What inspired you to create this book? How did it come about?
Jessica: The immediate inspiration came when Matt was pitching his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style to publishers. Our agent, Bob Mecoy, found that lots of editors were intrigued, but thought the book was a bit too esoteric. But if Matt could write a “how to write a graphic novel” book, well, that would be another story. When I heard this, I jumped right in. We didn’t want to write the book they were asking for, but we’d already thought of trying to write a real textbook on comics—someday—and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Of course, there are longer-standing inspirations, as well. Teaching, and wishing we had such a book available to us, was one. The incredibly enthusiastic response I got to the few tips and tricks I posted in the Do-It-Yourself section of my website, was another.
Back when I started my Artbabe website, in the late 90s, I had a collection of information I’d culled from various sources, including email groups, that I was eager to share with other aspiring cartoonists. I’d felt so out there on my own, I know that something like this, as minimal as it was, would be helpful to someone. I could never have predicted, however, just how popular it would be. That section is still consistently in the top five pages of my site, and I’ve gotten hundreds of mails thanking me for it and asking for more. All that’s there is some basic information on materials and the process of drawing a page, and it has had that effect. That told me how much desire there was for a reliable source of hands-on help with comics.
Matt: We’d been thinking of writing a textbook at least since we started teaching at the School of Visual Arts in 2001. As teachers and as artists we have found that none of the books that are out there—and there are some good ones—teach comics systematically. We wanted to guide readers through a step-by-step course that would teach the technical skills as well as the principles of comics as a narrative medium.
We often think of comic books as having separate writers and artists. DW-WP presents the idea that for comics creation, these skills are inseparable. Could you explain what that means, and why you chose to structure the book this way?
Matt: We wanted to created a one-stop comics manual that would be useful to everyone but we also want to encourage people to think of comics as one medium that can be created in any number of different styles and methods. Minicomics and superhero comics are created in a very different ways, but the fundamental tools and language are the same. We think it’s important that even those people who want to work in comics either as a writer or as an artist (or as an inker or penciler), are familiar with all the different stages of the process of making comics. If you go through the process of drawing and inking even just a couple of comics (even if you don’t think you can draw), the next time you write a script you will have a much richer understanding of what you can do with the medium.
Jessica: It’s basically impossible to teach making comics as separable skills. Everything ties into everything else. So, for example, if we wrote the book for just artists, we’d be supplying scripts for them to draw, which would mean that they aren’t coming to an understanding of story structure, which will help and influence their visual storytelling. This goes doubly for comics writers, who may have a very difficult time conforming their scripts to the visual needs of comics, and in terms of panels and pages.
What are your respective backgrounds in teaching, and how does that experience inform this book?
Jessica: The first course I taught was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1998. I had worked there for a couple of years in an administrative capacity, and got to know many of the faculty, and they me and my work. One day, just as I was about to leave that job, Susanne Doremus, the head of the Painting and Drawing department asked me to teach a course in comics. Unfortunately, I was planning to move to Mexico in a few months, so couldn’t teach a full semester-long course, but we managed to schedule a compressed intensive workshop in the winter session. Five days a week, six hours a day, for three weeks. That was my trial by fire.
I didn’t teach more than a workshop here and there between that class and starting at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001. We’ve both been teaching there since then. The first course we taught at SVA, which we’ve taught together ever since, is a sophomore class called Storytelling. That has been a primary influence on our book, since we’ve been able to cull so much information and feedback from there on what works, and what doesn’t, in a real-world context. I also teach the junior seminar class, Pictorial Problems. As we begin to think about the next textbook, the things I’ve taught and learned at that more advanced level will start to be more relevant.
Matt: I actually taught English as a Second Language for eight years before switching to teaching comics and drawing. Obviously that helped me in the classroom but I think it also helped us think about modeling the textbook after a language textbook—it’s “Comics sin Barreras”!
What are your respective backgrounds in cartooning, and how does that experience inform this book?
Matt: We are both entirely self-taught. We both studied literature in college and pursued comics on our own time. We learned through trial and error, combing through what books there were at the time, and bits of advice from our peers. Obviously we managed to find our way eventually, but we hope this book will help focus and shorten that early development period for our readers. In terms of the industry, we have both followed a trajectory from minicomics up to graphic novels—and have each had numerous foreign editions.
