GenX Comics

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture in 1993 with Understanding Comics, a massive comic book about comics, linking the medium to such diverse fields as media theory, movie criticism, and web design. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud took this to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are generated, read, and perceived today. Now, in Making Comics, McCloud focuses his analysis on the art form itself, exploring the creation of comics, from the broadest principles to the sharpest details (like how to accentuate a character’s facial muscles in order to form the emotion of disgust rather than the emotion of surprise.) And he does all of it in his inimitable voice and through his cartoon stand–in narrator, mixing dry humor and legitimate instruction. McCloud shows his reader how to master the human condition through word and image in a brilliantly minimalistic way. Comic book devotees as well as the most uninitiated will marvel at this journey into a once–underappreciated art form.

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics was published in 1993, just as “Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!” articles were starting to appear and graphic novels were making their way into the mainstream, and it quickly gave the newly respectable medium the theoretical and practical manifesto it needed. With his clear-eyed and approachable analysis–done using the same comics tools he was describing–McCloud quickly gave “sequential art” a language to understand itself. McCloud made the simplest of drawing decisions seem deep with artistic potential.

Thirteen years later, following the Internet evangelizing of Reinventing Comics, McCloud has returned with Making Comics.

Designed as a craftsperson’s overview of the drawing and storytelling decisions and possibilities available to comics artists, covering everything from facial expressions and page layout to the choice of tools and story construction, Making Comics, like its predecessors, is also an eye-opening trip behind the scenes of art-making, fascinating for anyone reading comics as well as those making them. Get a sense of the range of his lessons by clicking through to the opening pages of his book, including his (illustrated, of course) table of contents (warning: large file, recommended for high-bandwidth users):

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars a must if you wanna create comics/manga
this teaches you everything you need to know, from paneling, to creating believeable characters, to perspictive, and covers everything pretty much…

5 Stars This book is ESSENTIAL reading for anyone who wants to make comics
I’ll keep it short and sweet…With Making Comics, Scott McCloud gives a quick overview of the large points of his seminal ‘Understanding Comics’ and then proceeds to teach the reader the language of comics. If you’re here looking for a book to teach you the craft of making a comic, do it. Commit. This is your book.

5 Stars Very useful read
I found this book both helpful and fascinating as it shows the secrets to making comics stand out. I am considering being a comic book writer/artist (although the video game field is first priority for me), so this book can prove useful. Of course, I feel this book can be useful in other ways…

5 Stars Incredible Book and Great Fun!
If you are an aspiring comic book creator/writer/artist, this book is for you, it gives you the broad technical overview of comic book making that is just not available in most art books nowadays, including the DC Comics books on comic book writing (to be fair the DC comics series does have all the material it’s just spread out over several different books and not nearly as well organized nor as concisely communicated). Making Comic Books is a fun read and is a worthy companion to its predecessor, Understanding Comics. Buy this book, and if you haven’t bought Understanding Comics, buy that too, and read them in order (not that you have to, but you’ll just enjoy it more that way).

5 Stars LOVE THIS BOOK!
I love this book.The illustrations are great and the information and instructions are valuable.It’s fun to read and look at the cartoons.

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Filed under: Top Graphic Novels