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The Webcomics Handbook
The long-awaited sequel to the seminal How To Make Webcomics, this massive tutorial based on Brad Guigar's four years of writing at Webcomics.com covers the art, business, and promotion of digital comics. With chapters devoted to website basics, digital downloads, social media, advertising, business, and much more, this book is the perfect blend of step-by-step guidance and friendly, hard-won experience from one of the very first cartoonists on the Web.
- GenresWritingNonfictionArt
304 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 2014
1 person is currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Brad Guigar
70 books14 followersWebcomics pioneer Brad Guigar has been doing a daily comic strip since February 2000. Tens of thousands read Evil Inc every day on the Web and in newspapers. He has published over a dozen printed collections of his work, and he has been nominated for an Eisner award — the top honor in the comics industry. And he does it without a syndicate. Without a publisher. And without an editor.
Guigar runs the daily tutorial-and-advice Web site for independent cartoonists, Webcomics.com, and is the author of three books about the process of cartooning and self-publishing. He is the author of "The Everything Cartooning Book." He co-wrote the seminal "How To Make Webcomics Book," (Amazon) and he wrote its sequel, "The Webcomics Handbook" (Amazon)
His podcasts include Surviving Creativity, Webcomics Weekly, Webcomics Confidential and Hey Comics — Kids! (a podcast he records with his two boys on their drive to school).
Guigar is an adjunct professor at Hussian School of Art, teaching Arts Entrepreneurship and Sequential Art. Guigar is available for freelance illustration projects — including children's book illustration, superhero-themed illustrations and corporate work.
A confident and engaging public speaker, Guigar is also available to lead presentations on creativity-on-demand, managing creative people, social media, comics history, and Web-based publishing.
Guigar runs the daily tutorial-and-advice Web site for independent cartoonists, Webcomics.com, and is the author of three books about the process of cartooning and self-publishing. He is the author of "The Everything Cartooning Book." He co-wrote the seminal "How To Make Webcomics Book," (Amazon) and he wrote its sequel, "The Webcomics Handbook" (Amazon)
His podcasts include Surviving Creativity, Webcomics Weekly, Webcomics Confidential and Hey Comics — Kids! (a podcast he records with his two boys on their drive to school).
Guigar is an adjunct professor at Hussian School of Art, teaching Arts Entrepreneurship and Sequential Art. Guigar is available for freelance illustration projects — including children's book illustration, superhero-themed illustrations and corporate work.
A confident and engaging public speaker, Guigar is also available to lead presentations on creativity-on-demand, managing creative people, social media, comics history, and Web-based publishing.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 2, 2018
Guigar lays out realistic expectations for every part of running a webcomic, which I am grateful for because it gave me a clear view and saved me a lot of time learning things the hard way. It became clear to me not far into the book that I really just want to do webcomics as a hobby; I'm not ready to take it further, and I don't know that I want to. This book helped me be okay with that, and the advice for humor writing, comic design, and select aspects of the web will still help me improve even at my casual little webcomic. Overall, I'm glad I read this.
October 15, 2014
This is sort of a sequel to How To Make Webcomics (by one of the same authors), so it will appeal to the same audience; if you liked that, you'll like this too. There's some overlap between the two, but there's enough new content to justify the purchase.
A lot of the content is also posted to Webcomics.com, but you have to pay for membership in order to read it and you'll lose access if you stop paying. So, you may prefer to pay once and have a permanent copy; this format is also more convenient for offline reading.
As with the previous book, there's a lot of information that I haven't seen anywhere else, e.g. how to prepare a book of your comics for printing. I'm only a beginner in this area, so I can't vouch for how accurate the advice is, but I trust that the author knows a lot more about it than I do. That said, some of the content is only really relevant to the USA; it's understandable (since he lives there), but it's a bit less useful to me in the UK. I also skimmed over some of the chapters, e.g. the nitty gritty of putting adverts on your website.
While I've learnt a lot, the lesson wasn't always what he intended to teach.
