By Mark O. Stack — Young Offenders! is a comic book by artist Mike Becker, writer Mark O. Stack, and letterer Jodie Troutman about young adult superheroes who find themselves catapulted into the position of defending the world six months after all the major superheroes disappeared in a crisis. It’s about young people rising to the occasion when finally given the opportunity to step out of the shadows that have been forcibly cast over them. Young Offenders! #1 is currently available in digital and print at weekendwarriorcomics.com.

This piece marks the beginning of our Comics Anatomy - Creator Perspective series, where we invite creators to show us how they’re thinking about craft as they work. Today Mark O. Stack walks us through the first act of Young Offenders! #1 and his collaboration with artist Mike Becker.

There are times when it is appropriate to do so, but I generally do not like the idea of writing first issues that spend their entire page count arriving at the premise that has already been used as the basis for the work’s marketing in press releases, interviews, or solicits. If a comic is structured in such a way that its first issue doesn’t establish and then give me as the reader a little something extra to indicate the direction, I feel like I’d be better saved reading it when it’s collected and there’s been time to gauge the critical reception to the conclusion. I will absolutely go for the serialization ride with a book that manages to give the reader something more than the marketing copy indicated.

I wanted to make sure we did that with my latest release Young Offenders! #1. This was a book we were attempting to fund via Kickstarter, so there was a real need to make sure potential backers knew everything they needed to about the book in order to give them the confidence to support a project that was coming out of nowhere. Still, Mike and I managed to preserve a lot of the content with the final issue establishing more dynamics, obstacles, and threats than we had indicated in the copy or interviews. We were able to do that in all in the first issue because we opted to go for a 36-page debut that left us space to introduce our entire cast and put them together on the same page in the first third and then give them something to do.

Introducing a team of five superheroes and giving them a threat to face together all in twelve pages was daunting. Rather than fill those pages with flashbacks or expository captions to establish the characters and their dynamics, we opted to attempt a more natural approach with characters being introduced personality first with backstory details to be alluded to more through dialogue with other characters. This was challenging because we needed to make sure readers understood the artistic frustration of a character like Victor while also transforming him into a demon on-panel in a way that indicated this was a totally normal thing in the world of this comic. Establishing that level of buy-in can be plenty difficult!

In that spirit, we are going to take a look under the hood of pages 7 through 12 of Young Offenders! #1 to examine some of the decisions that went into how the characters were presented:

Page 07

There was initially more dialogue on this page as it was meant to download some Victor backstory for the readers. Victor was going to say something that was, in hindsight, just not a fit for the tone of the book because it was him referencing his long history of demonic transformation being very painful for him. It was a swing and a miss for some unexpected pathos to get the reader invested in Victor. As it stands, the dialogue in the script Mike was working with differs a lot from the final lettering draft because a lot of it was rewritten, rearranged, or cut to suit the comic as Mike drew it. I thought I needed to give the audience a reason to care about Victor with some dialogue on this page, but, when I saw the previous pages as well as Victor’s looks of complete annoyance at the top of the panel, I realized that Mike had already done that work on his end. His expressions are so realized that there’s already investment being bought from the audience. What did stay the same from first to final draft is Esperanza’s little “hot” response to the transformation. Her expression shows fear/awe as is appropriate for seeing someone turn into a monster, but the dialogue works with it to also simultaneously establish that what she’s seeing is not out of bounds for this reality. It helps that it’s a pretty simple joke and a little bit of humor can go a long way towards bringing things together.

Page 08

This is where the dialogue started to become difficult to wrangle as the writer. By this point, Jane and Colin are functioning as a unit and can more or less speak from the same position together with Elaine so there aren’t three competing directions on the page. Jane’s personality being the tough, “cut the shit” girl was really helpful to lean on as it made sense to have her skip past the greetings and information exchange I initially wrote but would have cluttered the page something fierce. Keeping the information at a need-to-know level keeps things light, propels the action forward, and gives the characters a chance to establish dynamics quickly.

With the size of Fallout and the motion of Elaine in the foreground of panel one creating that real contrast between monster and human (doing the hard work of making a fully armored person look vulnerable), one could lose track of the vehicle flying into the scene waaaay in the background if not for the yellow streak showing the flight path. The page is about a lot of things; namely establishing the size and threat of Fallout while sowing some more seeds about the disappearance mystery that gets answered at the end of the issue. But on a purely visual level, each major panel (barring the inset from Elaine’s POV) is dedicating space to the arrival of new players on the scene in a way that turns motion into the story.

