Scott McCloud

The percentage of comics consumers who actually want to become comics creators is probably higher than in most other mediums, and while the barriers to comics publication are lower than ever, with multiple sites offering hosting for free, there are still plenty of barriers to creation to overcome, from acquiring the right tools to developing the right skills. We've put together this gift guide to help you buy the ideal present for an aspiring comic creator.

Scott McCloud was born on this day in 1960, as Scott McLeod. (Like all great self-made iconoclasts, he changed his name.) Cartoonist, scholar, orator, inventor, and champion, Scott McCloud is one of the most important creators of his era, and perhaps the Ben Franklin of comics.

Two weeks ago, First Second Books released The Sculptor, Scott McCloud's long-awaited, five-years-in-the-making, latest graphic novel. It's a complex and nuanced work that functions as both an emotionally rich personal statement, and a masterclass in graphic storytelling (not surprising, given McCloud's authorship of the seminal Understanding Comics, and its two sequels, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics), and it's become an immediate commercial and critical success, shooting to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and garnering a wealth of rave reviews. The book tells the story of David Smith, a young sculptor living in New York City who makes a deal with Death that gives him only two hundred days to live, but allows him to shape any material, creating art with his bare hands from whatever he wishes… Which seems like a great deal, until he meets a mysterious woman named Meg, and falls desperately in love with her.

Since Scott McCloud first shot onto the cultural radar in the mid-80s, with his "reconstructionist" superhero series Zot!, he's been known as one of the modern masters of the comics form – his seminal 1993 volume Understanding Comics set a benchmark for intelligent analysis of graphic narrative language and technique (and became a go-to reference for college courses worldwide), his sequels, Reinventing Comics (2000) and Making Comics (2006) met with critical and commercial success, and his 1998 graphic novel The New Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln remains a fascinating and underrated attempt at melding the worlds of traditional and computer-generated cartooning. He's written a heaping handful of Superman stories, spoken and lectured around the world, and established himself as a comic creator, commentator, scholar and theorist without peer. And this week, First Second Books is releasing his latest work, the five-years-in-the-making opus The Sculptor, the story of David Smith, a young sculptor living in New York City who makes a deal with Death that gives him only two hundred days to live, but allows him to shape any material, creating art with his bare hands from whatever he wishes…

Jack Kirby is very probably the single most influential figure in the history of American comics. He produced countless stories in a career that spanned seven decades, inventing and re-inventing genres and styles every step of the way. He inspired generations of artists and writers; created and co-created thousands of characters; defined the visual vocabulary of superheroes; and believed in the potential of comics to be both entertainment and art, long before most people imagined these stories would be remembered past the four weeks that they sat on newsstands. This week would have been Kirby’s 97th birthday, so to celebrate, we asked some of our favorite creators and other comic pros to contribute their impressions of his characters, life, and legacy – and the response has been overwhelming. Yesterday, we posted the first set of these all-star tributes, and here's the second, even more expansive selection!

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

For many Scott McCloud is a name that's synonymous with comics -- Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics -- but it's been awhile since the Zot creator has released sequential art that wasn't rooted in education. That changes on February 3 next year with the relase of The Sculptor from First Second, a story McCloud's had in mind for more than two decades and has been actively wo

Lettering's something of a ninja craft. It's taken for granted not because it's inessential, but because -- like makeup -- it's often supposed to go unnoticed as a visual element. If executed improperly, however, lettering can draw undue attention to itself and distract where it should simply enhance...

ComicsAlliance closes the day with an after-hours link dump. Sex: Nerve, a site that both in this instance and in general you should probably not visit from work, recently stopped by Emerald City Comic Con and had a chat with some of the pros, retailers, and fans -- including Danielle Corsetto of "Girls With Slingshots" and Cosmic Monkey Comics owner Andy Johnson -- to talk about... Rea

This past weekend I dug into THQ's (and 5th Cell's - The developers of WB's "Scribblenauts") latest entry into the "Drawn To Life" franchise - "Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter." Given that players are tasked with creating much of the game's content from scratch within certain parameters (via a stylus or Wiimote depending on which version they've picked up), it's a tit