How to Make Web Comics – Book Review

Online Comic Creation and Making Money From Webcomics Explained

Oct 30, 2009

Learn online comic creation techniques and ways to profit from a webcomic in this expert guide to web comic design and deployment.

How to Make Webcomics is a guide to online comic creation written by the Half-Pixel team, Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub. Each author is the writer and artist of their own popular web comic, and in the book, each contributes their own thoughts, techniques and advice on the online comic creation process.

While the advice on the actual creation and deployment of a web comic is insightful, benefiting from the conversational back-and-forth between the authors, where they interrupt each other with additional suggestions for the reader, clarifications of points made, or outright disagreement with their fellow cartoonists, How to Make Webcomics is especially strong on the subject of branding and monetizing an online comic.

Branding and Monetizing a Web Comic

All 4 authors of How to Make Webcomics are successful full-time online cartoonists, and their collective knowledge on growing an audience, branding a web comic and exploiting different avenues of income from a web comic is a must-have reference for any cartoonist who is considering starting an online comic with the intention of generating a regular and reliable profit.

How to Make Web Comics Contents

How to Make Webcomics contains 13 chapters that lead the reader through every aspect of web comic creation. The earlier chapters concentrate on the comic itself: how to design interesting characters to populate the comic, how to format the web comic and prepare images for both print and online publishing, and methods for writing the comic.

Later sections examine building a reputation through readership interaction, both on the web and at comic book conventions, and monetizing the web comic through advertising, merchandise and print comic book sales.

How to Make Webcomics is illustrated throughout with examples of the 4 authors own comic strips. Each author also takes a turn in a “hot seat”, where one of his web comic strips is critiqued by his fellow authors.

A Guide to Making Money and Web Comics

There are several good books on making online comics that explain the tools and techniques of the trade. But there are few, if any, webcomic guides that so comprehensively explain the business side of creating and maintaining an online comic.

The webcomic business model demonstrated in How to Make Webcomics covers every modern means of monetizing a web comic, from ad-subsidizing to fan-orientated sales, right down to details such as how to properly write an invoice.

Essential Reading for Web Comic Creation

As a guide to making online comics, How to Make Webcomics is an informative and hugely enjoyable read, and is on a par with Scott McCloud's Making Comics as an example of entertaining teaching on the subject of online cartoon strips. And as a manual on building a profitable full-time business around a webcomic, How to Make Webcomics is in a class all its own, and should be considered essential reading.

The copyright of the article How to Make Web Comics – Book Review in Graphic Novels/Comics is owned by Nicolas McGregor. Permission to republish How to Make Web Comics – Book Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.