Here are 100 books that Let's Make Comics! fans have personally recommended if you like
Let's Make Comics!.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
For me, art is a journey of relentless questioning, exploring, and introspection. As an artist, author, and educator, I have relied on each book in this collection to further my creative journey. The titles that I've selected offer unique perspectives on the transformative power of art and have had the biggest effect on my students, my peers, and my own artistic growth. I believe that art is a language that is and should be for everyone, providing a conduit for individual expression, problem-solving, and innovation. Each of these titles has offered pivotal "aha" moments while igniting my passion, and I hope they allow you to unlock your creative potential.
This one may surprise you, but I assure you that Understanding Comics is an absolute gem!
McCloud has crafted an intellectual yet accessible guide that is not just a study of comics but a masterclass in communication and the art of storytelling. This book provides a rich fusion of insightful theory and practical advice, all conveyed through the very medium it discusses, making it a uniquely immersive experience.
McCloud’s engaging style and profound understanding of the mechanics of comics didn't just educate me; they enchanted me. His deep dives into the psychology behind why we connect with comics pair perfectly with his diegetic examples of framing, composition, and visual motivation. It’s a journey through the mechanics of comics that turns into a deeper exploration of visual expression and human perception.
Art is, in essence, a storytelling medium, making this book as invaluable for artists and writers as it is for…
The bestselling international classic on storytelling and visual communication "You must read this book." - Neil Gaiman Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.
My name is Art Roche and I've been drawing cartoons and comic strips for over twenty-five years. I wish everyone drew comics! Comic strips are an amazing art form that has been around for thousands of years. With a simple pencil, pen, and paper the artist can tell thrilling stories, make hilarious jokes, or illustrate their own diaries. Once you learn the basic mechanics of how comics are designed and built, anyone can begin drawing them regardless of talent level or experience.
I really like this book because, while it doesn’t teach much about the actual drawing, it does give the young artist a jumpstart to begin drawing and telling their own stories. The authors include pages and pages of drawn-out panels with word balloons ready to go. I’ve always believed in letting kids find their own path with drawing style, and this book is perfect for that.
75 sheets/150 pages
4 different template styles
Graph paper in the back of the book
Matte finish cover
Measures 8.5x11"
Great Gift For:
Homeschool students
Elementary grades preschool, k-2
Kids who love to create, draw and write
Birthday present for teens
Back to school supplies
Christmas stocking stuffer
Gift for art and design students and
My name is Art Roche and I've been drawing cartoons and comic strips for over twenty-five years. I wish everyone drew comics! Comic strips are an amazing art form that has been around for thousands of years. With a simple pencil, pen, and paper the artist can tell thrilling stories, make hilarious jokes, or illustrate their own diaries. Once you learn the basic mechanics of how comics are designed and built, anyone can begin drawing them regardless of talent level or experience.
This book features a simple, modern art style that will be appealing to most young artists. It starts out with a nice introduction to drawing tools and basic shapes then moves on to drawing simple objects that can be found around the house. Character design and perspective are also covered and done so with a light, humorous tone. A very comprehensive guide to drawing and an excellent resource!
Enter Planet Cute—where kids can make any drawing absolutely adorable! Draw anything and everything—people, animals, and things—and make it CUTE. It’s easy! Budding artists just have to pick up their pencils, pens, crayons, or gel markers and follow these step-by-step how-to sequences. They’ll learn the basics of Japanese kawaii, which emphasizes simple, rounded shapes; faces with large eyes and sweet expressions; and personifying inanimate objects. They’ll also master animals, mythical creatures, food, plants, vehicles, and more!
My name is Art Roche and I've been drawing cartoons and comic strips for over twenty-five years. I wish everyone drew comics! Comic strips are an amazing art form that has been around for thousands of years. With a simple pencil, pen, and paper the artist can tell thrilling stories, make hilarious jokes, or illustrate their own diaries. Once you learn the basic mechanics of how comics are designed and built, anyone can begin drawing them regardless of talent level or experience.
This is an excellent, well-designed book for anyone wanting to improve their Anime style of drawing. Many of the young artists I talk to have an intense interest in drawing in this particular style, sometimes referred to as the “Anime” style. This cartoon-style features sharp lines and shapes with stark, colorful graphics. Although this book doesn’t get into much instruction on how to create comics, it does provide the artist with a starting place for drawing in the anime style. From there, the artists can take this knowledge and apply it to the comics that they create. The drawings in the lessons are very well done, and the content covers all the topics that make anime a unique drawing style. I highly recommend this book.
