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

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

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The difference between reading comics and creating comics is the same divide that exists between understanding Norwegian and speaking Norwegian. You might pick up a few things through some exposure, and you might understand the rhythms and know how to ask where the bathrooms are, but it's almost impossible to really hold a complex conversation without hammering out a few fundamental rules and immersing yourself in it. Scott McCloud is here to teach us how to speak the language of comics, and to reveal the subconscious cues that those sneaky artists slip into their pages to make us think and feel different things.

I don't want to say that McCloud's various published analyses into the world of comics are beyond reproach, but I will anyhow. As both a skilled writer and a skilled artist, McCloud has an organic sense of what goes where and why, as well as the ability to explain the subtleties of these things. McCloud's strength lies in the idea that while he expertly instructs us how to create a powerful visual narrative, he also acknowledges creativity and encourages the readers to punch holes in his lessons and redefine the language of comics. Nothing is presented as an absolute, and that's the best kind of creative teaching.

I spent a year teaching comics at a private school before I decided that it wasn't for me, but Making Comics was a constant crutch for me, since it provides many examples for the daily lessons that are appropriate for every age group. Making Comics is divided up into an obsessively detailed table of contents, arranged by the traditional order of steps in the comic creating process. One might think that a thick, analytical tome about how to make comics would be a bore, but McCloud's signature "thing" is to instruct about comics using comics--and because McCloud is explaining the diversity of ways that comics can be expressed, every page is absolutely full of variety and amazingly interesting layouts and ideas. Open to any page and be visually arrested. Each chapter is recapped with exercises to try and a verbal summary of what had just been conveyed--but don't worry, it's still mostly pictures. Every nuanced line can have books written about it, but McCloud simplifies just enough.

I also appreciate the fact that McCloud, though a talented artist, accepts his own limitations when providing examples of comic techniques. McCloud made the effort to reprint exact examples from the material that he's referencing, whereas the authors of some other books in the same genre of "teaching comics" try to emulate these examples--often unsuccessfully. If McCloud is talking about Frank Miller's use of inks, he shows a Frank Miller panel, which is far more valuable than someone sloppily mimicking Miller.

Making Comics is the No. 1, absolutely essential resource for anyone who might be interested in making comics or anyone who'd like an insight into what those crazy artist guys are thinking when they're tossing panels and angles around. Aspiring artists might think they know exactly what they're doing, but there are always ways to do it even better, and a few more Norwegian words to bulk up the lexicon with.

-- Collin David

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

• ISBN13: 9780060780944
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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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):

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.

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Customer Reviews

This book is ESSENTIAL reading for anyone who wants to make comics - Patient Zero - West Coast
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.

Incredible Book and Great Fun! - NGP - DC
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).


Jun 03, 2010 13:20:04