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The Complete Guide to Comic Book Creation
A practical, no-nonsense guide to the real costs, time, gear, and day-to-day process of making your own comics from page one to printed page
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: What Is Comic Book Creation and Why People Love It
Open a comic book and you're looking at the end of a long, strange process. That glossy page in your hands started as a blank sheet of paper and a person sitting alone at a desk, trying to figure out what happens next. Comic book creation is, at its heart, a writing job and an art job happening at the same time, by the same person, in the same messy head. And if you've ever picked up a graphic novel and thought "I could do that," you're probably right. The question is whether you'll enjoy the hour-by-hour reality of doing it. Let's talk about what that reality actually looks like.
On a typical afternoon, you sit down with a script — either one you wrote or one you've sketched out in rough text. The script isn't a novel; it's more like a blueprint. It tells you what happens in each panel: "Panel one: close-up of Maria's hands gripping the steering wheel. Panel two: wide shot, the car at the edge of the cliff, headlights cutting through fog." Then you start drawing. You sketch lightly in pencil, working panel by panel, page by page, in a stack of 11 x 17 inch paper (that's the standard size comic artists use, roughly the size of a large cutting board). You're not trying to make it perfect yet — you're just getting the story down, figuring out where the characters stand,