---
title: Comics & Graphic Novels
description: Comics combine words and sequential images. You will learn panel composition and pacing, scripting, lettering, the medium's theory and history, and how to make and publish your own.
category: arts-design
subcategory: drawing
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/comics-and-graphic-novels
---

# Comics & Graphic Novels

Comics combine words and sequential images. You will learn panel composition and pacing, scripting, lettering, the medium's theory and history, and how to make and publish your own.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 1 Courses • 2 Websites

## Websites

### 1. Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (Free Teaching Materials)

**Author:** Jessica Abel, Matt Madden

The free companion site to Abel and Madden's comics textbooks, with teacher and student guides, 15-week, 10-week and 5-day syllabi, standalone exercises such as jam comics and the panel lottery, and process guides on supplies, lettering, layout and scanning.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://dw-wp.com/

**Tags:** comics-craft, cartooning, comics-pedagogy, syllabus, lettering, page-layout

### 2. Comic Book Grammar & Tradition

**Author:** Nate Piekos

A reference to the lettering conventions of professional American comics: balloon types, bold emphasis, the crossbar I, double dashes instead of em dashes, ellipses, captions, whispers, off-panel speech and sound effects, noting where Marvel and DC house styles differ.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://blambot.com/pages/comic-book-grammar-tradition

**Tags:** comic-lettering, word-balloons, sound-effects, typography, comics-conventions

## Courses

### 1. One-Week Cartooning Workout

A free self-paced course from the Center for Cartoon Studies in eight daily lessons: four-panel strips, characters, story, layout, assembling pages, keeping a practice going, and sharing work. Each day has tips, assignments and links, about 10 to 20 hours in total. Best free structured starting point from an elite comics school; gets a finished short comic made and shared within a week.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://sites.google.com/cartoonstudies.org/owcw/home

**Tags:** cartooning, comic-strips, character-design, page-layout, self-paced

## Books

### 1. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

**Author:** Scott McCloud

McCloud's craft follow-up to Understanding Comics. It covers the choices a cartoonist makes about moment, frame, image, word and flow, plus facial expression, body language, word-picture balance, and building believable worlds, with practical examples. Its five-choices framework (moment, frame, image, word, flow) is the clearest treatment of pacing and panel composition.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060780940?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** comics-theory, visual-storytelling, panel-composition, pacing, facial-expression

### 2. Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice

**Author:** Ivan Brunetti

A short book of fifteen lessons that treats cartooning as a way of writing with simplified drawings. Exercises start with quick spontaneous sketches and build to multi-page stories, covering rhythm, character design and the formal parts of a comics page. Short, exercise-first method suits beginners who stall at 'I can't draw'.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300170998?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** cartooning, drawing-exercises, character-design, comics-form, visual-storytelling

### 3. Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond

**Author:** Jessica Abel, Matt Madden

The most complete hands-on curriculum for actually making a comic, with graded exercises instead of theory only. A 15-lesson college-level course that goes from idea to a finished comic. Lessons cover panel layout, story structure, penciling, inking, hand lettering and page composition, each with homework, extra-credit exercises and reading lists for classes or self-study.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1596431318?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** comics-craft, panel-layout, inking, hand-lettering, story-structure, cartooning

---

*This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge*

*Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).*

View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/comics-and-graphic-novels