A short primer that places cultural context at the heart of comics creation
Most manuals and ‘how-to’ books about making comics fall into three categories: the first assumes no drawing skill on the reader’s part and instructs accordingly; the second assumes some skill in drawing (and using software) and offers technical direction about combining or adding to those skills; the third, and most useful, considers comics holistically, as a cultural medium.
Comics 101 falls into this third category. Really an extended magazine, produced by by TwoMorrows Publishing for Free Comic Book Day 2007, Comics 101... features articles by editors from several of its specialist comics-related magazines.
So firstly, there are articles on figure drawing and story layout, which cut to the point very smartly.
I also found Bob McLeod’s critique of a Fantastic Four layout fascinating and full of direct advice (‘It’s always better to design your elements using diagonals, rather than horizontals and verticals’ and ‘center the figures in the panel, then design the backgrounds around them’ and so on).
The article on writing is fairly general, but offers some good points on etiquette in dealing with publishers. But the two longest articles are potted histories of comics. The first article explains the roots of the comics medium up to the 1970s and the evolution of the super-hero genre. The second article concerns the modern era of comics, the advent of commercialisation and direct sales and the innovation of indie comics and the graphic novel.
What marks Comics 101 out as unusual is its insistence on basic skills, patient development of ideas and awareness of the historical and cultural context in which comics are created and consumed.
Of course it cannot be as in-depth as Scott McCloud's Making Comics, at just 30-odd pages, but as a freebie it is excellent value in every way.
Is it necessary to be a good draughtsman to be a good cartoonist? I’m not sure. Graphic style (pen, brush, digital and stroke) and draughtsmanship (perspective technique and design) effect storytelling in Comics in a way that is unique to the medium.
I believe that concept and plot are related by observation of realistic drawing rules (ie. perspective, depth cues and foreshortening); emotion and character by expressive line (and/or colour) (ie. emanatae, abstract visual elements).
In the little treatise-cum- instruction supplement to the last issue of Comic Art, Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, Ivan Brunetti says that the minimum job of cartooning is to convey the visual characteristics necessary for us to recognise drawings as symbols.
Brunetti illustrates - see what I did there? - with an exercise in which one draws several everyday subjects (a car, a cat, a castle, yourself) a number of times, in successively shorter periods (2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, etc.), forcing one to strip down images to their essential elements.
As Brunetti says:
“...When we really have too little time to ‘think’ about the drawing we get closer to the ‘idea’ or essence of the thing being drawn. Here we begin to see the universal, latent, symbolic, visual, mnemonic language that is comics.”
Brunetti argues that the goal of cartooning is to reach a compromise between the drawing that satisfies its fictional requirements to occupy space in the visual world of the comic and its function as a symbolic element of the story (ie. the drawing must ‘feel’ physically solid and be ‘readable’ as a symbol).
Jessica Abel and Matt Madden seem to agree. The first exercise they set in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures suggests that one tries drawing stick men. I think cartooning owes a lot more to the discipline of design than is commonly acknowledged and that, in many senses, comics stand or fall on this strength.
Is it necessary to be a good draughtsman to be a good cartoonist? No, it's not necessary, but to be a good cartoonist without being a good draughtsman requires exceptional storytelling. A reasonable storyteller with strong drawing skills is unlimited in terms of storytelling. Lots of amateur cartoonists fail because they want to tell stories beyond their drawing ability.
It’s perfectly valid to criticise comics on the basis of their art; perhaps it is the most valid basis for criticism. As Dez Skinn writes in the introduction to Comic Art Now, comics are and have always been about the artwork.
