One of the first books about cartooning that I ever got was Alan McKenzie's How to Draw & Sell Comic Strips for Newspapers & Comic Books! I think I got it new back in 1987. I had books previously on the illustation end of making comics, but never one that really got into production and salesmanship.
I recall reading it as a kid and being struck by two main things. First, despite "Comic Strips" being the largest words on the cover, there seemed to be a greater emphasis on comic books. Second, I'd never heard of the author in any capacity. (I was 15 at the time and anything beyond my personal experience was effectively non-existent.) While I didn't dismiss him entirely, I do remember thinking of the "those who can't do, teach" line.
Looking back at the book now, I can see that it was doing things few others were doing at the time. While there was some basics about art, McKenzie wasn't trying to compete with other books on illustration. It's not a book for learning how to draw in perspective, or how lighting and shadows work. It's a book that provides a wing-to-wing approach to making comics. By which I mean that covers not only the creative parts of comics, but also the business of comics. It's not completely comprehensive, but it goes over a lot of ground in 144 pages.
Of course, I'm also now more familiar with McKenzie's work as a professional. He never rose to the prominence of a Dave Gibbons or Mark Millar, obviously, but he had a solid career, beginning in the late 1970s and running up through the mid-1990s when he largely moved away from comics. He had more than enough professional chops to tackle this book in 1987.
And as I was also largely unfamiliar with comics outside the United States back in the day, the title does make a little more sense now. While fairly uncommon here, the anthology format which might use several comic strips in a single book is more widely known in Europe. At the time, "strips" to me meant newspapers because "comic books" were all about superheroes. Despite McKenzie covering what comics look like internationally in his book! (I might add that, in retrospect, this was immensely useful as any discussion of comics among American audiences focused exclusively on American comics at the time.)
The basics which McKenzie covers are still valid today. Obviously, though, much of the production and business portions are wildly out of date in my copy as it predates pretty much digital anything. I understand that a second edition was produced in 1997 and a third edition in 2005. I don't know precisely what was updated or how, but there's a large enough chunk of time between each edition that I would think they would almost have to be three entirely different books.
By the time I read this, I was already familiar with the basics of art that McKenzie had outlined. Not that I had mastered any of them, but I knew what he was presenting in the book. But what I got out of it was an understanding and appreciation of comics beyond what I saw in the my local comic shops, as well as a better understanding and apprecation of what happens on the business and production end of comics. I half wonder if the breadth of my interest in comics today started back in 1987 when I first saw how much more there were to comics than the completed strips and books I read.
One of the issues/concerns that gets bandied about in comics these days is, of course, that publishers aren't doing enough to support women and minorities. They're not hiring enough creators or featuring enough characters outside of a white cishetero male pool, relative to the population. And while there are some extremely talented individuals out there, who happen to be women and minorities, that they're producing and publishing their own works can make it difficult to even find, much less support them. Turtel Onli, for example, has been publishing his own Afrocentric comics for over 30 years, but you'd be hard-pressed to find them in a comic shop outside of his hometown of Chicago.
Now, most comic shops are happy to order books for you that they wouldn't normally stock, but this still generally requires that they work with publishers and distributors. They're going to call up their local distribution rep, and ask for your book and if it isn't available through a known publisher, they're mostly likely going to shrug and say they can't get it. Generally, if you see self-published comics in a local shop, it's because the creator was physically in that shop at some point and handed them her or his comics to sell.
So how can you add diversity to your pull list if the big American publishers aren't producing much?
The key is in that question itself. Whether you're consciously thinking of this or not when you're talking "comic publishers" or the "comics industry", you're most likely limiting your thinking to American publishers of American materials. That's not completely unreasonable, given that you're in America and want to read comics in your native language. But if you're looking for diversification, why not look at a more diverse base in the first place? We're not the only country that speaks English, after all.
Gestalt Comics, for example, is out of Australia. Campfire is out of India. JR*Comics is out of Korea. Beyond Publishing is out of Barbados. And they're all publishing in English.
Admittedly, I can't say whether their complete lines are all top-notch; I've only read one or two books from each of them. But the point is that you, as a reader, don't have to limit yourself to American publishers. I don't know the full extent to which non-US publishers utilize people other than white cishetero men as their creative talent, but they're largely using local talent. So a comic out of Egypt would likely be created mostly by Egyptians, a comic out of Brazil would like be created mostly by Brazilians, a comic out of Zimbabwe would likely be created mostly by Zimbabweans. That will inherently make the make-up of creators you read more diverse. And isn't that what we're trying to get to?
At the opening of Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby, curator Charles Hatfield was asked by a reporter to describe Kirby's career in seven words or less. Several folks made their own suggestions on Facebook, and I thought I'd share some of them here since they're all accurate..."Stan Lee took all of the credit."
"That is a stupid question. You dork."
"Ripped the fabric of space and time."
"Tough Jewish street kid as cosmic visionary."
And my own personal favorite (because it's mine)...
PA-THOOM KRRAK!
Can you come up with anything better?
