How ironic to find a lovely thrift stash of composition books for pennies and then a prepublication copy of the new Making Comics, all while on an epic artist’s date last Saturday.

Making Comics, releasing November 5th, 2019, is artist, author and teacher Lynda Barry’s latest how-to book. Like her treasure trove of ideas, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, the physical format of Making Comics is that of an actual compostition book printed as though completely hand collaged, lettered, and drawn. The physical feel of the book is appealing, with its thin glossy smooth pages and white inked, fabric wrap-around spine. Fun!

I was suprised to find Making Comics available at Belmont Books in greater Boston, four days before its official release date, and happily snagged a copy.

It came with me today to an appointment at a Boston hospital and sat through an afternoon of blood draw, consult, and infusion, whirling me away into the alternate reality of monsters and dreamlike drawings that epitomize Barry’s style. It seemed fitting.

Making Comics

Each page portrays a handpainted background, seemingly glued on pages of text, much of it in brown fountain pen ink, with collaged emphemera and art by her students—and covers the content of Barry’s popular semester-long class of the same title at the University of Wisconsin-Madison art department.

Peppered with the author’s can-do attitude toward drawing and her philosophy behind the content of the course, are all the details that her course contains, even down to how she creates a classroom culture. The book covers the author’s guidelines for class seating, grading, how attendance is taken. As a teacher, no detail of this is uninteresting to me.

I also relish the how of conveying her class. I’m not only teaching but feeling my way to the same end, retelling how I teach nature journaling to teens over 24 weeks. What is of interest, what is dross. And here I see Barry through her inimitable style, tell all the details. Much grist for the mill of telling our story.

a Certain State of Mind

But the book is of interest whether you’re managing a classroom or not.

“There is no correct way to use this book but following the exercises in order will be something like being in my comics class,” says Barry. “This will work for anyone interested in drawing and writing and the mysterious things they conjure when practiced together.”

“This class is about practicing a physical activity with a certain state of mind.”

— Lynda Barry, Making Comics

The practice of a certain state of mind is the purpose of the class time, reinforcing that state of mind in the weekly assignment.

“Our first task is to get to know this state of mind and find ways to sustain it.”

Interesting to hear expressed as this was the subject of The Writer’s Practice class I taught this week. Experiencing, learning to recognize and then foster flow.

There is an energy on the first day of class—dread and hope combined—and I don’t want to waste it on introductions or taking about he class. We start drawing right away.

Yes. Energy and dread. I know it well.

We blast off on an expedition that will last the whole semester.

A class, Barry confirms, for the gazing part of you, not the talking part of you.

“Your compostition notebook is the backbone of this class. It’s a place rather than a thing.”

Our nature journals also have that feel of cherished place not practical thing. In Barry’s class they are a place for a daily diary (using an ingenious format that Barry suggests), notetaking, story writing and drawing.

Making Comics: the Contents

Some philosophy on how kids draw and why we quit drawing launches the book. It’s hard from there to see the divisions between content and I’m probably going to add some washi tape page tags to the various sections and favorite exercises. But in essence, this is the structure:

Materials, Methods, Classroom Culture
Section 1: Are You My Monster
Section 2: Character Jam
Section 3: Story Time
Let’s Make a Comic Kit
Last Day of Class

Each section is teeming with specific exercises, classroom activities, and the homework expected from her students. Little fits the traditional feel or content of a typical class but makes glorious sense.

Check Out One Complete Exercise

To see one complete exercise from the book, The New Yorker put out the The Face-Jam Exercise.

Back to Reality … and the Drawing Board

After reading through Making Comics for several hospital hours, the clean page of my own composition book was a shock of blankness.

The text’s every available space is plastered with notes, but through the hubbub of image and clutter of line, a clear thought rings.

The author is saying in sum: Draw. Don’t take it too seriously. Tell a story. Here’s how. Do it.

My Take

It’s a privilege to look over Lynda Barry’s shoulder as she pours out her ideas on making comics and teaching that to others.

Newly energized by both the book and my hospital visit, I can’t wait to fold in Barry’s ideas on classroom energy and management, and idea generation, with my current writing and nature journal students.

Heck, I can’t wait to use the whole thing.

The book’s greatest strengths are a can-do attitude, and the specific practical how-tos for idea generation. The book is replete with the means to overcome art fear, to imagine characters, to create storylines, and pull it all together into a story that flows.

A story dear to my heart that waits to be told is going to trot with me through these pages and see if it can’t live and breathe and learn how to tell its tale.

“Have you given up on drawing?” asks a panel on the back cover. “Would you like to give it one more try?”

I suggest you do.