Walrus Comix Book Review
Drawing Words & Writing Pictures
A Definitive Course from Concept to Execution in 15 Lessons
Jessica Abel and Matt Madden
First Second Books, Paperback / $29.95

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a book that strives to be the first and last word on the tools, process and goals of making comics. In fact, it says so right there in the sub-title: definitive.  That’s a pretty tough goal to set for any book, but co-authors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden have risen to meet it.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is two books in one. The first book – the top book, if you will – is a textbook on the tools and step-by-step process of creating a comic in the traditional manner.  The second book – the one lying underneath – is a manifesto of sorts, trumpeting the ideals of the 1990’s independent cartoonists movement.

The top book is very easy to review.  Put it this way: are you thinking that you’d like to make comics, even just for fun, but you don’t know anything about where to start?  This is the book for you.  How about a book that discusses materials and techniques in depth, a storehouse of information on making comics?  Again, this is the book for you.   What if you’ve already been making comics, and you want to refine your technique?  Ditto. 

In fact, from start to finish, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a volume on working in any art form that’s more thorough on its chosen subject than Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is about comics.  I fully expect this text to be in print when I’m on my deathbed, with the joint estate of Abel and Madden (married, no less) still collecting residuals. 

Definitive it is.  Drawing Words & Writing Pictures covers characterization, plotting, layout, penciling, inking, lettering, production – the works. And after each chapter, smartly honed exercises really get the student focused on learning and improving.  The overall gung ho attitude of the book is infectious, and the encouragement to find a group of like-minded people to make a scene is genuinely thrilling.  You.  Go.  Buy.  Now.

But what of the second Drawing Words & Writing Pictures – the alt-comics manifesto beneath?  It’s problematic. And perhaps the biggest part of the problem is that I largely agree with it. 

A personal aside:  At 37, I’m of the same generation of the authors.  It’s pretty clear that we approach constructing a comic in the same way – and even have the same general idea of what a comic should be, and what makes a ‘good’ comic.  In fact, I was pleased to find how closely the book parallels the curriculum that I developed for a comics class that I teach.  It would, seeing as how the backbone of the book are the classes that Abel and Madden teach at the School of Visual Arts.  Lord knows, I’m incredibly grateful to the authors for giving me such beautifully laid out and informative book to Xerox from for class and to recommend to students who are interested in tools.

However, over the last couple of years, I’ve found that the greatest challenge that any arts teacher faces is the struggle not to impose their own set of aesthetic choices on their students.  When a voice of authority – even one as spineless as my own – states an opinion, the student is likely to accept it as fact.  I’ve observed it up close in my own students, who start trying to draw like me.  I can only imagine how much greater the effect will be on students when you throw the weight of a beautifully designed and authoritative book at them.

Viewed as a manifesto, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures really becomes a book on how to make comics… like Jessica Abel.  An artist whose work I admire greatly, but definitely one with a very traditional approach to character and storytelling, and even more conservative in her views on the function of the comics medium in the first place – as a print-based medium to tell narrative stories using pen and ink.

There’s no denying that pen and ink cartooning has been the dominant style of comics – American and Japanese – for the majority of its modern existence.  But this is a fluke of limitations in reproduction.  Comics is not, by definition, a pen and ink medium, any more than jazz can only be played on a saxophone.  In the days of cheap color printing and free web distribution, the media with which you create a comic is limited only by your own ability and preference.

Perhaps the most telling omission in the trade-off of the Abel/Madden Method is the almost complete lack of discussion on computers (with the exception of a single well done chapter on scanning), either as a tool useful in any stage of production and as a canvas for display and distribution.  In fact, about the only function a website would have in this book is as a way to market paper copies of your printed mini-comic.

No surprise there, when you consider that mini-comics are where many of the luminaries of the 90’s alternative scene made their start.  Both Madden and particularly Abel were superstars in that particular firmament.  But it’s a bit like encouraging bands to exclusively promote and distribute themselves in 2008 on Compact Disc, rather than any online method like MySpace or Sonic Bids or iTunes. 

The fact is that most, if not all, of the post-2000 generation of breakthrough indy comics artists have gotten their exposure online (usually on their own sites), and many established cartoonists are abandoning the print comics ‘pamphlet’ format, instead serializing online and only putting out trades when a story is complete.

