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Draw! #15 Spring 2008 (magazine review).

Amongst my Draw! bundle, # 15’s cover title is ‘Back To School Issue’ seemed an unusual title. Actually, it’s more like a university education but that would make for a longer title. As editor Mike Manley points out, comics are respectable and now you can even get art degrees in it in the USA. Although written in 2008, a lot of the points raised and with interviews with people belonging to the various American institutions out there telling you what they offer and at what price, which obviously would have changed in the past 12 years.

Although he doesn’t cover all of them, it should give you an idea what you’re looking for to improve your skills and job prospects so still mostly applicable a dozen years later. They also all employ people who work in the industry so you get a better education. As they all, as far as I can tell, still exist so they must be doing something right. Reading what they were offering then and now mostly boils down to a lot of intense hard work in all aspects of the industry so you can do something while waiting for the right break.

With Nick Bertozzi’s interview and his history, there is an important lesson in the costs of self-publishing comicbook and the cost if you don’t sell most of them. There is some rather amusement in the fact that trying to give away issues at an American comicbook convention rather than sell them had the reverse effect because people thought there was a catch to it all. No wonder some publishers boldly proclaim such things as ‘limited edition’ on their covers. Any selling point to stir readers’ interest to buy.

The interview with Bill Reinhold covers his career from moving from penciller to be an in-demand inker and all the skills that entails. Reading how he confers and learns from other inkers and the opportunity it gave him to ink Steve Ditko amongst many others also explains the difference between working on loose to tight pencils.

Mike Manley and Brett Blevins focus on feet, reminding that many artists aren’t very good at drawing them and do all kinds of things to avoid drawing them. Considering how they give poise to the muscles, I wish they had gone a step further and show how shoes, especially high heels, affect the legs generally. Even so, if you draw then pay attention to this section and leave you wondering how you never got it right in the first place.

Finally, the first part of an interview with comicbook writer Dan DiDio about his career in the media, animation writer and so forth before working for DC Comics.

Do I have to sell you on buying early ‘Draw!’ issues? There is always something to learn.

GF Willmetts

November 2020

(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2008. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: $ 6.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6882. Direct from them, you can get it for $ 6.95 (US))

check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com, www.draw-magazine.blogspot.com and www.penciltopencil.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_59&products_id=592&zenid=eb99b3af1fbec4fce9ea889168ceff06

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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