The Times of London takes the occasion of a trade paperback collecting Jodi Picoult‘s batch of Wonder Woman stories to examine the appeal of comic books for literary writers, with namechecks to Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, as well as Ian Rankin‘s run on the supernatural suspense comic Hellblazer (but not, curiously, Denise Mina‘s.) Says Rankin: “I’m enjoying the process, but finding it hard to think in such visual terms. Most of what I do is write instructions to the artist as to character description, visual point of view, etc, for each frame—all of which gets in the way of actual storytelling.” Maybe the visual element makes it easier for TV writers like Joss Whedon and Marc Guggenheim to make the switch to comics?