Top Graphic Novel Reviews

Now here are some great external resources that can really give you that extra boost in writing and publishing your very own graphic novel.

1. A much cheaper prospect at honing your writing skills. Learn from a professional editor and writer how to avoid the most common mistakes that will brand you as an amateur. Costs Just $12.95.
2. A book that I bought myself from clickbank. If you are serious about writing a proper novel (or graphic novel for that matter) AND if you have some money to spare you could get this. The “NewNovelist”
3. Submit your novels for publishing
4. 10 things you can learn from Harry Potter
5. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating A Graphic Novel. This is the definitive guide.
6. Creative writing for teens
7. Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel : Everything You Need to Know to Create Great Graphic Works

There are some ways in which you can promote your GN. They need not be costly. One of the best and cheapest ways of advertising is via your local newspaper. Start from your community. Ring up the reporters and see if you can work something out. Get them to review your GN. Look at the classifieds section. It is also a cheap and relatively effective form of advertising.

Explore Adwords. You can choose the locations which you want to target and also set your daily budget. The beauty of this is that the visitors would be highly targeted. Meaning they are the visitors that you want! These visitors are much more likely to buy and read your GN then anyone else. This has to do with keyword bidding, as you bid on specific keywords that users will search on Google. Say ‘buy graphic novels online’, and your ads appears whenever someone searches for that term.

One of the most important things to get right in a graphic novel is its dialogue. It is through dialogue that you give life to your characters and through dialogue that your tell your story.
This article I found from the web describes what you can do to practice. 

1. Find a comic book or collection of comic strips in which the visuals appeal to you. Choose work that has at least one character you would like to write about (but you are going to make this character your own, so select by visuals only; you may want to pick a character that looks like a character you have already created). Also consider using work you are unfamiliar with; this will make the exercise a little easier. You’ll need a comic in which more than one character speaks. 
2. Photocopy the comic or strips (you’ll want at least a few pages — a whole comic’s worth would be useful) and blank out all the text, captions as well as speech bubbles.
3. Re-write the dialogue as if the characters were your own creations. Don’t try to use the characters as created by the writer, but pretend they are entirely different people. Try to give each character his or her own way of speaking — given enough dialogue you should be able to tell which character is which just by what they say. You may have to be careful about exaggerating the differences between characters’ speech at first; the differences should mostly be subtle.
4. If needed, re-write or add any supplemental text such as captions, monologues, or whatever else the work may call for.
5. Notice how the visuals of the comic effect any possible interpretations of what is happening. Did you find it difficult to make up new text? Think about what this means for text without pictures (short stories and novels). How can you create visuals using text only? What might gestures and actions interspersed with dialogue add to the meaning of the dialogue and/or to the progression of the story?
6. Using your re-written comic as a guide, re-write the scene/story again, this time in short story format (in other words, as text only). Keep in mind the things you discovered about the effect of visuals, of gesture and action and facial expression (and whatever else), on dialogue and meaning. Add some of these things in as you write.

Notes: It can be difficult to write new dialogue for existing characters in an attempt to turn them into different characters, especially if the existing characters are ones you are already quite familiar with. However, this exercise can hopefully illustrate two things: first that every character — every person — has their own way of speaking, even if the differences are extremely subtle. Changing the way a character speaks changes the character. Second, this exercise should show you that the things happening at the same time as dialogue — action, gesture, expression and so on — affect the interpretation of the scene. They may change the meaning of the dialogue, or the understanding of the character, or any number of other things. Experiment to see how small changes affect stories.

Where do you submit your work after you have completed your grand masterpiece? Fret not, I have a list of places where you can go publish your works after you are done. Another place to go is this website. Here are some useful tips on publishing.

• Formatting. In what type of format must you submit your work? What if you have changes? How do you submit cover art, author photos and other information? What about ISBN numbers? You would have to decide on which platform you want to do your work from the very start.
 
