Review by KC Carlson Plugged In: Comics Professionals Working in the Video Game Industry is exactly what it says it is. Writer Keith Veronese has interviewed almost two dozen comic book artists and writers about their experiences working on video games. They cover the gamut of video game history, going way back to Elliott S! Maggin freelancing at Atari in the early 80s, as well as Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway working on Atari Force and Swordquest in conjunction with […]

Following Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics and Stan Lee’s How to Write Comics comes the more specialized Stan Lee’s How to Draw Superheroes. I suspect, as in the previous volumes, Stan didn’t really write this. A small line on the indicia page credits Danny Fingeroth, Keith Dallas, and Robert Sodaro. It’s packaged by Dynamite Entertainment, which explains the use of their covers. The book might more properly have been called “How to Create Superheroes”, since there’s more of that […]

Marvel has announced that Hyperion Books, another Disney division, will be publishing two prose novels focused on “strong, smart heroines seeking happiness and love while battling cosmic evil.” The She-Hulk Diaries is clearly taking a “Sex in the City” approach, described as follows: Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk, juggles climbing the corporate ladder by day and battling villains and saving the world by night — all while trying to navigate the dating world to find a Mr. Right who might not […]

Review by KC Carlson I now hold in my hands an actual copy of the first in the series of American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960-1964. I first read and reviewed this book (based on a digital preview copy) way back last August, over at the Westfield blog, and have been waiting patiently while the real thing was obviously on the slowest boat from China ever. It will finally be in comic shops this week, as well as other fine booksellers, […]

Four years ago, the talented Jessica Abel and Matt Madden brought us an essential book on how to make comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. Mastering Comics continues where that book left off, providing, as they term it, “a definitive course in comics narrative”. This is a topic I’m thrilled to see getting more attention, since the best-looking comics still need to have something to say. The book consists of four substantial sections: Building Stories — tools to generate ideas […]

Fantagraphics sent out its catalog for next year, and among all the wonderful books of classic reprints and alternative cartoonists, I discovered a new prose work I’m going to be very curious to see. Trina Robbins is writing Pretty in Ink: American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013, billed as “her ultimate book, a revised, updated and rewritten history of women cartoonists, with more color illustrations than ever before, and with some startling new discoveries”. Among which is finding out that someone Robbins […]

Christopher Hart, the bestselling author of how-to-draw books who doesn’t take criticism well, will be releasing another book on August 7 from Watson-Guptill. Manga for the Beginner Kawaii promises to teach readers “How to Draw the Supercute Characters of Japanese Comics”. The sell copy references Hello Kitty and Pokemon, for some quick reference points, in explaining “the superpopular manga genre of Kawaii”. (I wasn’t aware it was a genre, instead of a style or a design choice, but I also […]

When I think of Mark Crilley, I fondly remember Akiko, the charming small-press comic that began in 1995. That was a long time ago now — the comic ran 50 issues, before spinning off another ten children’s prose books, and if it was a person, it would now be getting ready to graduate high school — and Crilley has done other books since then, Miki Falls and Brody’s Ghost. His newest publication gives readers the benefit of his experience, providing […]