And as far as using computers as a tool for creation, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures sets itself firmly in the analog camp all the way.  The topic is occasionally raised only to be dismissed, most tellingly in the chapter on lettering. 

In fact, the chapter on lettering is where my own conflicting impulses on this book and comics in general really get a workout.  Abel and Madden contend – and I completely agree – that hand-lettering is both visually superior and more in-tune with the feel of comics than computer lettering.  And I positively salivated over the multi-page guide on how to use the Ames Lettering Guide, a simple device the operation of which has eluded many cartoonists I know. 

But. 

Examine those two concepts of ‘visual superiority’ and ‘in-tune with the feel of comics.’  Really, don’t those just sound like the dusty opinions of an old fart?  In fact, what’s really being said is ‘hand lettering was what I grew up with, and I’m resistant to change.’  I can’t change myself – I’ll never be able to look at computer lettering with anything other than resignation – but it’s the same way I feel about Manga, and I know that’s an aesthetic failing on my part.

Even more specific than the manifesto for hand lettering – and even more curious – is a mild lecture on the superior approach of lettering upper and lower case, as Abel herself does, over the ALL-CAPS method.  The two main arguments forwarded for this are that 1) upper and lower case is more inherently ‘readable,’ and 2) people are more used to reading upper and lower case than all caps. While both points are debatable, the second has an obvious counter-argument in the fact that almost every comic book and comic strip ever produced features all capital letters, and that’s the tradition that any comic is generally going to be following. 

To wit: people are going to want to make comics because they read Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Mr. Natural, Dirty Plotte, Shonen Jump, Spider-Man, Mad Magazine, Bazooka Joe – all of which were lettered by their respective (and sometimes highly idiosyncratic) creators in all caps.  Really, it’s the custom of the country, and a visual aspect of comics that anyone who has ever read a comic book or strip – meaning everyone in the whole damn U.S. of A. – would be familiar with, so a comic lettered in upper and lower case would probably look odd to the average reader. 

The argument made in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures for upper and lower case lettering reminds me in a roundabout way of a common criticism of superhero comics; that the fun, easily accessible romps of the 50’s and 60’s have given way to continuity porn that can only be read by people with encyclopedic knowledge of forty years of a character’s history.  I suspect that Abel’s preferred lettering style is the result of being so overly in tune with comics that she can no longer view them from the perspective of a non-fan.

Largely as a result of completely ignoring the web-cartoonist explosion and going by the de facto definition of comics as a print-only medium, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures ends up being curiously dated, in a way.  Similar to Dave Sim’s early 90’s Guide to Self-Publishing, the authors’ idea of what form a comic takes is fixed in time about fifteen years ago.  In that way, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is as restrictive on its own terms as How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (which might have a more honest title, now that I think about it).

None of this takes away from the truly invaluable service Abel and Madden provided in the ‘top’ part of this book.  And if, like me, you think that Jessica Abel is at the pinnacle of her chosen comics genre, and that genre is something that’s close to your heart (again, as it is to mine), then the Abel/Madden Manifesto coiled inside the how-to manual is equally exciting.  But I’d definitely like to see a second edition that moves away from the singular focus on the mini-comic, and talks more about the use of computers as a production tool for the entire comics journey – from creation to community to distribution to career. 

If you already have an idea of what your goals are in comics, and only had enough money to buy one ‘how-to’ guide, this would be the one.  But for the true beginner, I’d probably recommend Scott McCloud’s Making Comics, which provides a stronger philosophical underpinning and a broader scope of the potential of the medium – which is, of course, part of McCloud’s personal manifesto.  Although the discussion of tools in Making Comics isn’t nearly as deep or thorough as Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, it covers a lot more ground, does get into specifics about where computers can fit into your workflow – even, yes, an approach to computer lettering.  And best of all for the beginner, Making Comics is done as a comic, which works wonders in the ‘show, don’t tell’ spirit of both comics and teaching. 

But for me? Drawing Words & Writing Pictures paired with Scott McCloud’s Making Comics (and Reinventing Comics and Understanding Comics) make up a thrillingly complete course in comics. 

Hey Kids!  Collect them all!

- David Kopperman: Cartoonist Extraordinaire, Songwriter, Musician, Walrus Comix Journalist and Roving Fireman