• Editing. Are the books edited or proofread and are there fees charged for editing or proofreading? What experience do they have? You might consider using the editing service or hiring a freelance editor to proof your work for you prior to publication. Editing is a must if you want to make sure your first graphic novel goes well

• Promotional Benefits. Does the publisher promote its authors? Does it contact the media for you? Does it have a media contact list or a mailing list where you can announce your book? How does the publisher feature its most recent releases? There is nothing wrong with this approach, but be sure you know what the company’s policies are so that you aren’t disappointed. You would probably want to take charge and do your own marketing, whichever it is be sure to research your target market carefully. I will include a ‘promoting your graphic novel’ below.
 
• Book Covers. Book cover graphics are a real draw at bricks-and-mortar bookstores; It is more so for graphic novels! Very often, it is the cover art that draws the reader and like them have an idea of how the artwork would look inside. So do invest some time, effort and money to get a top drawer cover for your graphic novel.
 
• Introductions and Accolades. Whom do you want to find to write a introduction or synopsis for your graphic novel? It is best if you can maintain a website for your book and link up with other first time graphic novelists. Subscribe to Novel Ideas Newsletter and we can link you all up. You should then review each other’s work and give a honest assessment. Submit your works to some local newspaper in your area. Have them appraise it for you. Accolades are a very good persuading factor.
 
• Book Price. How much will your GN cost? How much will readers have to pay for your GN? Do all your calculations carefully beforehand. Do you want to sell it online? Or sell it through bookstores? Or both? Look after and mull on the price you want to sell your graphic novel, it is after all, where your money comes in from.
 
• Retail Partners. Who do you want to partner with? If at all. Does the publisher have agreements with Amazon.com, BN.com and/or Borders.com? What price do readers have to pay for your GN at these retailers? Is there a discount or promotional discounts available? What is the lead time to customers? You have to take a lot of factors into consideration here. Establish a good relationship, and you will find that they are more then willing to help promote all your GNs, future and present.
 
• Online Selling. If you are promoting/selling your GN online you will have to answer a few questions. How does the publisher promote its books? Does it have a bookstore on its website? Is it highly visible or hard to find? Does it get much traffic? Does it have a bestseller list? Does the bookstore have secure online ordering? A great online bookstore is essential, especially if you are sending people to the website to get your Graphic Novel.
 
• Sales. Will you have access to sales information? How often is it updated? This is especially crucial if you decide to do your own marketing. You need to get those statistics and find out which is the most effective form of advertising for you.
 
• Networking. How many other Writers do your know? What about artists? Freelance or otherwise? How many bookstore owners do you know? Get opinions from friends, newsgroups, writer’s groups and professional organizations. Their point of views can throw some light into many things. Establish useful contacts in the industry and community, start making little inroads. Subscribe to our Novel Ideas Newsletter and build your network. If you are an independent Graphic Novelist and have a website, I can do a feature on you for free on the newsletter.

Writing is hard enough. Writing a novel is harder. Writing a graphic is the hardest! Well, that is my warped logic anyways.

First, you have got to ascertain your talent. We are all good at something, it could be that you are very artistic and creative or that you have a knack for numbers and facts. Do you want to be the writer AND the artist or do you just want to draw? Maybe you would just like to write (like me) because you have a fantastic story in you but you just cant draw to save your life.

The best way in this case is to find a partner and pool your talents together. Creating a graphic novel is rarely a one man show. Most importantly, as a WRITER, you must start honing your writing skills and let people critique your work. The more criticisms the better! Look for criticisms and embrace them for they will always spur you on and help you your skills. Do remember that you cannot please everyone.

There are several resources listed below that would do good to help you find out more about writing your own graphic novel. As I am typing this, I am currently working on an E-book where I introduce some solid concepts on website monetization and income. It is nearly completed already.

It is totally unrelated to graphic novels but I suppose it does involve an element of writing and creating here. What I wanted to say was that I would have NEVER would have completed it if my friend hadn’t introduced me to a writing guide called “NewNovelist“.

One of the pioneers of the industry. Like wine, he creations gets better with age.
He has since left the world but his works will always leave a lasting impression for many many years to come. Here is a tribute to the great Will Eisner.

William Erwin Eisner (born March 6, 1917, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States; died January 3, 2005, Lauderdale Lakes, Florida) was an acclaimed American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an instructional medium; for his leading role in establishing the graphic novel as a form of literature with his book A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories; and for his educational work about the medium as exemplified by his book Comics and Sequential Art.

