Patreon isn’t a 1:1 comparison to what McCloud describes in Reinventing Comics, but the popularity of Patreon, particularly amongst webcomic creators, shows the plausibility of his initial idea. But, years after its publishing, Patreon proved to be essential to cartoonists’ business model. Most of the industry laughed at his proposition that webcomics would incorporate micropayments in the future. At the time of its release, the comics community dismissed most of its conjectures, but several of McCloud’s predictions came true. Reinventing Comics, published in 2000, theorized some of the paths comics might have gone down in the digital age. Not all of the knowledge within this can be directly implemented into a creator’s work, but it still serves as an excellent reminder of the fundamentals of comic book storytelling and gives readers a far deeper understanding of t This guide focuses less on making comics than the comic book reading experience. Understanding Comics, published in 1993, excellently describes what makes comics special, their effect on readers, and the machinations of the art form.

To put it simply, Understanding Comics is about what comics are, Reinventing Comics is about what comics can become, and Making Comics is about the creative process behind them. Unlike the rest of the guides on this list, these three guides all comics themselves, in which an avatar of Scott McCloud takes readers on a journey through every corner of sequential art. Scott McCloud’s trilogyĪn article like this can’t be written without acknowledging three of Scott McCloud’s most defining works. Scott McCloud’s work refines a lot of the information conveyed in this guide, but the book still includes plenty of interesting nuggets of wisdom, and it’s great to learn directly from one of the comic masters. He goes on to explain the creative process and the forms sequential art can take His guide defines comics as a form of reading and describes, among other things, how the medium juxtaposes words and images and how the panel structure plays with time. In each chapter, Eisner covers a different topic and includes some of his own comics to provide examples. Will Eisner created one of the earliest books about making comics when Poorhouse Press published Comics and Sequential Art in 1985.

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