With more and more graphic novels on shelves and tablets of comics readers worldwide, there's also been a boom in books about comics—from examining their history to showing how to make them. So far, 2014 has been an outstanding year for nonfiction books about comics. Here are some new and upcoming books that should have a place on the shelf of every serious comics enthusiast.


Make Comics Like The Pros
Greg Pak and Fred van Lente. Watson Guptill, Sept. 2014
A soup-to-nuts guide to making comics, from the ins and outs of collaboration to using social media to promote yourself. Two veteran creators give sensible, frank advice on all the ins and outs of today’s comics world. A must for every would-be comics makers library—and probably for every working pro as a brush up.

Comics Art
Paul Gravett. Yale, 2014

Gravett is perhaps the most knowledgeable and congenial of comics scholars, and in this overview of comics he covers the last 50 years of international comics history and artistic development with the sure-footed understanding of a graphic Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Gravett covers both form—the panel experiments of Chris Ware and web comics experiments of Jason Shiga—and content—the autobiographical comics of Lynda Barry and storytelling of David Mazzuchelli. While it’s but an introduction to the many contemporary facets of graphic storytelling, it’s a very welcoming one.
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