Book Review #37: Making Comics

Making Comics (2006)

Written and Drawn by Scott McCloud

With Making Comics, a book on how to put together your very own Comic Book, Scott McCloud has done it again. This book is the one to get if you are really serious about diving head first into the world of self publishing your own Comic's. Within' the pages here you will get a lot of practical knowledge of how and why certain shots are used and what type of panels to use when telling your stories. Scott goes into the theory of the in's and outs about all thing relating to the meaning behind a page layout. He also gives you a lot of info about Manga as well and how to go about using elements from other cultures to take your own artwork to another level.

This really is a fantastic book and should be in everyone's personal Library. I love it, and the exercises and notes at the end of each chapter will keep you busy for a long long time. You can't help but to improve your own work. The one thing this book is not, is a book about how to draw pretty pictures (i.e., Babes, Cars, Animals, etc....). There are a million other books devoted to just that. This book is about looking under the hood and understanding how things work. Highly recommend this one.

Rating: 5 Stars out of 5 

Review by Chiprocks1

Book Review #36: Reinventing Comics

 Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form (2000)

Written and Drawn by Scott McCloud

Where Understanding Comics has a timelessness that will never fade, Reinventing Comics clearly is dated given the fact that it came out in 2000. With his first book, the main objective was to teach you how and why comics works as a medium as well as the historical significance. But for Reinventing Comics, it's all about giving us the reader a theortical look at the future of comic books regarding everything from computers to the internet to distribution, etc...

This book is Scott's manifesto of what he would like to see happen in the future and how to go about getting there. One can't help but see 11 years later how close or how far he miss the mark on that. I won't spoil it and will leave it up to you to read for yourself. 

Once again the artwork is done by Scott, which makes for a pretty fast and compelling read, even if you really don't want to hear about all the technical stuff about some of the minute things in the process of how a comic book travels from the artist to eventually the reader.

I like the book, but trying to top, let alone equal that of Understanding Comics, it does come off as a bit underwhelming because the expectations were higher than normal. 

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars out of 5

Review by Chiprocks1