It takes more than THWACK to give a comic book punch. These passages from the script for Batgirl #16 convey the essence of Puckett's thinking and writing. His scripts focus mainly on scene-setting and story line, telling the penciller what to draw and why.
PAGE ONE
Panel 1: Open with a shot of a small mouse suspended in midair above the Gotham rooftops, at night. He's been hurled upwards by the kids on the roof far below and has just reached the apex of his flight. Make this a front shot, just the mouse, the sky and skyline below and beyond.
Panel 2: Downshot, mouse in foreground, rooftop below in background. The mouse starts to fall back down towards the rooftop. There's a large circle of kids (ages 9 to 12) below, looking up at the mouse. I mean that literally--they're in a large circle around a crudely painted bull's-eye circle, which is the target for the mouse (just one circle for the bull's-eye, not concentric circles). This is a mouse-hurling contest between two of the bigger kids. They're standing on the inside edge of the circle of kids, across from each other.
Panel 3: A blurry speed shot as the mouse picks up speed and hurtles down, just an instant before impact. I picture this as a front shot from just above the kids' heads with a blurry speed-line mouse coming down from off-top.
Panel 4: Ew. Impact. I'm not trying to be gross or sensationalistic, but I think it's important to show the dead mouse full-on, or the scene (and its role later in the story) loses its impact. So we have here a downshot of the crushed mouse, viscera smeared on the rooftop. . . . The mouse is half in, half out of the outer edge of the thick bull's-eye line. [On pages 2 and 3, the kids argue over whether the shot counts as a point. Then the second boy hurls his mouse.]
PAGE FOUR
Panel 1: Big, freaky upshot as Batgirl drops out of the night sky straight down towards us, her cape flaring. Scary and funky. Her right hand is curled into a loose fist.
Panel 2: Batgirl lands in the middle of the bull's-eye in a creepy Bat-crouch, cape flowing out, a dark creature of the night. The kids freak. They all immediately turn and run screaming from the circle, getting the hell out of there, never to harm a rodent again for the rest of their lives.
Panel 3: Small panel as Batgirl opens her right hand, letting the mouse scurry off onto the rooftop and freedom, unharmed.
