When I was in college at Clackamas Community College (where I also met David, one of my co-hosts of the Anime Explorations Podcast) – one of my campus jobs I worked was in the library, where I worked the check-out counter. As one of the classes that was thought (occasionally) was Comics as Literature, a selection of graphic novels were on reserve at the front desk, and during terms where the class was not offered, I would help myself to read them during downtime. One of the books I read during this time was Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and this inspired me to go on later to check out Reinventing Comics from my local library. It wasn’t until this year that I found out there was a third book in the series – Making Comics – and having found out about it, I checked that out from my local library as well.
At its core, Making Comics is about taking the concepts McCloud laid out in the two previous books in the series, and applying them to making comics. It’s not necessarily getting into the weeds on “here’s how you format a script/Marvel Method outline” or “here’s how you do a panel layout” – but instead on here’s what you need to think about when it comes to doing an outline or script or panel layout – and how to think about pacing action in the comic.
Does this mean that you need to have both of those earlier works for reference and to flip between them? Not really but it doesn’t hurt. I read the book on its own, and I was able to pick up what McCloud was laying down just fine – without having either of the earlier works readily available. That said, if you’re going to be really serious about this, you are going to want to get into additional reading after going through this – and McCloud was also aware of this and included a thoroughly researched and thought out recommended reading along with the book.
This came out in 2006, so there are some works that came later that might be worthy of consideration (like Brian Michael Bendis’ Making Comics), but this book, plus the recommended reading, definitely gives you a really solid to build off of when it comes to taking doing individual art pieces into comics, or if you’re thinking about writing comics for commission, or you want to format your fanfic as a comic script rather than as more conventional prose.
Did this leave me wanting more exploration of comics as a medium from McCloud? Absolutely – in each of the previous books in the series, he’s touched on various concepts when it comes to global ways comics are made – discussing manga and bande dessinee, in brief, in all of the previous books. I’d love to see a “Global Comics” book discussing the various formats in depth – especially considering the rise of the Webtoon format coming out of Korea (particularly considering that format in particular is something that McCloud was thinking about in Reinventing Comics, even if it wasn’t as big then as it’s gotten now).
In all, if you really want to approach comics from a critical perspective, or if you’re new to making comics and want to improve, Making Comics (along with the two previous works) are absolutely something to put in your toolbox.
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