Although we both come out of the alternative comics scene of the 90s we’ve had a very broad experience in the world of comics. We’ve both done work with mainstream publishers—Jessica drew a Supergirl and Mary Marvel story for Bizarro Comics #1 and I’ve done a bunch of coloring for DC and Marvel. We’ve also worked as editors and, of course, teachers. I’ve also written reviews for The Comics Journal and Bookforum.
Jessica: The way all that influenced DWWP, however, is that our frustration at trying to master this incredibly difficult art form all on our own made us that much more eager to share our experiences and help young artists avoid those pitfalls. We both really love teaching and working with young artists, and that also pushed us to share our experiences with more of them via this book.
How do you navigate the enormous variety of comic book styles and genres when teaching how to create comics?
Jessica: Basically, we simply don’t. As Matt said, it’s our view that comics is a language, and that the basic principles of (at the most essential level) conveying information from panel to panel, depicting time passing, and clarity of action, apply to any kind of comics, from the bloodiest adventure tale, to the sweetest shoujo manga, to the most esoteric art comic. Whatever genre or style students want to work in ultimately is fine with us.
That said, we do teach things like traditional inking and basic narrative arc, on the theory that these are tools everyone will be able to use and learn from, and that learning more is better, even if you ultimately decide not to use these tools most of the time.
Could the concepts of “Writing Pictures” and “Drawing Words” also be applied to interacting with text and pictures outside of comics? How so?
Matt: Our textbook will offer new perspectives and insights to people working in all kinds of other media. The idea of blending image and text has obvious applications to graphic design, fine art, and information sciences like graphs and mapmaking. There are also parallels to animation, filmmaking, and theater—all of these share a principle of not relying on just one mode (writing or imagemaking) but instead create meaning by blending the two in various ways.
Jessica: There are also individual chapters that will be of interest to illustrators (such as technical sections on ink drawing) and prose writers (like the chapter on narrative arc).
You’ve set up a website, www.dw-wp.com to supplement the lessons in this book. Could you explain more about this?
Jessica: At the moment, it’s a pretty simple set of additional materials for the book. We have put sample student work with critiques on the site for the majority of activities and homework in the book, and we’ve also put together notes for teachers or group leaders to help them plan lessons and syllabi, and to navigate the on-the-ground function of the various book sections. The users who will get the most from the site right now are Ronin (which is what we call individuals learning on their own), and teachers.
However, we plan to continue working on the site, and make it a really in-depth resource, and a destination on its own. We shouldn’t promise anything here, since we’re not yet set on what will go up next, but it’ll be a site to keep bookmarked.
This book is designed to teach comics to students at the college level, but it has information that would also be beneficial to K-12 teachers, as well as anyone seeking to learn more about the comics medium. Could you recommend an exercise that would work well as an introduction to comics for any level of student?
Matt: We have a few activities in the book that don’t require a lot of experience or skill but which give you a good idea of how comics work—and why they’re so fun to make. We have one activity (on page 95) which asks you to make a one-page comic with no pictures—you don’t draw anything, instead, you try to tell a story using dialogue, sound effects, panel design and page composition. For example, imagine a werewolf chasing a man down a foggy London street—how would you write and draw that scene without drawing any pictures?
Another activity is a time-worn classic: the jam comic. This requires getting some friends or classmates together to collaborate on an improvised comic. One person draws the first panel of a comic—usually something far out or wacky—and hands it off to the next person, who adds a panel and hands it to a third. In our book we offer a list of additional rules (on page 13) you can follow that make the jam more challenging and that really make you think about the way you use comics to create stories. (There will be 9-panel blank panel grids for download on our website, www.dw-wp.com, in the Chapter 1 section.)
What other resources would you recommend for aspiring cartoonists and comics scholars?
Jessica: We actually provide quite a number of references to additional resources in our book. Many times we don’t have the space to really delve into a subject fully, so we point to other books that do a more complete job. We cite these books in sections called “further reading” and we also provide an extensive bibliography.
Matt: To name a few specific authors, Scott McCloud and Will Eisner’s books remain essential reading for young cartoonists. (I should also point out that my 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin) is a popular book in various comics courses.) For scholars and those interested in theory, there are two excellent recent books I recommend: Thierry Groensteen’s The System of Comics (University Press of Mississippi) and Tom McCarthy’s Tintin and the Secret of Literature (Counterpoint).