Page 09

This page was emotionally difficult to write because I had to come to terms with the story benefiting at this stage from a splash featuring only one of our lead characters rather than a page with multiple panels that could feature the rest of the cast that was being rapidly assembled. Ultimately, it was simply more important to devote the space to a turn in the scene motivated by bold, character-driven action. There was a certain thinking behind who received splash pages in this book. They’re usually our biggest, most heroic images or key reveals in superhero comics, so I wanted every splash to denote the status of the subject as a “proper superhero.” Victor’s backstory that we touch on is that he was a teenage superhero who has since retired, but here he is coming back in his fully revealed demon form with the heroic grandeur of a splash page. So, the set-up on page seven that showed his transformation but hid his form demanded the big pay-off, the scene demanded escalation, the character demanded space to further establish his role… Ultimately, I was able to rationalize to myself that it wasn’t a waste of the space we had available.

Mike wisely added an inset at the top so we can see the anticipation and the aftermath of impact due to the realization that the unexpected hit wouldn’t have the same impact without the set-up. It’s comics so a punch almost always works better when divided between a wind-up panel and an impact panel so that the reader can fill the gap appropriately.

Page 10

I remember Mike asking me if I thought the background choice he made for panel two was appropriate. I told him I loved it because of the energy it provided along with the contrast with Victor’s wings, but the real reason to love it is that it’s just selling the reader so hard on the heroism and might of Victor right before we move to the next panel where he’s unceremoniously swatted out of the sky in a puff of energy the same color as his high energy background which really sells the irony of the hero shot with the ensuing letdown. We also briefly split up Colin and Jane here so that we can give a little space for Colin and Elaine to interact on their own. They get more time together later in the issue, but it was important to give them a brief moment together here first so that didn’t come out of nowhere.

Page 11

Panel one was a great moment for Mike and I when he showed me the inks because it’s where we both got on the same page about really leaning on Victor as a sort of unrelenting hunk. Even when he’s lying in rubble, he’s going to look hot while doing it. While I had to split up Colin and Jane on the previous page, here I wanted to keep Esperanza and Victor as a unit since they’re a little closer in age and have developed a fun dynamic of her playfully undercutting him (which will be reversed in the second half of the issue as he begins to undercut her).

Panel four of page eleven! Mark it down as the first panel that the entire cast is united on and it’s less than halfway through the first issue. In terms of arriving at the premise of “five young adults band together to defend the world,” it’s mission accomplished! The introductions are skipped over thanks to Elaine taking charge and immediately asking the two obviously superpowered folks coming to help what they can do. We even poke a little fun at that in the panel immediately after with Elaine referring to Victor by his old superhero persona (established earlier in the issue, which means Elaine definitely knows who he is) while giving the rest of the “team” impromptu designations.

About the last two panels, those were written as the same shot being repeated back to back. I write a decent amount of those static panel concepts as someone who grew up reading comics written by Brian Michael Bendis, and I think they’re really great for pacing on comedic bits where understatement is the name of the game. No one I work with EVER draws them that way because they’re artists and believe in silly things like “variety” and “dynamism.” Really, Mike’s choice to push in on the hands going in like the huddle in a game of football sells something better than what I had in mind which is the spirit of cooperation that almost miraculously moves through these characters in the first issue. And, better, there’s still the element of incongruity/understatement with their gesture of unity being reified by bland statements like “yeah” and “sure” that almost communicate that everyone is a little embarrassed, not of superheroics, but to be interacting with strangers they’ve only just met.

Page 12

Our first proper look at Elaine underneath her armor! Her armor leaving her body unprotected as it transforms into a weapon was something I was really attached to because I wanted to work with the idea of a character who was at their most vulnerable when they lash out which would suggest that their best course of action would be to think of non-violent solutions in order to leave themselves protected. A theme to be developed more fully later, but it was important to me that we lay the groundwork here.

This page was a relief to arrive at because in the outline I had more or less written “page twelve: they work together.” Actually figuring out what that looked like was obviously more difficult to work out. Ultimately every character ends up with a job to do with helping people away from danger being given equal weight to evaporating a radiation monster. The team of Colin and Jane are reunited (this is a pairing that we’re going to see a lot of thanks to their status as legacy heroes who offer a foil to the other). Jane, who has been unflappable since her first panel, finally shows a hint of vulnerability and awe as she takes in the scene. The big action being underlined by the remembrance that these characters are kids in capes and masks which brings us a bit more of a character focus during the spectacle.

If there’s anything I learned from this, it’s that introducing an ensemble doesn’t necessarily mean working double-time to make sure everyone is given equal space and importance at all times. Sometimes characters need to cede the stage so that others can briefly shine. Ultimately, what the characters do need is to be given space in which they can serve the story by advancing the plot, developing a theme, establishing/advancing their arc, or ideally doing all of those at the same time. As long as that is maintained, it really doesn’t matter if one character gets a splash page and the others don’t.

Mark O. Stack is a comics writer and educator from New Jersey. His current output includes Young Offenders!, The Scent of May Rain, and other titles released under his Weekend Warrior Comics imprint. You can find his work at weekendwarriorcomics.com.

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