Hi, Folks:

We are proud to announce that we’ve joined ComicsXP, and that Story Studios’ publications will be available in digital format there. Furthermore, we are happy to be featured on their site in the Publisher Spotlight. ComicsXP is unique among digital retailers, offering an elegantly functional comic reader that is intuitive in its use, and plans to expand their service into a magazine, gift cards, and a wide array of features that will bridge the gap between traditional and digital fan bases.

I rarely do book reviews, but I would like to suggest that anyone interested in a career in comics get Andy Schmidt’s “The Insider’s Guide to Creating Comics and Graphic Novels,” published by Impact books. Most how-to books written for comics cover the same, well-trodden tracks and fail to impart anything new or interesting. In fact, it seems the common approach is divide comic how-to books up by genre, not by technique. So, you can find books how to draw cartoon superheroes, or zombies, or crime noir, or what have you, and they all essentially pedal the same information but couched in terms of individual genres. Schmidt’s book doesn’t do this.

Furthermore, Andy Schmidt’s book is written from an editor’s perspective, which is different than that of the penciler, inker, colorist, and/or letterer. The concerns he lays out are part of the whole storytelling experience, making for a sort of holistic approach to creating sequential art. He covers composition and staging quite well, and some of his opinions were illuminating even to me, after all the years I’ve done this. Then, he goes on to inking, coloring, and lettering, and the inevitable “breaking in” chapter.

This is not a “how to draw” book, but I do see it as potentially informative for cartoonists of just about any skill level. Schmidt’s writing is refreshingly straight forward and concise, and he has a way of making even complex topics clear. I give “The Insider’s Guide to Creating Comics and Graphic Novels” an A.