The Insider's Guide to Creating Comics and Graphic Novels by Andy Schmidt

Scott McCloud's books on how to create effective comics were good, but this book is aimed at those who want to do more than just art. It expands the field to include colorists, inkers, letterers and writers as a separate job, not just doing it all.

To illustrate the points the book raises, images from comics published by a wide variety of commercial companies are used, and the techniques used in the example are highlighted, from how to vary lines after inking to how to use color to give a sense of urgency, sadness, menace or distance... just with color alone.

Also given are the bios of various srtists in the field, from their first work to their favorite comic they have worked on, along with a picture of that artist. Other topics covered include breaking into comics, networking, and how to get your art seen by pros at comics conventions.

The book is broken up into 10 major chapters, with the art as the lead in most of the chapters, since graphic novels, manga and comics are primarily a visual medium. Inking, coloring and lettering are each given a chapter on their own, but not as much space as simply the art, which takes up a whole seven chapters.

This definitely isn't a bad book about the comics industry. It's sort of a modern-day reinterpretation of "How to draw Comics the Marvel Way", but with a wide variety of techniques instead of trumpeting "Ours is the best and only way to make comics!" that was more prevalent in "Comics the Marvel Way".

Andy Schmidt, the writer, is a former editor at Marvel Comics, and most of the people whose work he used in this book are close friends and former co-workers at Marvel. Not all of them still work at Marvel, but I must say that the information on Manga given in this book is extremely slight. Probably only 1 or 2% of the information within. And given that manga is in the title, I find that particularly unforgiveable.

Other than that, this book is a superior guide to drawing comics and the various art techniques you will need to know to make your art effective. Not just the rules, but knowing when to break them. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to make it in sequential art or graphic novels/comic books and manga.