Cataclysmic Comic Making! We pit "Write and Draw your Own Comics" (Usborne) against "How to make Awesome Comics" (David Fickling Books)

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Back to "Write and Draw your Own Comics" - we dipped into Louie Stowell and her comic collective's brill tome to jazz up our panels a little with some of the fantastic stickers designed to compliment your own strips. Speech bubbles, sound effects and other cool stuff are in there to get you off to a flying start (so even if you're really rubbish at drawing - like me - or great at drawing - like Charlotte - you'll have some brilliantly drawn additions to add to your own work). 

We were a bit ropey at planning out a story so kept it simple, with an all-out battle between Bottom Faced Fish Man and Rainbow / Diamond for supreme rule under the sea...

Back to "How to Make Awesome Comics" for a few lessons on polishing up your backgrounds and applying the all-important polish to the story as it emerges from our simple grid. 

One thing we did realise early on is just how LONG it all takes if you're amateurs like us, and so it's a very good idea to put aside plenty of time and even if you haven't got the best bunch of art materials in the world, work as big as you can too because we were always running out of room in our tiddly panels (we were drawing in a fairly big A3 pad but you might even want to go bigger than that if you can!)

We absolutely loved the spiral-bound "lay-flat" presentation of "Write and Draw your Own Comics" (believe me, having a book that lays flat without needing to break the spine is a real boon when you're using it in the way we were). Having sets of stickers to use was fun too, and it's so full of brilliant advice (even stuffed into the margins) and great artwork and presentation, that we couldn't fault it at all. On balance, this would be the perfect book if your children are slightly younger, and haven't had a go at creating comics yet. There are so many nifty little tips and shortcuts in it that will get them off to a cracking start. 

But we absolutely loved "How to make Awesome Comics" too, because Neill's sense of humour and truly brilliant eye for detail comes across from every page. This is cool comic making, from a master of what he does. Breaking things down into chapter-like sections, and drawing on all the fabulous advice we've been loving in The Phoenix Comic's "Comic Creation" features that they run occasionally meant that we were on familiar ground. This is also a book that I keep sneaking off and reading myself, just to try and pick up some useful tips to buff up my own artistic skills (meagre as they are).

So which is better, Charlotte? Perhaps Minnie Mouse can help decide.

Both Charlotte and I found both books too durned good to declare an outright winner, and you know what that means don't you - With Christmas coming up and comics becoming more and more high profile as a means to getting kids interested in art, creativity, writing and literacy, it's a very very good idea to buy both! In fact just do that! Do it, because you'll have a heck of a lot of fun, cackle like drains (like we did) and find the hours slide by so quickly! Can't make a higher recommendation than that!

"Write and Draw your Own Comics" by Louie Stowell et al is out on 1st October from Usborne Books. 

"How to make Awesome Comics" by Neill Cameron is out now, from David Fickling Books. 

"The Lovely Mermaids vs Bottom Faced Fish Man" is...er...currently being finished off (we did tell you it took a long time to draw comics) so we might catch up in a future article and show you what happened at the end :)

Charlotte's comic making skills are top notch! Snap her up now before Marvel or DC do!

(Huge huge HUGE thanks to Usborne Books and David Fickling Books for sending us such a brilliant and inspiring pair of awesome resources to buff up our comic-making skills with!)