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Mastering Comics

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.

Buy Mastering Comics from us directly, or from your favorite vendor, via this link.

99Ways_cover

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style was inspired by the book Exercises in Style by the French writer Raymond Queneau. In that book, Queneau spun 99 variations out of a mundane, two-part text about two chance encounters with a mildly irritating character during the course of a day—in different tenses, haiku and sonnet versions, as a telegram, in pig latin, as a series of exclamations, in an indifferent voice… you name it. Matt’s book applies the same principle to comics by creating as many variations as possible on a simple one-page non-story: different points of view, different genres, different formal games, and so on.

 “I’ve probably recommended 99 Ways to Tell a Story 99 times. It’s one of the most useful, most accessible texts there is on creating comics.” —Andrew Farago, Curator, Cartoon Art Museum

“Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style is a fascinating analysis of and a treatise, of sorts, on language in comics.” —Steven Heller, author & graphic design guru, in The Daily Heller

 

Buy 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style from Amazon.com, or shop locally—find a store that stocks our books via Booksense.

You can also preview pages of the book here.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

(The textbook version, that is!)

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a textbook containing a systematic course that teaches the alchemical art of combining words and pictures to make comics. In it, authors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden have laid out a complete, structured syllabus that guides students from creating narrative in a single drawing to orchestrating all the skills involved in creating a multi-page, complex story.

“A gold mine of essential information for every aspiring comics artist. Highly recommended.” –Scott McCloud

Buy Drawing Words & Writing Pictures from us directly, or from your favorite vendor, via this link.

La Perdida

Jessica’s La Perdida (Pantheon Books) is the story of Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, who heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” Her intense desire to make a connection with Mexico and her unwillingness to see the impact of her own history on her understanding combine to turn an innocent journey down a dark path. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida—at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal—is a story about finding yourself by getting lost.

Abel writes like a dramaturge, developing character and conflict mostly through articulate dialogue that ping-pongs between her smart, if oftentimes deluded or flawed characters.
Time.comix 3/06 (Best Comic of 2006)

 

Buy La Perdida from Amazon.com, or shop locally—find a store that stocks our books via Booksense.