The son of Jewish immigrants — his father a former painter, marginally successful entrepreneur, and one-time manufacturer in Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue garment district — Eisner attended De Witt Clinton High School. There he drew for the school newspaper (The Clintonian), literary magazine (The Magpie) and yearbook, and did stage design, leading him to consider doing that kind of work for theater. Upon graduation, he studied under Canadian artist George Brandt Bridgman (1864-1943) for a year at the Art Students League of New York. Contacts made there led to a position as an advertising writer-cartoonist for the New York American newspaper. Eisner also drew $10-a-page illustrations for pulp magazines, including Western Sheriffs and Outlaws.

Wow, What a Magazine! #3 (Sept. 1936): Cover art by a teenaged Will EisnerIn 1936, high-school friend and fellow cartoonist Bob Kane, future creator of Batman, suggested that the 19-year-old Eisner try selling cartoons to the new comic book Wow, What A Magazine!. “Comic books” at the time were tabloid-sized collections of comic strip reprints in color. In 1935, they began to include occasional new comic strip-like material. Editor Jerry Iger bought an Eisner adventure strip called “Captain Scott Dalton”, an H. Rider Haggard-styled hero who traveled the world after rare artifacts. Eisner subsequently wrote and drew the pirate strip “The Flame” and the secret agent strip “Harry Karry” for Wow as well.

In the late 1970s, Eisner turned his attention to longer storytelling forms. A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, Oct. 1978) is one of the first American graphic novels, combining thematically linked short stories into a single square-bound volume. Eisner continued with a string of graphic novels that tell the history of New York’s immigrant communities, particularly Jews, including The Building, Dropsie Avenue and To the Heart of the Storm. He continued producing new books into his seventies and eighties, at an average rate of nearly one a year. Remarkably, each of these books was done twice — once as a rough version to show editor Dave Schreiner, then as a second, finished version incorporating suggested changes. 8

In the introduction to the 2001 reissue of A Contract with God, Eisner revealed that the inspiration for the title story grew out of the 1969 death of his leukemia-stricken teenaged daughter, Alice, next to whom he is buried. Until then, only Eisner’s closest friends had even been aware that he and his wife, Ann Weingarten Eisner, had a daughter. They also have a son, John.

Some of his last work was the retelling in sequential art of novels and myths, including Moby Dick. In 2002, at the age of 85, he published Sundiata, based on the part-historical, part-mythical stories of a West African king, “The Lion of Mali”. Fagin the Jew is an account to the life of Dickens’s character Fagin, in which Eisner tries to get past the sterotyped portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist. His last graphic novel, The Plot, an account of the making of the anti-semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was completed shortly before his death and published in 2005.

Eisner has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Comic Book Award for 1967, 1968, 1969, 1987, and 1988, as well as its Story Comic Book Award in 1979, and its highest accolade, the Reuben Award, for 1988.

He was inducted into the Academy of Comic Book Arts Hall of Fame in 1971, and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1987. The following year, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were established in his honor.

“As a soul, Will was generous, ambitious, insightful, and fair. He did not hesitate to give of himself in these last decades. A constant presence at conventions, Will made equal time for the captains of this industry, the aspirants looking to break in, and the fans whose lives he touched with his body of work. He was always a gentleman, in the classical sense, where the word actually means something beyond mere politeness.” 

-Charles Brownstein (Executive Director for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund)

“…I’m going to miss him enormously, more than I can say. I made a speech last year, where I said how strange it was to discover that the gods of comics, the people who made the medium, were, when I met them, cranky old Jews. Will Eisner wasn’t cranky, and he was never old. He was, in all ways, a mensch. 

And I keep weighing it in my head, the sorrow at losing Will with the knowledge of how fortunate I was to have known him (”you’re always sorry, you’re always grateful,” as Sondheim said about something quite different). 

I’m more grateful than sorry.”

-Neil Gaiman

Will Eisner died of complications from a quadruple bypass surgery performed on December 22, 2004 in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida.

I am a big big fan of his. And I sure am not the only one around. He and Alan Moore are so different in terms of their personality but there is no doubting both of their literally genius.

