Creating Comics: A Writer's and Artist's Guide and Anthology

Bloomsbury Writer's Guides and Anthologies

by Chris Gavaler, Leigh Ann Beavers, Joe Wilkins (Editor)

For creative writers and artists, comics provide unique opportunities for expression – but unique challenges, too. Creating Comics brings together in one volume an authoritative guide to the creative process, with practical drawing exercises throughout and an anthology of comics demonstrating the eclectic possibilities of the form.

Creating Comic

· Using images to conceive and develop characters and stories
· The complete range of possible relationships between two images
· The step-by-step structure of visual narratives
· How to approach each page like a unique canvas
· Combining words and images to create new meanings


Fully integrated with the main guide, the anthology section includes work by creators Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Jaime Hernandez, Marjane Satrapi, Adrian Tomine, and many others.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 14, 2021

About the author

Chris Gavaler’s novel-in-stories SCHOOL FOR TRICKSTERS was published by Southern Methodist University Press (2011) and his romantic suspense novel PRETEND I’M NOT HERE by HarperCollins (2002). His short fiction appears in over three dozen national literary journals, including PRAIRIE SCHOONER, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW, HUDSON REVIEW, and WITNESS. He is also a four-time winner of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival’s Outstanding Playwright award. He received an MFA from the University of Virginia and is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA.