Creating Comics!

Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics

#175 P DTP:204 Page:8

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001-059_19413.indd 8 5/25/10 6:49:39 PM

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Introduction by

I

’ve been obsessed with comics and cartoon-

ing for as long as I can remember. I loved it

long before I knew the difference between its

various incarnations, before I knew its history, and

before I realized there were other avid followers

just like myself all over the world. The excitement

I felt as a kid seeing the work of the great story-

tellers and humorists the medium had to offer

has never left me.

Since then I’ve been a fan, a retailer, a student

of comic art, a professional freelancer, a self-

publisher, a webcomic creator, and a published

graphic novelist. When people ask what I do for a

living, I say I’m a cartoonist. Usually their eyes light

up, and I know they’ve shared at least some part

of my own experience. I’ve walked the length and

breadth of my particular corner of the medium,

but that still hardly begins to account for what’s

undeniably a worldwide phenomenon that tran-

scends borders, languages, customs, and cultures.

Clearly we have a shared, universal need to tell

each other stories, and there’s something uniquely

powerful about the marriage of words and pictures

that’s managed to keep cultivating new audiences

for centuries. You can see evidence of this impulse

on the cave walls of Europe and the hidden tombs

of Egypt. It’s not the product of a certain time or

place. It’s not the expression of a particular culture.

It’s more than that. It’s something innately human,

which is probably why cartoonists all over the

world, and their fans, have such a strong sense of

a shared bond with each other.

Modern cartoonists have seen the rise of film,

television, video games, and the Internet, and not

only have their works survived, but in many cases

they’ve infiltrated and conquered. Cartoonists

themselves are seeing their work printed and

reprinted in high-quality formats once unthinkable in

the days of the cheap pulps. The digital distribution

of webcomics has obliterated many of the obstacles

between creator and audience and provided a

fertile testing ground for experimentation with

format, design, and technique.

As artists themselves move between the sister

industries of animation, illustration, cartooning, and

comics, they’re taking, borrowing, and swapping

tools and techniques as they go. It’s fascinating to

see cartoonists working in styles that have more

in common with Schiele than Schulz. This sense of

experimentation is at a high, and artists from all

over the globe seem to be discovering each other’s

work and reveling in their own sense of communal

accomplishment as never before.

In many ways, it seems as though the world has

finally caught up with this most ancient endeavor.

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Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics

#175 P DTP:204 Page:8

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