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Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued
A new course of material to accompany First Second's widely acclaimed 2008 comics textbook. In their hotly anticipated follow-up to 2008's comics textbook "Drawing Words & Writing Pictures," School of Visual Arts cartooning professors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel bring their expertise to bear on the "second semester" of a course of study for the budding cartoonist.
Covering advanced topics such as story composition, coloring, and file formatting, "Mastering Comics "is a vital companion to the introductory content of the first volume.
Covering advanced topics such as story composition, coloring, and file formatting, "Mastering Comics "is a vital companion to the introductory content of the first volume.
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 8, 2012
20 people are currently reading
493 people want to read
About the author
Jessica Abel
55 books159 followersAuthor and coach Jessica Abel is the author of Growing Gills, Out on the Wire, La Perdida, and two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics. Abel’s latest work of fiction is the Eisner-nominated Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
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September 20, 2021DNF - the size and format makes it very difficult to read this. So I didn’t
July 10, 2021
Read the review on my blog: Tim's Book Reviews
Premise: Many artists have the desire to create comics but might not know where to begin when it comes to layout, style, or the techniques necessary for creating print and digital art. Mastering Comics is a textbook covering topics including character and reader perspective, storytelling, artistic techniques, conversion to screen, penciling, inking, lettering, and much more.
Themes: One of the main things covered in Mastering Comics is creating thumbnails as a sketch of what an artist is going to eventually make into a more detailed drawing through penciling, inking, and shading or coloring. The thumbnails are there as a guide as you go about telling the story without having to worry about spending too much time adding detail before the story or artistic details have been thought out.
Mastering Comics takes time talking about layout, especially as it pertains to how people will see the pages individually, as you turn the page, and as the composition as a whole. It looks at the visually pleasing aspects as you look at the page, as well as the natural progression of reading through dialogue boxes and narration, color schemes, and artistic style.
Another topic covered is considering the digital realm of publication. Mastering Comics talks about how to draw for the screen, especially with what resolution to scan at, how to save your documents for adding ink, color, and shading, and also for thinking about how it will be viewed on the screen when compared to the printed page.
Pros: Not only does Mastering Comics cover a wide array of topics for artists, it manages to do so in an easy to understand way. The artistic examples in the book are fantastic. I like that they offer extended examples and content on their website, especially if you haven’t read the previous book or are simply looking to expand your artistic knowledge. Having not read the previous book, I still felt like there was plenty of help in the drawing aspect to help a beginning artist, such as with perspective and size and placement relationships between people and objects.
Cons: Mastering Comics makes some assumptions about your level of artistic ability and knowledge, though it is fairly forthcoming about those assumptions. The authors give references to the previous book for guidance on art and beginning drawing techniques, though they don’t always go into much detail with those references. Some of the step-by-step instructions on creating computer graphics are not as clear as they could be (or should be in some cases).
Recommendations: This “definitive course in comics narrative” lives up to its claim. If I were going to look for a definitive place to research cartooning as a career or as a serious hobby, Mastering Comics would be a perfect starting place. There is so much in this book to talk about, it can’t be covered in a review, but must be experienced from reading through the examples and working through the exercises. After reading this textbook it made me want to get into starting a comic. I enjoyed going through Mastering Comics so much that I forgot I was reading a textbook.
Premise: Many artists have the desire to create comics but might not know where to begin when it comes to layout, style, or the techniques necessary for creating print and digital art. Mastering Comics is a textbook covering topics including character and reader perspective, storytelling, artistic techniques, conversion to screen, penciling, inking, lettering, and much more.
Themes: One of the main things covered in Mastering Comics is creating thumbnails as a sketch of what an artist is going to eventually make into a more detailed drawing through penciling, inking, and shading or coloring. The thumbnails are there as a guide as you go about telling the story without having to worry about spending too much time adding detail before the story or artistic details have been thought out.
