Pitch #6 of 10: I’ve already dropped a reference to him earlier in these pitches, so it should be no surprise that I’m tremendously influenced by Scott McCloud, particularly his -ing Comics trilogy. Understanding Comics, Making Comics, and even the more controversial Reinventing Comics have a lot to offer the aspiring comic-maker, exploring comics themselves and the wider world through a holistic yet comics-based “lens.” Even when his observations were limited or wrong or ahead of their time, they were partly redeemed because of the language they gave us. In many cases, no one else was even having the same conversation until Scott started it up.

My only real complaint about them? They’re not still being done! The process of making comics is changing rapidly, and while other books have come out about it, the sort of demonstration by action that a comic about comics can offer is hard to find. Scott did try an online continuation of Reinventing Comics for about six weeks, but I think he wasn’t prepared for the, er, coarse discourse that some corners of the internet had to offer even in 2001.

Comics Now… assuming it was written, er, now… would deal with such topics as post-pandemic convention planning, pandemic-set plots, designing stories for mobile, dealing with file-sharing (and when to call it piracy), the sometimes-porous line between comics and memes, emoji design, e-cards, NFTs, and just what’s happened lately to traditional cartooning sectors like political cartoons and comic books (that last one’s probably a multi-parter). A lot of interviewing would have to go into it, because few have McCloud’s ability to project expertise and I wouldn’t even want to portray myself as “the guy who’s figured it all out.” But somebody should be trying to cover this stuff via comics on a regular basis, you know? I don’t know anyone who is… and if somebody is, more people still probably should be.