Out later this spring is a specialized guide of value to those interested in what some consider a nostalgic craft. The Sequential Artists Workshop Guide to Creating Professional Comic Strips is by Tom Hart (Hutch Owen), who founded and runs the Florida art school whose name this appears under. He also co-created (with Marguerite Dabaie) the former syndicated strip Ali’s House (2008), about an Arab-American family. Although the background of this book is the traditional newspaper strip, in the introduction, […]

This month’s Diamond Previews catalog, used by comic shops and their customers to determine what to buy in the comic months, has the theme “How to Draw” to “pay tribute to the DIY spirit”. That means a number of publishers are reoffering books about making comics. Here are some I recommend you should be aware of, complete with this month’s ordering codes. The DC Comics Guides to Creating Comics — Writing (JAN16 1915), Pencilling (JAN16 1916), Inking (JAN16 1917), Coloring […]

Bart Beaty’s Twelve-Cent Archie resembles a grab bag of blog posts put under book covers. There are 100 capsule pieces, in no immediately obvious order, each lasting 2-4 pages and covering some aspect of Archie comics cover-dated from December 1961 through July 1969, when Archie publications sold for 12 cents. He’s read all the works the company put out in that time period, 17 different titles. In particular, he’s focusing on the work of artists Harry Lucey (Archie), Dan DeCarlo […]

I really like the guys behind TwoMorrows. They made a go of publishing historical magazines and books about comics at a time when few others were. However, their publications are aimed at a core, comic shop-based, male audience that is so clearly irrelevant to what I enjoy about the medium. Take, for instance, this latest volume, the 29th. (It’s labeled 30 because number 23 never came out.) As the series has progressed, the subjects have gone from well-known, acclaimed creators […]

Out next month is a fascinating novel by Martine Leavitt. Calvin is the story of a 17-year-old, born on the last day of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip and coincidentally named to match, who’s convinced Bill Watterson can fix his life. Calvin has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and hearing the voice of an imaginary tiger is one of his symptoms. After his hospitalization, he finds a mission. “I just need Bill Watterson to make one more comic strip […]

Marvel seems to finally be realizing that there is an audience for works about their superhero women. There’s still no word on a much-desired Black Widow movie, even though she’s, due to her being part of The Avengers, their best known female character. Instead, she gets a book, one written by best-selling YA author Margaret Stohl. I didn’t think, going in, that I wanted to know more about the super-spy. I’m ok with her being a kind of female Wolverine […]

These days, a comic guidebook doesn’t get published without including business advice. That’s a good thing — artists should learn more than they were traditionally taught about how to make a living (just as businesspeople should learn more about valuing creativity, but that’s a different post) — but with so many different formats and industry paths available to people these days, a lot of books aren’t clear enough about their target audience. (See, for example, Brian Michael Bendis’ Words for […]

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about the planned launch of ACE magazine, a new publication from the editor of Comic Book Artist, Jon B. Cooke, and publisher/retailer Robert Yeremian. “ACE” stands for “All Comics Evaluated”, and the magazine promised both interviews and reviews of current material as well as a price guide. It debuted in March, and it was monthly after that — until May, when issue #3 was published. No issues have followed, although issue #4 […]