Drawing Words & Writing Pictures
May 20th, 2009How can you teach comics? For me – and my friends – comics were something you’d learn on your own. -Read Daredevil or Swamp Thing, and then make your own, consulting Silver Surfer for chrome reflection, Daredevil for the muscle groups of the upper body, and Todd McFarlane for the consummate Spiderman. Teenage knuckles whitened and cramped, sweating over sketchbooks bearing pages of characters and heroes, costume designs, and renderings of fire shooting from hands, lasers from eyes, and impossibly portable gatling guns. The most ardent of these hormonal young artists would slide their drawings into portfolios, seeking the sagely criticism of modern masters, themselves seeking approval from their audiences at an annual Comic-Con. (I sound phallocentric, but I’m being anecdotal, and my memory of the comics world includes very few girls into making comics. The influx of girl readers might be one of the biggest changes in comics over recent years.) So we identified as artists, but we didn’t really think of “medium.” Comics were an obsession, not a medium.
But upon acknowledging that comics can be a medium, we can be serious in analyzing techniques, history, and language, above and beyond their content. Understanding Comics made Scott McCloud the Sir Isaac Newton of comics. In Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Matt Madden and Jessica Abel declare a principal of comicsology: “Comics is a language first and foremost, style and genre come later.”
As successful comics artists, Matt Madden and Jessica Abel have endured the self-teaching tradition. As teachers, they’ve seen its results several hundred times a year. They understand what young creators need to know. Drawing Words & Writing Pictures sets out to codify the process of making comics, without alienating proud autodidactic artists. And aspiring Jim Lee successors must understand that their drawing skills fight less than half the battle. “Good” drawing is relative and unnecessary, and the core of comics is more profound.
The book splits cleanly into fifteen chapters that approach the lexicon of comics (e.g. “emanata”), the science of panels, penciling, lettering, inking, writing, designing, “comics in the age of mechanical reproduction,” and even a guide to your 24-hour comics creation marathon, which should result in a dynamic comic – and coffee breath. Each chapter is laden with exemplary comics pages and panels, even including a cool glimpse of Charles Burns’ process.
Jessica and Matt write as informed peers, rather than lecturing elders trying to scold readers into submission. They read like attentive, active, insightful professionals willing to rationally explain their do’s and don’ts, and demonstrate what happens when those get mixed up. And their welcoming writing style gently reveals the impressive erudition the writers have accumulated. They seem to account for every other text on the topic in question, a range of artists from distant eras and countries, and agile comparisons and references to art history.
The supplemental website makes Drawing Words & Writing Pictures a viable textbook. Students and teachers alike will benefit from this dynamic resource, which promises actual student artwork, helpful external links, and even a printable nine-panel comics page.
After you score a copy, you can get it autographed. This summer, Jessica and Matt will teach a workshop that guides students in making a comic in two intensive weeks. Well connected, they will invite other professionals for lectures and crit sessions. And the timing is perfect, as the MoCCA fair coincides with the conclusion of the course. Students can display their creations at the fair, hot off the presses.