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A cartoonist, in 1940 Messick created the comic strip "Brenda Starr, Reporter", which she drew and wrote for 43 years. At the time, it was rare for a comic to have a strong, female, working character; Messick modeled the smart Starr character after herself, but it was a long road to respect. "Throughout her life, [Messick] met a lot of resistance from men," says Trina Robbins, author of A Century of Women Cartoonists. "Even in the early 1960s, [male interviewers] played her up as a dizzy dame instead of this brilliant comics creator. Brenda had a better image than Lois Lane, who was always being rescued by Superman. Brenda Starr always solved her own problems and got herself out of fixes." Still, her syndicate was not exactly a friend of the strip: if Messick included cleavage on Brenda, their editor would erase it. During its heyday, the comic was in 250 newspapers, but in 1983 her syndicate pressured her to retire, replacing her with other artists because she didn't have ownership of her own creation. The strip continues, but now is only run in about 20 papers. She received better treatment from others: the U.S. Postal Service issued a "Brenda Starr" stamp in 1995, and the National Cartoonists Society gave her its lifetime achievement award in 1997. Messick died April 5 after suffering several strokes. She was 98. From This is True for 3 April 2005 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Scott Mccloud List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $15.61 Editorial Review: A comic book about comic books. McCloud, in an incredibly accessible style, explains the details of how comics work: how they're composed, read and understood. More than just a book about comics, this gets to the heart of how we deal with visual languages in general. "The potential of comics is limitless and exciting!" writes McCloud. This should be required reading for every school teacher. Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman says, "The most intelligent comics I've seen in a long time."Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, this innovative comic book provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning.  By: Scott Mccloud List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $15.61 Editorial Review: Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was published in 1993, just as "Comics Aren't Just for Kids Anymore!" articles were starting to appear and graphic novels were making their way into the mainstream, and it quickly gave the newly respectable medium the theoretical and practical manifesto it needed. With his clear-eyed and approachable analysis--done using the same comics tools he was describing--McCloud quickly gave "sequential art" a language to understand itself. McCloud made the simplest of drawing decisions seem deep with artistic potential. Thirteen years later, following the Internet evangelizing of Reinventing Comics, McCloud has returned with Making Comics.
Designed as a craftsperson's overview of the drawing and storytelling decisions and possibilities available to comics artists, covering everything from facial expressions and page layout to the choice of tools and story construction, Making Comics, like its predecessors, is also an eye-opening trip behind the scenes of art-making, fascinating for anyone reading comics as well as those making them. Get a sense of the range of his lessons by clicking through to the opening pages of his book, including his (illustrated, of course) table of contents (warning: large file, recommended for high-bandwidth users):
Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture in 1993 with Understanding Comics, a massive comic book about comics, linking the medium to such diverse fields as media theory, movie criticism, and web design. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud took this to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are generated, read, and perceived today. Now, in Making Comics, McCloud focuses his analysis on the art form itself, exploring the creation of comics, from the broadest principles to the sharpest details (like how to accentuate a character's facial muscles in order to form the emotion of disgust rather than the emotion of surprise.) And he does all of it in his inimitable voice and through his cartoon stand–in narrator, mixing dry humor and legitimate instruction. McCloud shows his reader how to master the human condition through word and image in a brilliantly minimalistic way. Comic book devotees as well as the most uninitiated will marvel at this journey into a once–underappreciated art form.  By: Scott Mccloud List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $15.38 Editorial Review: Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, the sequel to his groundbreaking work Understanding Comics, is a study of two revolutions: a failed one and a potential one. His 1993 book was not only a chronicle of the potential breakthrough of comics (which he redefined as "sequential art") into a legitimate art form but a sterling example itself of the medium's astonishing untapped potential. Now, seven years later, he chronicles the failure of the comic book industry to fulfill that promise, but also explores how the movement can be restarted, particularly by utilizing the resources of another spectacularly successful revolution, the Internet. In the first half of Reinventing Comics, an elegantly clean example of comic art in McCloud's trademark bold black-and-white style, the author outlines how hype, speculation, and artistic burnout led to the genre's decline. He then lays out 12 paths toward a new revolution of comics, including creators' rights, industry innovation, public perception, gender balance, and diversity of genre, which are then explored with such innovative intelligence that, as with his earlier work, the conclusions he comes to are fascinating for both artists and nonartists alike. Three of his paths, however, are of particular interest to anyone who wants to know how the Internet will affect both our lives and the livelihoods of future artists. Understanding Comics, with its brilliant how-to guide on marrying image and language, has become an indispensable reference for many Web designers. Now McCloud returns the favor by focusing on how the digital revolution will influence production, delivery, and the art form of comics itself. Informative without being pedantic, controversial without being argumentative, and always entertaining, this is both a worthy sequel to the author's brilliant original and a work that opens up the potential for an entirely different direction for sequential art in the realm of cyberspace. --John Longenbaugh In 1993, Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture with the acclaimed international hit Understanding Comics, a massive comic book that explored the inner workings of the worlds most misunderstood art form. Now, McCloud takes comics to te next leavle, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are created, read, and preceived today, and how they're poised to conquer the new millennium. Part One of this fascinating and in-depth book includes: The life of comics as an art form and as litertureThe battle for creators' rightsReinventing the business of comicsThe volatile and shifting public percptions of comicsSexual and ethnic representation on comics Then in Part Two, McCloud paints a brethtaling picture of comics' digital revolutions, including: The intricacies of digital productionThe exploding world of online deliveryThe ultimate challenges of the infinite digital canvas Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991 By: Scott Mccloud List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $16.47  By: Will Eisner List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $19.47 Editorial Review: An intimate self-portrait of the American icon Will Eisner, and a chronicle of the career that launched a new art form. In what will be the closest thing Eisner fans will see to an autobiography, the great master and pioneer of American graphic arts presents the most intimate and personal perspective yet on his life as a writer, a professional, and an artist. "The Dreamer" and "To the Heart of the Storm" describe Eisner's gritty early life and career, while "The Name of the Game" chronicles a personal history of his wife's family. Finally, two shorter pieces illuminate the bookends of a legendary career: "The Day I Became a Professional"—which will appeal to any hopeful young artist—describes Eisner's first rejection from a potential publisher, and "A Sunset in Sunshine City" provides a poignant portrait of Eisner in old age. The book features famous characters from the world of comics (under pseudonyms, of course) and other historical figures and family members, all drawn with Eisner's characteristic mastery and technique. |
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