Let’s spark your creative ability and let your passion run wild with this amazing How To Draw Anime book from Sophia Elizabeth!
This book will teach you how to draw anime step by step, with the easiest approach possible through simple shapes. Inside this wonderful drawing book, you can learn everything you need to know on how to create a perfect original anime character. This includes head, facial details, body proportions, facial emotions, clothing and even basic character models for you to try out. In other words, this book is a perfect head start for any anime-drawing enthusiast.
I had been an exhibiting painter and an editorial cartoonist for years, but never a graphic book artist. Not until A Revolution in Three Acts. I was fortunate to have great guidance: my buddy David Hajdu (Positively Fourth Street, Lush Life, The Ten Cent Plague) wrote the words, did the research, and created the blueprint of every page and panel. My job was to lock myself up in my studio and draw, draw, draw. I think David and I did justice to three amazing figures of the American stage who dealt with the shifting societal forces of race, femininity, and gender: Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge.
This is the backstory of Spiegelman’s two-volume masterpiece.
What was the impetus for MAUS?
How did comic creatures find their way into a Holocaust narrative? What were the reactions to such a unique
merging of cartoons and historical horror? How has Spiegelman dealt with the
book’s tremendous reception?
The book answers these questions with many interviews,
photos, explanations, and reflections. Even agent and publisher rejection
letters are included.
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER • Visually and emotionally rich, MetaMaus is as groundbreaking as the masterpiece whose creation it reveals.
In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago.
He probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.
Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.
I’m an Eisner-nominated and award-winning graphic novel and comics writer, editor, and book packager. I've worked on staff at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Disney Publishing, DC Comics, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Platinum Studios. My sequential art book, The Bramble, won the 2013 Moonbeam Gold Medal for Picture Books, and I created a new way to read comics with BirdCatDog, a 2015 Eisner Awards nominee, that received the 2015 Moonbeam Spirit Award Gold Medal for Imagination, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best children’s books of 2014. SheHeWe, the third book in the series, was a 2016 Eisner Award nominee for Best Publication for Early Readers.
In his foreword, Eisner writes: “In this work, I hope to deal with the mission and process of storytelling with graphics.” Where McCloud shows you different options and tools for how to choose images to explore ideas, Eisner gets specific, and shows you how he does it. This book, along with the four others I recommend, and mine, gives you all the tools you need to choose your own path for effectively working as a writer and/or artist in the sequential art medium.
In Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Will Eisner-one of the most influential comic artists of the twentieth century-lays out the fundamentals of storytelling and their application in the comic book and graphic novel. In a work that will prove invaluable for comic artists and filmmakers, Eisner reveals how to construct a story and the basics of crafting a visual narrative. Filled with examples from Eisner's work as well as that of artists like Art Spiegelman and R. Crumb, this essential work covers everything from the fine points of graphic storytelling to the big picture of the medium, including how to:…
I’m an Eisner-nominated and award-winning graphic novel and comics writer, editor, and book packager. I've worked on staff at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Disney Publishing, DC Comics, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Platinum Studios. My sequential art book, The Bramble, won the 2013 Moonbeam Gold Medal for Picture Books, and I created a new way to read comics with BirdCatDog, a 2015 Eisner Awards nominee, that received the 2015 Moonbeam Spirit Award Gold Medal for Imagination, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best children’s books of 2014. SheHeWe, the third book in the series, was a 2016 Eisner Award nominee for Best Publication for Early Readers.
Eisner was a comics and graphic novel pioneer, first by his work on his classic creation, The Spirit, and then with his graphic novels. Eisner offers valuable, personal, professional, and practical insights into how the sequential art medium can be tailored to your intentions. In his foreword, he writes: “This work is intended to consider and examine the unique aesthetics of sequential art as a means of creative expression, a distinct discipline, an art and literary form that deals with the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea.”
