Cartooning Required Reading List
I’m teaching a cartooning class in the spring (I’ve not finished the syllabus or designing the course yet) but I had to tell the campus store yesterday what books they needed to order.
The list above was what I pulled together in a quick panic. I still want to make sure I cover Peanuts & other newspaper strips as well as some webcomics, but for the most part I think it’s a pretty solid list.
Can you think of any MUST READS (for cartooning) that I missed?
You're seriously requiring all of those books? That's going to cost your students an absurd sum of money. 🙁 A lot of comic collections are in the $20 range, so that's $260 or more.
I know, I'm an evil professor right?
No seriously, they are required to read all the books above, but I'm not requiring them to buy them all. I'm having $100 worth of books being required the rest will be kept on hold at the campus library so that they can go there and read it (they just can't leave the library with it). And if they are thrifty they could get the books for a lot cheaper on Amazon or online.
Yeah I know $100 is still a lot but I figure a lot of text books cost between $80-$150 so I don't feel bad. Plus the major is "Sequential Arts" (comics) so I feel like if they are going to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in comics then they should be exposed to some indie/award winners. My original "must read" list had 33 books on it. So I'm proud of the fact that I widdled it down to what you see above.
"Whittled", not "widdled". (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
😉
I'm dyslexic. Bite me.
And I'm a compulsive human spellchecker. Bite me back.
😉
Good then before we go to print you can proof EVERY page for us :).
I recall having to buy a $190 text for one class. It was a book that I was never likely to ever reference again and the bookstore refused to buy back. If anyone wants to buy a circa 1992 book on circuit board automated manufacturing, please send me an offer.
As far as Scott's requirements, I would imagine receiving a good bit of enjoyment reading and probably re-reading those (thus taking the sting out of the purchase), unless Scott is purposely choosing a bunch of poorly devised comics to teach how not to cartoon.
Thanks buddy!
Yeah man for Gen-ed it was nothing to spend $100 or up for text books. So I figured my list was pretty good.
I'd suggest Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" as a basic primer — it discusses what makes comics different from other media (panels, the gutter, time = space, etc)
It's a good suggestion, but it's already covered somewhere else.
The major is a "sequential arts" major and "Understanding Comics" is a required text for Sequential Arts I, which is a pre-req for my class.