Mark Crilley has posted the below YouTube video announcing that Mastering Manga 3, a followup to Mastering Manga With Mark Crilley and Mastering Manga 2: Level Up With Mark Crilley, will be published next year (2016). He says in the video that he has plans for what he wants to cover, but he also wants to know what suggestions readers would like to see. He asks for ideas for what he hasn’t covered or what people think he didn’t cover […]

I finally got a chance to sample Batman: Murder at Wayne Manor, one of Quirk Books’ interactive mysteries that feature replica artifacts. It’s written by Duane Swierczynski, as was The Crimes of Dr. Watson, but as suits the main character, there are also comic-style illustrations by David Lapham. The plot here seems the best integrated with the licensed property of the three books in the series. (Along with the Holmes one, there’s also Dracula’s Heir, by another author.) Bruce Wayne […]

I have read an honest-to-goodness romance novel set at the San Diego Comic-Con. More Than Comics by Elizabeth Briggs is the love story of Tara McFadden, a young woman just out of college who’s been writing Misfit Squad, a successful graphic novel for Black Hat Comics, “the third largest comic book publisher” in this universe. That’s not the only discrepancy. She’s meeting her artist, Hector Fernandez, for the first time in person at the con, and he turns out to […]

Review by KC Carlson Between the years of 2007 and 2011, a publisher named Running Press issued a series of beautifully written and produced Vault books on the histories of comics’ biggest companies (Marvel and DC Comics — both previously reviewed by me, here at CWR) and their top characters (Batman and Spider-Man). Despite the similar title, this new 2015 Avengers Vault book, from a different publisher, Thunder Bay Press, is not like those books. In fact, I think the […]

As laid out in editor Jon B. Cooke’s introduction, Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers was originally supposed to come out over 12 years ago. Now, it’s here, labeled as Comic Book Creator #6, but it’s similar in length and content to other TwoMorrows volumes. Either way, it’s a specialized subject. The book focuses on the swamp monsters of the 1970s comics and in detail on the Alan Moore era of Swamp Thing. Two pages of justification lay out other characters […]

Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels is a bit of a specialized book, focused on writing comics for businesses run by other people (instead of self-publishing or drawing your own work), but it’s full of great advice for those who want to go into that aspect of the industry. More importantly, the enthusiasm Brian Michael Bendis conveys for the job is infectious. Similarly, Joe Quesada’s foreword hits the “don’t give up, push through […]

Kawaii Manga: Adorable! is a colorful, heavy book that contains a selection of walk-throughs, showing how 22 different images (from 16 artists) were built digitally. They’re all loosely “kawaii”, or super-cute, and manga- or anime-influenced. (Seriously, the thick paper over 350 pages makes for a hefty tome. This isn’t a “carry it around with you” book.) The sections are “Cute Girls”, “Happy Time”, “Sweet Dessert”, “Super Adventure”, and “Magical World”. Each image begins with a short paragraph explaining the character. […]

You’ve likely already heard of Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman, since there was an impressive profile last month at The New Yorker that summarizes many of the key points. This book, though, goes into great depth with new discoveries about the life of William Moulton Marston, her creator. Early on, Lepore lays out her premise clearly. She traces Superman’s roots to science fiction, Batman to the hard-boiled detective, and Wonder Woman to “the feminist utopia and to […]