Mastering Comics takes time talking about layout, especially as it pertains to how people will see the pages individually, as you turn the page, and as the composition as a whole. It looks at the visually pleasing aspects as you look at the page, as well as the natural progression of reading through dialogue boxes and narration, color schemes, and artistic style.
Another topic covered is considering the digital realm of publication. Mastering Comics talks about how to draw for the screen, especially with what resolution to scan at, how to save your documents for adding ink, color, and shading, and also for thinking about how it will be viewed on the screen when compared to the printed page.
Pros: Not only does Mastering Comics cover a wide array of topics for artists, it manages to do so in an easy to understand way. The artistic examples in the book are fantastic. I like that they offer extended examples and content on their website, especially if you haven’t read the previous book or are simply looking to expand your artistic knowledge. Having not read the previous book, I still felt like there was plenty of help in the drawing aspect to help a beginning artist, such as with perspective and size and placement relationships between people and objects.
Cons: Mastering Comics makes some assumptions about your level of artistic ability and knowledge, though it is fairly forthcoming about those assumptions. The authors give references to the previous book for guidance on art and beginning drawing techniques, though they don’t always go into much detail with those references. Some of the step-by-step instructions on creating computer graphics are not as clear as they could be (or should be in some cases).
Recommendations: This “definitive course in comics narrative” lives up to its claim. If I were going to look for a definitive place to research cartooning as a career or as a serious hobby, Mastering Comics would be a perfect starting place. There is so much in this book to talk about, it can’t be covered in a review, but must be experienced from reading through the examples and working through the exercises. After reading this textbook it made me want to get into starting a comic. I enjoyed going through Mastering Comics so much that I forgot I was reading a textbook.
first-second-publications
June 6, 2012Do you need a book that tells you how to make comics?
This is that book.
Jessica Abel and Matt Madden do an amazing job putting together the basics of how comics should be made -- not only for potential comics creators, but for the classroom. Each chapter has homework, additional reading, and a whole lot of examples from amazing authors.
This book is also great for teachers or librarians who are interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes comics-making process. What goes into how your favorite graphic novels are made? Find out here!
This is that book.
Jessica Abel and Matt Madden do an amazing job putting together the basics of how comics should be made -- not only for potential comics creators, but for the classroom. Each chapter has homework, additional reading, and a whole lot of examples from amazing authors.
This book is also great for teachers or librarians who are interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes comics-making process. What goes into how your favorite graphic novels are made? Find out here!
November 17, 2018
This book continues where the previous book left off, showing you how to publish your book and advanced techniques on making your comic or graphic novel. It was just as good as the previous book and I recommend it to anyone that's read the previous book or to anyone that want's to know how to self-publish their work.
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May 13, 2025Like the previous book, this book was really hard to go through because of the format of the book
May 30, 2012
Matt and Jessica have extensive experience creating and teaching comics and in their first book, Drawing With Words and Pictures, they shared a portable classroom. Now they come back to us with further lessons in this companion book. The book covers more advanced topics in creating a good comic, such as story composition; coloring and formatting pictures; and even more importantly it has a section on how to self-publish and getting published, surely to be helpful to young writers/artists just starting out. Just like the first book, this one is divided into easy to read sections so the book can be used as a textbook or for an individual course study, which is extremely helpful and makes the book very versatile.
This text is heavily illustrated with examples to help guide readers on seeing the lesson in action. Jessica and Matt use examples, not just from their own works, but examples from other professionally published artists so that readers have an extensive bibliography of images to look at (and look for.) They also supplement the text with “further reading” sections, which allow a reader/student to continue their learning and more importantly to get an additional point of view from other working artists. I also really like how they've broken down homework assignments in the book. Not only do they put assignments at the back of each chapter to help readers learn the concepts that they've been reading about, but they also put some right after they've talked about a particular aspect, such as scriptwriting. They walk the reader through how to start the process step by step and offer examples of things to do along the way.
