Others say...

"VERY Little Info on Penciling"
I can't recommend this book, which falls firmly in the category of works aimed at milking the purses of comics-artist wannabes. It also teeters right on the edge of the stuff that seems driven by an urge to discourage potential competition from entering the field. Plus it doesn't have any valuable info on penciling!!! Mitch Byrd's "Notes to Draw From" is a better resource.

Klaus Janson has worked on some major DC titles and apparently also teaches at the School of Visual Arts. Here he seems to be trying to pad out grudgingly little info on penciling with a sort of "why comics require super skills to draw" pedagogy that consumes more than 110 pages of an essentially 142-page book!

There's some good info in here I suppose, but the technical stuff always needs to be taken with a large block of salt. No one ever became a great artist by studying art. People become great artists by doing what they enjoy! The way to become an artist is by creating art. As you encounter challenges you look for solutions to problems and develop. In that sense this book might be useful. B-S- statements like "Drawing... requires study" etc etc do more harm than good IMHO.

The most important thing for would-be comics artists to remember is that the most successful guys in the field are Matt Groening and Scott Adams. They didn't get to the top through their knowledge of anatomy! Frank Cho is a brilliant draughtsman, but "Liberty Meadows" will never have the kind of circ "Doonesbury" had - back when Garry Trudeau was drawing little better than stick figures!

There are lots of books written from a viewpoint of encouraging young artists to learn while supporting them through their inevitable frustrations. Look for those books before wasting your time with this.

"Useful"
This is a useful guide no doubt, as with many other how-to books, however it's not at all the best I've seen.

I'd still recommend getting this book if you are an aspiring artist, because it's always important to stock a library of information within your field(s).

"Useful"
This is a useful guide no doubt, as with many other how-to books, however it's not at all the best I've seen.

I'd still recommend getting this book if you are an aspiring artist, because it's always important to stock a library of information within your field(s).

"Well written and inspiring"
Janson gives a well written breakdown of the techniques needed to develop into a good penciler. He discusses the finer points of story telling through the medium of illustration and uses a wide range of artists he admires as examples. It has become one of my go to books when drawing storyboards. This book, as well as his one on inking is a must for anyone seriously interested in illustration.

"A solid introduction to the pencilling end of comic books"
"The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics" by Klaus Janson introduces wannabee comic book artists and fans of the art form to a more detailed appreciation of what goes into drawing pages for "Batman" than they will have picked up through osmosis or imitation to date. Janson divides the fifteen chapters in this volume into three parts focusing on Drawing, Storytelling, and Pencilling designed to provide an introduction to one of the most difficult of art forms:

Part One Drawing: (1) Materials outlines what supplies an artist needs in terms of paper, pencils, erasers, rulers and templates; (2) Shapes are presented as the foundation of the creative process of drawing, the general concept from which the artist moves to more specific ones; (3) Faces looks at both the basic geometric elements in composing a face and the artistic range available through example of faces drawn by Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, and Neal Adams; (4) Anatomy covers both the structure and design of the human body, including all the muscles, with special attention paid to the most difficult thing in the world to draw, the hands; (5) Clothing establishes the four basic dynamics that shape the folds and wrinkles of a person's clothing; and (6) Perspective, which is covered from the fundamentals to the use of vanishing points and systems of perspective. This unit is the most instructive in the book since it deals with the basic building blocks.

Part Two Storytelling: (7) Juxtaposition establishes the uniqueness of comic book art in terms of how sequential art functions in the eyes of the reader, featuring diverse examples by Eduardo Risso, Sean Phillips, and Dave Taylor; (8) How to Lay Out a Page starts with the grid approach and then moves to the free-form end of the spectrum, starting with an example by Jack Kirby and then moving on to some by Neal Adams and Walt Simonson. Janson explains the value of insert panel and breaking borders, along with the larger pictures need for covers, splash pages, and double-page spreads; (9) Storytelling is considered as being judged by the criteria of clarity and entertainment, just like telling a joke; (10) Composition takes us down to the level of individual frames, looking at how the process of combining elements together to form a united whole; (11) Shots and Angles parallels what we know about such things from cinematography; and (12) Movement examines the one inherent disadvantage of comic art, which is trying to show movement in a static image.

Part Three Pencilling: (13) Procedure lays out how most comic books are written, so you can see where the penciller comes into the process; (14) Breaking In has Janson offering advice on how to break into the business in a professional manner; and (15) Anatomy of a Story has Janson walking us through the drawing of "Good Evening, Midnight," a story he wrote and drew for "Batman Black and White" #3.

"The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics" provides exactly what it promises: a clear-cut introduction to the fundamentals of drawing comic books. As to the fact that the vast majority of illustration examples in this volume are not pencilled but inked, I would point out a couple of pragmatic facts that would explain why. First, inked examples look better than pencilled examples. Second, given that Janson is using examples from real DC Comics, these are covers and pages of art that are already inked. Still, I would agree that more examples of pencilled art would have been nice, although I certainly like what Janson does in Chapter 15, "Anatomy of a Story," where we see layouts, pencilled, and inked pages side-by-side to have a full appreciation of the transformation wrought by the inker.

The companion volume to this work, "The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics," is authored by Dennis O'Neil. Along with Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics," as well as Will Eisner's "Comics and Sequential Art" and "Graphic Storytelling," and John Buscema's "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way," these two DC volumes are worthy additions to the limited library that every aspiring comic book writer/artist should have next to their computer/drawing table.