Joe Kubert's Comic Book Studio

Well crack my Crayolas! Once again, it is the hour of the Oddcube! …I’m sorry; I don’t know why I said that. So I guess I’d better try to cover it up by saying: Hi there! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying hello and welcome to the column!

That’s right! So if you’ve been here before, welcome back! And if you’ve never been here before, what the heck took ya so long? Nevermind, tell me later. I gotta tell ya what you can expect to happen here.

You see, with a VERY complicated system (involving many small notes inside of a hat) I choose a subject for my monthly article. The subjects can be everything and anything I feel like talking about: movies, TV shows, books, music, and the ever-popular et cetera! Then, I try to give you a little pertinent information about it, so that you know why it’s cool enough to check out, or un-cool enough to avoid. Then I wrap the whole thing up with a phony rating system to make it seem like a serious review!

Now, when I was growing up, I wasn’t so very different from all the other square-headed kids. I rode my bike, played video games, read comic books, and had trouble finding a hat that fit. I also was the artistic sort, and liked to doodle instead of doing my schoolwork. So it was a wonderful revelation when it finally occurred to me that somebody somewhere actually got paid to draw comic books!

Of course, it was a major bummer to realize that I couldn’t draw as well as the guys who draw comic books, and that my stories were…well, really dumb! There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into making a comic book, and you don’t really realize that until you’re dumb, I mean, ambitious enough to try it!

But the whole process has become a little easier to understand thanks to Joe Kubert! Now, if you don’t know who Joe Kubert is, then you’re not a real comic book fan. Cuz he’s a BIG NAME in the comic book industry. He’s probably best known for the work he’s done for DC Comics, first as an artist, then as director of publications. Then, in September of 1976 he and his wife Muriel founded the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, the ONLY accredited school to specialize in the art of cartooning.

But that’s not all, cuz he’s also written a “How To Draw Comics” instructional book, and developed the “Joe Kubert Comic Book Studio”, which is what I’m actually supposed to be talking about today.

Now, I’ll go ahead and admit that I’ve bought more than one of those “How To Draw Comics”-type books, by various authors. Basically, they are all the same, and I don’t really mean that in a bad way. They all basically say “this is how to draw a guy and THIS is how to draw a guy with super-muscles!” The example art is different in each book, of course, and I like to collect them for inspirational purposes.

So when I found the “Joe Kubert’s Comic Book Studio”, I rather assumed it was going to be the same sort of instruction book, but with some supplies included. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that’s NOT what it is at all!

Wait, first of all, let me tell you all the stuff for get with this thing. If you get it new, it looks like a book wrapped in plastic wrap. But when you open it up, you find out that it’s not a book, it’s a portfolio! You open up all these flaps and find that there are three different pockets to store your sketch papers in! One of the inside “pages” has all this nifty pockets to store all your vital art supplies: drawing pencil, colored pencils, eraser, pencil sharpener, outlining pen, and even a triangle! When you buy it brand new, it COMES with all these supplies, plus twenty sheets of sketch paper (suspiciously similar to the paper I put in my printer). It also comes with a blank comic book for you to draw in that has sixteen interior pages (not including the inside covers), and the instruction book!

Now, as I said, the instruction book is NOT simply “how to draw comic book guys”, as I expected. You are guided throughout the book by a little cartoon Joe Kubert, who sums up the entire process of creating a comic book! He starts off by telling you that you need an Idea, and a Story, Characters. There’s some helpful hints and advice on how to come up with these, and a suggested format on how to write the script for your comic, so you know exactly what happens in each panel!

He does NOT dwell on how to draw people, but he does point out that you have to draw more than just people to make a comic book! There are all sorts of props and settings, and if you don’t practice them, too, your book won’t look right! Funnily enough, I’ve seen many “how to draw” books that fail to mention this!

Then, you take your script and figure out the best way to arrange all your panels on the page! You don’t even touch the empty comic book until Chapter Five, and then the first thing you do is draw in the panels! You come back later and actually start drawing the story.

And then you’re still not done! Cuz ya have to put in all your word balloons, caption boxes, and sound effects! Then you ink it, and color it in! There are a few hints and tidbits on inking techniques, and how to mix the colors of these six colored pencils to get even more colors. But that’s basically it. And now that I know how to make a comic book, I feel inspired to re-invent one of the heroes I designed in my misspent youth. Like maybe a modern and gritty update of this guy here:
There are, of course, other techniques than the ones presented in the book, but this was the first book I’d ever seen that took you step-by-step through the entire process, so I was plenty impressed! Plus, I think the whole portfolio-thing is a really neat idea to try and keep all your stuff together. Although, if you’re not careful, the colored pencils WILL fall out!

Now, I found mine at my local Michael’s craft store for $16, so it really wasn’t too bad of a deal. I have seen them cheaper on Amazon, but they may have been used and missing stuff. But they should be available online from places like Michael’s, or Jo-Ann Fabrics, or Dick Blick, and probably other art supply stores as well.

I’ll admit that a serious art student may not be as impressed with it as a tween-aged comic book enthusiast. But it does tell you the basics from start to finish, and comes with all the physical equipment necessary to make your own book. You only have to supply the idea and the talent! All in all, I thought it was pretty neat!

But, I can’t just say that! That’s not how we do things around here! We have to go by the numbers, and around here we determine numbers fairly and randomly with a pair of D&D percentage dice! So, in case ya don’t know, percentage dice are a pair of ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between 01 (think of the most terrible, horrible thing and multiply it by six!) and double-zero, which actually means 100 (if don’t get no better than this!). So I’ll give my handy-dandy dice a nice and un-biased roll just like that…

…and end up with an eighty-four! Well, hey! I can live with that!

But that’s just one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! You can form your very own opinion! You can even share it with the world by leaving a comment below! Go ahead, it won’t hurt! At least, I’m pretty sure it won’t!

But that does bring us to the end of another invigorating, stimulating Odd Review! So be sure to tune in again next time to find out what I talk about next! I have not idea what it may be, so we can both be surprised! And if you're after additional oddness, you are accordingly invited to investigate my other blog, the link is in the right-hand side-bar! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube


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