In hindsight, there are very few deep insights in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way<\/em>. It has a lot of pages that are just as useless as those Gaddlewinky Goose four-step exercises. In fact, it condenses them into just two steps: scratchy stick figures transform into fully-rendered panels by Jack Kirby or John Buscema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I remember learning from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know, for a 14-year-old who was starved for any insights at all, that was plenty to learn. It certainly set Robb and me off on a creative frenzy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the way, the last of those lessons may be the most important. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly the one that I see many aspiring comics artists struggle with even after they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mastered many other skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time after time, I see artists draw page after page, panel after panel with characters centered, faces pointed directly to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153camera.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Their backgrounds or panel compositions are symmetrical or nearly so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flip open the nearest professionally produced, action-oriented comic book or graphic novel. How many panels can you find where a character is facing square into the camera? Or 100% in profile? How often is someone standing in the dead center of a panel? How often do vehicles move in flat lines parallel to the panel borders? When you do see those panels, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re typically inserted as a dramatic effect \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which works because<\/em><\/strong> they are rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artists, check your own work. Are you too reliant on symmetry? Straight-on portraits? Full profiles? In reality, those square-on views almost never happen. Someone is turned 10% or 23% or 41% away from you. Vehicles turn and are viewed from an angle. The world happens off-center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers, this can apply to you, too. Are you calling for symmetrical poses in your panel descriptions? For that matter, is your writing lacking in diagonal energy? Are scenes playing out in predictable ways. Do your characters speak in stock phrases and clich\u00c3\u00a9s? Does your plot just move ahead predictably? Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s add some zig and zag to that script!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hmm. I guess that was a pretty good book after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are many wonderful books, videos, and resources about creating comics. When I was a kid, there weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very many at all. My local libraries\u00e2\u20ac\u201da tiny small-town location and my school library\u00e2\u20ac\u201donly had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how to draws cartoon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d books that showed the faces of 1930s-style cartoon characters in those useless four-step illustrations. You know the ones: …<\/p>\n