For instance, page 130 includes a copy of this comic. When I looked at it, the body language in panel 4 seemed odd; it looks as if she's talking, but the voice is coming from the person on the other end of the phone. So, I wonder whether he reused that panel from an earlier strip. Once I started thinking about that, I then noticed that panels 3 and 5 are basically identical! I.e. that image has definitely been copied and pasted, and it simply has a bit of extra (blank) background in panel 5. I'm not going to say that reusing art is always bad, but I think it's best not to draw attention to it.
p16 says: "Now that you have a grid to work from, you can use it to draw a body in perspective." I wonder whether there's a missing page somewhere, because this is the first time that grids are actually mentioned! I think I figured out what he meant, partly based on other drawing books that I've read, but this section could certainly have been clearer.
There are various points in chapters 6 and 7 where he gives examples of HTML/CSS code. However, he's used smart (curly) quotes rather than straight quotes (""), which won't work. It's fine to use them in text which is intended for humans to read, but not when a computer has to interpret it. Also, when I've read IT books it's traditional to use a monospaced font (e.g. Courier) to make it obvious which bits are code.
On p49 he repeats the myth that you can recognise words as long as the first and last letters are in the correct place. Here's a page from a Cambridge University researcher which discusses that claim in detail:
cmabridge. As an example, can you recognise what "magltheuansr" is supposed to be?
On p246 he has a sidebar about editing. He emphasises that it's important to spell words correctly, strongly recommends hiring a copy editor to proofread the book, and talks about how many mistakes his editor caught in the first draft of this book. Given that, it's unfortunate that I spotted a lot of mistakes as I was reading the book. Some of these are simply typos, while others are mistakes which change the meaning of the sentence.
p50: "online" should be "in print".
p54: The antecedent is the noun, not the pronoun.
p97: "suh as" -> "such as".
p129: "acheive" -> "achieve".
p161: "sitre" -> "site"
p215: "geting" -> "getting"
p223: He talks about pre-orders via PayPal, and says "We'd make the announcement that a book was forthcoming and readers could preorder it - with the knowledge that it would be shipped immediately." That should say "wouldn't be shipped immediately", since the whole point is to gather funds before you print the books.
p229: The final sentence says "You probably can't afford preprinted packaging, but a modest investment into a custom rubber stamp you can turn any package into one that reinforces your brand." That should either say "with a modest investment" or "stamp can turn", i.e. add "with" or remove the extra "you".
p256: The final sentence says "And many webcartoonists are experimenting will offering these digital downloads on a micropayment basis." That should say "with offering".
p260: "JEPG" -> "JPEG"
p268: "occassional" -> "occasional"
I realise that I'm nitpicking, but at the very least this is a poor advert for his colleague's services. If she missed all of these, I wouldn't hire her to edit any of my work.
Having said all of that, I'll reiterate what I said at the start. This book is worth reading, and I've paid to join Webcomics.com so that I can read more articles by the same author. So, it is a good book, but it has enough flaws to stop it from being a great book. Hopefully, some of these problems may be fixed in a later (digital) edition.
A lot of the content is also posted to Webcomics.com, but you have to pay for membership in order to read it and you'll lose access if you stop paying. So, you may prefer to pay once and have a permanent copy; this format is also more convenient for offline reading.
As with the previous book, there's a lot of information that I haven't seen anywhere else, e.g. how to prepare a book of your comics for printing. I'm only a beginner in this area, so I can't vouch for how accurate the advice is, but I trust that the author knows a lot more about it than I do. That said, some of the content is only really relevant to the USA; it's understandable (since he lives there), but it's a bit less useful to me in the UK. I also skimmed over some of the chapters, e.g. the nitty gritty of putting adverts on your website.
While I've learnt a lot, the lesson wasn't always what he intended to teach.
For instance, page 130 includes a copy of this comic. When I looked at it, the body language in panel 4 seemed odd; it looks as if she's talking, but the voice is coming from the person on the other end of the phone. So, I wonder whether he reused that panel from an earlier strip. Once I started thinking about that, I then noticed that panels 3 and 5 are basically identical! I.e. that image has definitely been copied and pasted, and it simply has a bit of extra (blank) background in panel 5. I'm not going to say that reusing art is always bad, but I think it's best not to draw attention to it.
p16 says: "Now that you have a grid to work from, you can use it to draw a body in perspective." I wonder whether there's a missing page somewhere, because this is the first time that grids are actually mentioned! I think I figured out what he meant, partly based on other drawing books that I've read, but this section could certainly have been clearer.