Will Eisner is one of the twentieth century's great American artists, a man who pioneered the field of comic arts. Here, in his classic Comics and Sequential Art, he refines the art of graphic storytelling into clear, concise principles that every cartoonist, comic artist, writer, and filmmaker meeds to know. Adapted from Eisner's landmark course at New York's School of Visual Arts, Comics and Sequential Art is an essential text filled with invaluable theories and easy-to-use techniques. Eisner reveals here the fundamentals of graphic storytelling. He addresses dialogue, anatomy, framing, and many other important aspects of the art form. Fully…
I’m an Eisner-nominated and award-winning graphic novel and comics writer, editor, and book packager. I've worked on staff at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Disney Publishing, DC Comics, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Platinum Studios. My sequential art book, The Bramble, won the 2013 Moonbeam Gold Medal for Picture Books, and I created a new way to read comics with BirdCatDog, a 2015 Eisner Awards nominee, that received the 2015 Moonbeam Spirit Award Gold Medal for Imagination, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best children’s books of 2014. SheHeWe, the third book in the series, was a 2016 Eisner Award nominee for Best Publication for Early Readers.
The subtitle toMaking Comics is: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels. In this book, Scott gets practical, and shows you how to apply what you learned from his previous volumes. In his introduction, he writes, “The comics industry is changing fast. Old formats die and new ones are born. Whole industries come and go. But these storytelling principles always apply. They mattered fifty years ago and they’ll matter fifty years from now.” To quote Stan Lee, ‘nuff said.
"Magnificent! The best how-to manual ever published." - Kevin Kelly, Cool Tools Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture in 1993 with Understanding Comics, a massive comic book about comics, linking the medium to such diverse fields as media theory, movie criticism, and web design. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud took this to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are generated, read, and perceived today. Now, in Making Comics, McCloud focuses his analysis on the art form itself, exploring the creation of comics, from the broadest principles to the sharpest details (like how…
I’m a comic fan first, then a comic creator. I grew up on the classics—Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side and excitedly watched as new comics popped up online. I love comic strips and have rows of collections lining my bookshelves. The coolest part of starting my own series has been becoming a member of a cartoonist community that I have always been a huge fan of.
I immediately loved Jake’s comics. The art style and humor is right up my alley.
They’re a perfect intersection of print comics like The Far Side and online ones like The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The internet seems especially suited for timely comics that don’t always age well, they’re scrolled past and never read again, but this collection is perfect for print because the comics are timeless and worth repeat reading.
The Book of Onions is a collection of darkly funny comics from Jake Thompson, creator of the celebrated bi-weekly webcomic "Jake Likes Onions."
Ranging from the relatable to the utterly nonsensical and bizarre, The Book of Onions focuses on themes of loneliness, desperation, and failure. And misplaced optimism. And perverted talking fruit. Sort of like Gary Larson's "The Far Side," if Gary were way less accomplished and suffered from depression.
My family is a marvelously mixed bunch: lesbian, gay, and straight relatives; Jewish and Latin relatives; relatives along a spectrum of economic situations, abilities, and political views. The policy work that I do connects me with social justice advocates from across NYC’s multiple ethnic, racial, religious, and LGBTQ communities. The wildly disparate voices that surround me illuminate both the power of communal ties and the dangers of narrow identity labeling. A central quest behind my work, my reading, and my writing has thus always been to balance and respect everything at once: the cultural structures that sustain us; the individual quirks that challenge and complicate those structures; and the universalities that cross all cultural borders.
Alison Bechdel (best known for Fun Home, a graphic memoir about her bisexual teacher-cum-funeral-parlor-owner father) also wrote this graphic memoir about her actor-writer-teacher mother. It largely takes place in the 1990s, when being boldly “out” was just becoming possible—and Bechdel joyfully and graphically reveals herself as such to her readers. With her mother, however… maybe not so much. When told that Alison is publishing a book of lesbian cartoons, the mother asks: “Isn’t that rather a narrow scope?” before landing the zinger: “You’re not going to use your own name, are you?” Still, the book’s power derives from showing that sexual identity is only a small part of what divides, enrages, and ultimately re-connects this vivid mother-daughter duo. There’s also fierce creative competitiveness. Deeply shared sorrow. And love.
An expansive, moving and captivating graphic memoir from the author of Fun Home.
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a literary phenomenon. While Fun Home explored Bechdel's relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, this memoir is about her mother - a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood... and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven.
Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf.
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
comics,
cartoons,
and
cartoonists.