Born November 10, 1960, in Portchester, Hampshire, Gaiman is an English Jewish author of numerous science fiction and fantasy works, including many comic books(and graphic novels). As of 2005, he lives in Wisconsin, between Madison and Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He is married to Mary T. McGrath, an American, and has two daughters, Holly and Maddy, and a son, Michael.

A popular writer of fantasy and the dreamily macabre, Gaiman created the landmark comic Sandman. The comic ran for 75 monthly episodes and was an industry phenomenon in the early 1990s. Once a popular “underground” author, Gaiman later became a mainstream success thanks to Sandman and other screenplays, short stories and novels. Gaiman’s books include Good Omens (1990, co-written with Terry Pratchett) and American Gods (2001); his illustrated novel Stardust was published in four parts by DC Comics in 1997 and reprinted as a text-only novel in 1999. His fantasy mini-series Neverwhere was broadcast by the BBC in 1996; a novel by the same name was a best-seller in 1997. He also wrote the children’s book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1997).

After forming a friendship with famed comic book scribe Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comics, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before the collapse of publisher Eclipse Comics, leaving the series unfinished. He wrote two British graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases and Signal to Noise. Afterwards, he landed a job with DC Comics, his first work being the limited series Black Orchid.

His New York Times bestselling 2001 novel for adults, American Gods, was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards, was nominated for many other awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and appeared on many best-of-year lists.

Gaiman was the creator/writer of monthly cult DC Comics horror-weird series, Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award. Norman Mailer said of Sandman: “Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it’s about time.”

Gaiman’s 1999 return to Sandman, the prose book The Dream Hunters, with art by Yoshitaka Amano, won the Bram Stoker award for best illustrated work by the Horror Writers Association, and was nominated for a Hugo award. In 2003 The Wolves in the Walls, illustrated by his longtime collaborator Dave McKean, was published, and it was named by the New York Times as one of the best illustrated books of the year. It is currently being made into an opera by the Scottish National Theatre. 2003 also saw the appearance of the first Sandman graphic novel in seven years, Endless Nights, which was published by DC Comics and was the first graphic novel to make the New York Times bestseller list.

In 2004, Gaiman published the first volume of a serialized story for Marvel called 1602, which was the bestselling comic of the year, and is currently a Quills Award finalist in the graphic novel category.

Additionally, With Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman has written the script for Beowulf, to be directed by Robert Zemeckis and set to begin filming in fall 2005 with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie starring in it. Gaiman also writes songs, poems and novels. Gaiman forged an intense friendship with singer Tori Amos in the early nineties. Before she achieved stardom, she sent him a demo tape of her album Little Earthquakes, and they became fast friends. As such, references have been made to Gaiman (often rather cryptically) in at least one of her songs on each of her albums.

He seems like an eccentric character eh? With all that long fuzzy hair and his continued contempt for Hollywood movies inspired or adapted from his comics. Well, if you look deeper into the reasons, you can empathize with him. V for Vendetta the movie was good BUT if you (like me) had read the comic before hand, you would have found the movie has done a great deal of injustice to the graphic novel.


And that is the same with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Interestingly enough, he does not really like the term ‘Graphic Novel’ saying that it is just another word for expensive comic books. Oh well.

His Proper Bio

Alan Moore (born November 18, 1953, in Northampton, England) is a British writer most famous for his work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs “workings” (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. The oldest son of the brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen, Moore’s childhood and youth were influenced by the poverty of his family and their environment.

Moore’s exceptional writing talent won him his first American series, Saga of the Swamp Thing. Moore displayed great depth and insight in his work, demonstrating that he was able to write on a wide range of topics and situations. Moore’s stories set the pace for the “Sophisticated Suspense” by which most comics under DC’s Vertigo line operate under today. In addition to Swamp Thing, Moore also penned several other DC titles, such as The Green Lantern Corps, a Batman Annual and several Superman stories.

Moore had a long-standing dispute with DC Comics, and he was unhappy that his deal with Wildstorm unexpectedly placed him in the DC “family.” Wildstorm attempted to placate him by forming an editorial “firewall” to insulate Moore from DC’s corporate offices. However, various incidents continued to irritate Moore. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5 contained an authentic vintage advertisement for a “Marvel”-brand douche, which caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted without the advertisement. 

