Taking a short break from all the Discworld, the next book I finished reading was How to Make Webcomics, by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz and Kristofer Straub.

The title of How to Make Webcomics pretty much sums up what the book is about. It is not so much about cartooning per se, it assumes the reader is already familiar with the basics, and focuses on preparing work for digital distribution, and on the business side of webcomics.

Personally, I have no plans or desires for making webcomics, certainly not for commercial gain. I bought this book for the same reason that I listen to the Webcomics Weekly podcast by the same group - the creators are extremely funny people. The book, predictably, is more down-to-business in tone and has fewer of the hilarious tangents they tend to go off on when in verbal discussion, but I still found it entertaining.

Coming to it from that perspective, much of the first half of the book is not really all that interesting, being about drawing and image preparation and such things, but if you are interested in attempting to make a webcomic yourself, I think the information found here would be invaluable help for a beginner. Later chapters, about things such as web design, branding and monetising your work, a are more easily adapted to other endeavours, and so are of more interest to me. There is plenty of good advise crammed into this book, I was actually a bit surprised at how much ground it covered.

Each chapter is written by one of the four authors, but the other three will occasionally chime in with words of support or dissenting views via speech bubbles. This is my favourite aspect of the book, it is where it gets the most interesting, and most funny, as the authors debate, argue and joke about the topics at hand. In addition, regardless of chapter author, they have all written smaller sidebars on topics related to the chapter topics, which are scattered throughout the book. These are often quite interesting and funny as well, I particularly enjoyed Straub’s four points on embedding sound in websites.

I also quite enjoyed the “hot seat” feature, in which each of the authors present a couple of their strips for critique by the others. It is interesting to see professionals talk about things like these.

Speaking of strips, the book is littered with them. Series by all four authors are present, usually strips which relate in some way to the subject being discussed. As mentioned, these are extremely funny people, who all make very funny strips, and there are plenty of them in each chapter.

If you are interested in making webcomics, this book is probably a godsend. If you’re like me, without any ambitions of cartooning whatsoever, you will probably still find it an entertaining read.