My favorite section in this book might just be “The Horror of the Blank Page,” which lists ways to overcome the fear of a blank page and getting some ideas on where to go next. It’s helpful to know that even the authors, experienced artists that they are, still struggle sometimes with overcoming that scary empty white page. And I think that's something else that is helpful, that Jessica and Matt share some of their own personal experiences in this book, which for me helps make reading the book easier knowing that yes, they've encountered some of these same issues that have plagued me. An important addition to this book Matt and Jessica talk about webcomics, even encouraging the students to give them a try to gain experience with not only how they work, but to help artists/writers improve upon their skill set.
This this is a great book for providing practical lessons that will be useful to readers whether they are doing a self study or in a class. Even more so it’s a great book for fans of comics/graphic novels to see what type of work goes into creating the these items that they enjoy. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.
Review copy provided by Gina at FirstSecond
This text is heavily illustrated with examples to help guide readers on seeing the lesson in action. Jessica and Matt use examples, not just from their own works, but examples from other professionally published artists so that readers have an extensive bibliography of images to look at (and look for.) They also supplement the text with “further reading” sections, which allow a reader/student to continue their learning and more importantly to get an additional point of view from other working artists. I also really like how they've broken down homework assignments in the book. Not only do they put assignments at the back of each chapter to help readers learn the concepts that they've been reading about, but they also put some right after they've talked about a particular aspect, such as scriptwriting. They walk the reader through how to start the process step by step and offer examples of things to do along the way.
My favorite section in this book might just be “The Horror of the Blank Page,” which lists ways to overcome the fear of a blank page and getting some ideas on where to go next. It’s helpful to know that even the authors, experienced artists that they are, still struggle sometimes with overcoming that scary empty white page. And I think that's something else that is helpful, that Jessica and Matt share some of their own personal experiences in this book, which for me helps make reading the book easier knowing that yes, they've encountered some of these same issues that have plagued me. An important addition to this book Matt and Jessica talk about webcomics, even encouraging the students to give them a try to gain experience with not only how they work, but to help artists/writers improve upon their skill set.
This this is a great book for providing practical lessons that will be useful to readers whether they are doing a self study or in a class. Even more so it’s a great book for fans of comics/graphic novels to see what type of work goes into creating the these items that they enjoy. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.
Review copy provided by Gina at FirstSecond
June 10, 2012
This is (in my opinion) a fantastic book to get anyone interested in creating absolutely any kind of story with sequential art. Whether you want to use stick figures - which is actually very good when you just want to get your idea for a story down - or eventually use complex drawings, this book takes the mystery out of it, if you are a beginner. The book is designed for groups to use, but us loners can easily use it to. After getting this book, I got some of Will Eisner's books (genius books) among a few others.
February 28, 2015
This is a great follow-up to Drawing Words and Writing Pictures that goes more in depth into the processes of inking and coloring, with a much stronger focus on working with comics in the digital age, including using computers to produce your art as well as publishing web comics. This is definitely a worthwhile text for anyone trying to put together a comic, though the focus is much heavier on the art than on the writing.
May 5, 2012
I read so many how-to-books, that I was waiting for those who went in depth and MC, did not disappoint. It went in depth on subjects of production, coloring, and scripting. It was concise and there several exercises to do to work that creative muscle and vanquish the BLANK PAGE.
June 14, 2013
THis has more to do with the mechanics of story than its predecessor, and it does not disappoint. As I noted in the review of the last one, the use of spot color is very effective, and in this book, they get it right.
June 15, 2016
4 if you draw graphics. This book is a sequel to an earlier book and can be used as a textbook for drawing graphics and comics. Very detailed and helpful for those in this artistic field. I appreciated the tips and the recommendations for further reading found in each chapter.
May 15, 2012
This book has so much great information. A great start for anyone that wants to get into creating comics!!
October 26, 2012
Great intro to drawing book; doesn't focus on realistic life drawing but a good 101 for ppl new to drawing; tips from how to sit properly were interesting!
July 31, 2014
Behind the scenes explaining how the sausage is made!
August 13, 2014
Absolutely invaluable.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews