You Can Do a Graphic Novel: Comic Books, Webcomics, and Strips

Putting together words and pictures produces a compelling medium for story telling. Whether it's a comic book, strip, or graphic novel, veteran cartoonist Barbara Slate guides you through the process.

Barbara shares the insight and skills she learned creating characters for Marvel and DC Comics and perfected over the hundreds of comics, strips, webcomics and graphic novels that defined her successful career. She shows you how to:
- Find your own artistic style.
- Create characters that get people's attention...and hold it!
- Develop a great plotline and write believable dialogue.
- Lay out your pages to keep the story moving forward.
- Keep those creative juices flowing with her top creative tips
- Break into the Biz

And there's advice from 20 Pros in the field!

Barbara Slate launched a line of feminist greeting cards in 1976 featuring her character Ms. Liz. After appearing on millions of cards, Ms. Liz became a regular comic strip for Cosmopolitan magazine, and was the star in a series of animated segments on NBC's Today show. Ms. Liz also appeared in Glamour, New Woman, Working Woman, and Self magazines. Barbara's big break in comics came when she created Angel Love for DC Comics. From there, she created, wrote and drew Yuppies from Hell and Sweet XVI for Marvel and put her own spin on the Disney classics Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Archie's Betty and Veronica, and Mattel's Barbie. Barbara's original art has been widely exhibited, and has been reviewed by The New York Times. She is profiled in the seminal work A Century of Women Cartoonists. Barbara is a keynote speaker, panelist, and moderator at ComicCons. Since 2007 Barbara has been teaching how to do a graphic novel in libraries, elementary and secondary schools, writers conferences, and at colleges. Her first textbook, You Can Do a Graphic Novel (Alpha/Penguin, 2010) was reissued as an eBook by Britannica Digital Learning in 2014. It is widely used in classrooms at all levels of study, as well as in home schooling.