off, never remembered never give any money, never give any credit and I got to say
Marvel came through for us. We didn't even ask him I asked him at one point is it possible this will
ever happen we'll get some kind of recognition out of this and all they said was we'll see we'll
get back to you and they got back to us in a very nice way so I'm really grateful and thankful and
seeing your name on the IMAX screen at Grauman's Chinese Theatre with all the footprints outside in
the front lobby was a big deal