Moore was further irritated when Paul Levitz decided that a story Moore wrote for the Cobweb character to appear in Tomorrow Stories #8 featured references to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, John Whiteside Parsons and “The BABALON Working”. The story was blocked by DC Comics who feared being sued by the notoriously litigious Scientologists. DC was embarrassed when it was later revealed that they had already published a version of the same event in their Big Book of Conspiracies.

Film adaptations of Moore’s work also proved controversial. With From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore was content to allow the filmmakers to do whatever they wished and removed himself from the process entirely. “As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them,” he said, he could profit from the films while leaving the original comics untouched, “assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naive on my part.”

Today Moore is working on several series: Tom Strong Adventures, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Supreme: The Return, Promethea, as well as several other series on the horizon. Moore is also a vegetarian and a practicing magician.

-culled from The Wikipedia

I will start off with one my favourite Graphic Novel of all time - Life Eaters. You might be unfamiliar with the writer David Brin and may not have even heard about him. It’s alright, you can read up a little on him here. The outline of the story on the back of the book goes like this :

“Roused by sorcery and a stench of holocaust, Norse gods have returned to the mortal plane, tilting the scales of World War II and cheating the Allies of victory. Near a generation later the war still rages, this time in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The tide has been set for a final battle as a few heroes gather their courage - and their most advanced technology - for a final stand against the Nazis and their Aesir partners. In the end, it will be an epic struggle to reclaim the sovereignty of the human race, one that will pit our basest instincts against…our own humanity.”

Life Eaters was THE first Graphic Novel I picked up and the one which got me started into reading them. I was greatly pleased when I got this book, this has all the elements of a blockbuster - exciting storyline, unexpected twists and turns, explosive action, great characters and ,of course, a climax to boot. It also incorporates science fiction and mysticism into this war based novel and does a brilliant job at that. It is also very much a ‘human’ story.

Many questions will be posed that will set you in a thinking trance about World Wars. What if Gods fought along men in war? What if they took sides? Which would emerge victorious - Sophisticated and highly advanced technology or million years old voodoo and mysticism? What if the holocaust happened because of something else Hitler was planning? Something much much more sinister…

This book is really quite something, it challenges and throws up some fantastic fanatical scenarios of ‘what ifs?’ during the warring periods. The artwork is nothing short of superb and is brought to life by Scott Hampton. One of the best in his field may I add. Some readers might not like the way or the style he portrayed certain religions but I for one, thoroughly enjoyed his book.

David Brin is more of a science fiction writer then a graphic novelist. Nonetheless, I decided to do a bio on him because of some outstanding graphic novels he wrote. He is well, obviously very smart.

Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is a well-known American author of science fiction. He is the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards as well as the Interstella War Award. He lives in Southern California and has been both a NASA consultant and a physics professor.

Several of his novels have been New York Times Bestsellers. His 1989 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyber-warfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on The Postman. His novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Several studio-financed screenplays are under pre-development consideration.

Brin’s first non-fiction book, The Transparent Society, published by Perseus/Addison Wesley Inc. in 1998 deals with contemporary concerns about privacy, accountability and secrecy in the world of the coming century.

As part of his concern to ensure that young readers get the best possible bridge to a lifetime habit of reading, Brin has developed a new series of novels, the OUT OF TIME series, about high schoolers from our era who get yanked into the future to solve problems and teach their descendants courage — before being put back in time for classes the next day. The first few volumes of this exciting and yet thoughtful series were penned by Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch and Roger MacBride Allen.

David Brin’s wife, Cheryl Brigham, is also a scientist. They have a young daughter and two sons. Brin speaks before many groups and schools, sharing his passionate enthusiasm for the future. His novels have been translated into twenty languages and non-fiction articles have appeared in many magazines. Claiming to be — “in love with this amazing, scary, fascinating century”– David Brin makes extensive use of his scientific training in his writing, bringing to his novels an intense passion for the exploration of ideas, and the human spirit.