Best Sources for Making and Understanding Comics
Comics - one picture after another to show the passage of time. Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud
Understanding Comics and Making Comics are two of the best sources for comics:
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott McCloud - describes what comics are about and how they have evolved.
Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels , by Scott McCloud - Describes how to make comics. However, even if you aren't motivated to make comics you can learn a lot about interpreting comics by looking and reading this book.
James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, & Alexis Frederick-Frost
Adventures in Cartooning is an interesting and entertaining story within the story of how to create a comic. Should inspire children who want to creat comics and privide easy to follow and simple suggestions on how to begin cartooning.
Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud
Reinventing Comics (2000 - post web creation) 256 pages. Black and White comic book is a sequel of Understanding and Making Comics that describes comics and technology. It examines comics as a form of art, communication, and technology and uses 12 revolutions to analyze the way comics are created, distributed and perceived; with special emphasis on the potential of electronics related to comics.
Part One Reviews comics characteristics as related to 9 revolutions with significant historical examples from classic. Characteristics include: comics as art and literature, creator's rights, industry innovation, public perception, institutional scrutiny, gender balance, minority representation, and diversity of genre.
Part Two explores comics in relation three more revolutions based on the new 2000 era technology: digital production, digital distribution, and design challenges of comics in a digital environment.
While decades of time usually makes digital technology information outdated, the philosophical big ideas and historical nature of the writing makes it suprisingly still appropriate and beneficial for the information included.
More about - Scott
Will Eisner
Here are two historical first sources for comics and graphic storytelling:
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist - Will masterly describes what comics are about and how they have evolved.
Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist. - Will describes principles and practices about graphic storytelling and visual narratives.
Historical science fiction Sunday edition comic - 1950's
My annotated list of Graphic Novels