There are various points in chapters 6 and 7 where he gives examples of HTML/CSS code. However, he's used smart (curly) quotes rather than straight quotes (""), which won't work. It's fine to use them in text which is intended for humans to read, but not when a computer has to interpret it. Also, when I've read IT books it's traditional to use a monospaced font (e.g. Courier) to make it obvious which bits are code.
On p49 he repeats the myth that you can recognise words as long as the first and last letters are in the correct place. Here's a page from a Cambridge University researcher which discusses that claim in detail:
cmabridge. As an example, can you recognise what "magltheuansr" is supposed to be?
On p246 he has a sidebar about editing. He emphasises that it's important to spell words correctly, strongly recommends hiring a copy editor to proofread the book, and talks about how many mistakes his editor caught in the first draft of this book. Given that, it's unfortunate that I spotted a lot of mistakes as I was reading the book. Some of these are simply typos, while others are mistakes which change the meaning of the sentence.
p50: "online" should be "in print".
p54: The antecedent is the noun, not the pronoun.
p97: "suh as" -> "such as".
p129: "acheive" -> "achieve".
p161: "sitre" -> "site"
p215: "geting" -> "getting"
p223: He talks about pre-orders via PayPal, and says "We'd make the announcement that a book was forthcoming and readers could preorder it - with the knowledge that it would be shipped immediately." That should say "wouldn't be shipped immediately", since the whole point is to gather funds before you print the books.
p229: The final sentence says "You probably can't afford preprinted packaging, but a modest investment into a custom rubber stamp you can turn any package into one that reinforces your brand." That should either say "with a modest investment" or "stamp can turn", i.e. add "with" or remove the extra "you".
p256: The final sentence says "And many webcartoonists are experimenting will offering these digital downloads on a micropayment basis." That should say "with offering".
p260: "JEPG" -> "JPEG"
p268: "occassional" -> "occasional"
I realise that I'm nitpicking, but at the very least this is a poor advert for his colleague's services. If she missed all of these, I wouldn't hire her to edit any of my work.
Having said all of that, I'll reiterate what I said at the start. This book is worth reading, and I've paid to join Webcomics.com so that I can read more articles by the same author. So, it is a good book, but it has enough flaws to stop it from being a great book. Hopefully, some of these problems may be fixed in a later (digital) edition.
February 18, 2015
Almost as soon as I finished "How to Make Webcomics," I delved into "The Webcomics Handbook," by Brad Guigar.
The author makes two distinctions about his book right away.
First, it is a compilation of notes, posts and articles gleaned from his site Webcomics.com as a one-source guide, even for subscribers.
Second, "The Webcomics Handbook" is not an art manual. You'll find no guidelines on writing or drawing. Instead, this book covers the business and social aspects of running a webcomic.
Some of the material can found in "How to Make Webcomics" (printed in 2008), but it has been updated, or revised.
"The Webcomics Handbook" hit the shelves in August after a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. It's so brand new that no one has written a review on Amazon.com yet.
Aside from a few typos/syntax errors in the first two chapters, and the last chapter, I found the book informative and about as entertaining as "How to Make Webocomics."
I say "about as entertaining," only because I enjoyed the cross-talk and banter between the authors in the previous book.
The author makes two distinctions about his book right away.
First, it is a compilation of notes, posts and articles gleaned from his site Webcomics.com as a one-source guide, even for subscribers.
Second, "The Webcomics Handbook" is not an art manual. You'll find no guidelines on writing or drawing. Instead, this book covers the business and social aspects of running a webcomic.
Some of the material can found in "How to Make Webcomics" (printed in 2008), but it has been updated, or revised.
"The Webcomics Handbook" hit the shelves in August after a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. It's so brand new that no one has written a review on Amazon.com yet.
Aside from a few typos/syntax errors in the first two chapters, and the last chapter, I found the book informative and about as entertaining as "How to Make Webocomics."
I say "about as entertaining," only because I enjoyed the cross-talk and banter between the authors in the previous book.
January 3, 2016
3.5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews