Customer Reviews

Draw Comics with Dick Giordano

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dick Giordano mixes very Andrew Loomis-inspierd construction techniques with his own very 1950s style. He devotes just a few pages to topics like figure drawing, character types, drafting tricks, and page composition. Everything but lettering, really. He gives the best foundation for doing a comic than any other single book I've seen. Right up there with Loomis's Figure Drawing For All It's Worth and Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation!

I loved this book! Infact, I've read it once and am reading it again! The cover art is cheesy, I'll admit, but the interior art is great! Y'know how Christopher Hart's books start off with somewhat okay drawing that just gets worse and worse? Dick's book does just the opposite. He's a living legend in the comics field and his book deserves a high review. This book is worth the cover price!

I love comic books and superheroes. Blessed with a little artistic talent, some story/hero ideas, and no clue where to start I ordered this book a few weeks ago. I love it. Dick Giordano will admit himself that it is not a complete work on every topic covered. But if you have been drawing for years, and are somewhat experienced with recreating images that you have in front of you with a pencil, then this book is wonderful. I am very pleased with my progress and would recommend this book to anyone who considers themself at an intermediate drawing level who is looking to advance their abilities.

For anyone that is interested in comics and how to draw them, this book touches on everything that has to do with comics. I recomend this book to anyone that is interested in drawing comics. I suggest that someone that buys this book have a little background in drawing skills.

This book is basically a carbon copy of all such how-to-draw-comics books. You get the same basic pages, not showing you so much how to actually draw a hand or head, but instead more-or-less finished drawings useful only to someone who already knows how to draw. So fairly useless if you're not an artist trying to learn some new ways to frame a shot or change a perspective. I bought this only because I'm a Giordana fan. I was pleased with about a third of the images here, the rest didn't do much for me. For the price, however, it was a good buy and worth having in my collection.

Some say the drawings are outdated, but those are the comics I enjoy reading. They're not out of date. The foundation and basics are the same. It's a nice starting point. I enjoyed it.

If you want to learn how to draw comics, there is no better book out there than this one. I got Draw Comics the Marvel Way, and You Can Draw Marvel Characters, but this one is head and shoulders above those other two as far as giving step by step instructions for someone who wants to learn how to draw in the first place, never mind how to draw comics. It is true that his style is old school, but if you're a beginner, just start drawing and worry about styles and schools after you've gotten some ability. Trust me, you'll love it!

Giordano is a pro from way back in the day... he hasn't been able to adjust to the changing styles and this art book is a sad display of that fact. I recommend getting a straight art instruction book from Bridgman, Hogarth, or Loomis. This book shows his deplorable lack of anatomy knowledge (seemed to be mainstay back in the 50's a la Ditko & Kirby anatomy), his simplistic 3D construction, and overdrawn oval shaped good girls, etc. He also graduated from the Wally Wood school of art where if you didn't know how to render anatomy you blacked it out. Still, he was one of the prime lenders to the modern comic language, so I suppose this is some publisher's way of patting him on the head and saying thanks for the memories.

Don't expect to come away with any newer material already covered in "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" by Stan Lee and Buscema (very simplistic book but the comic dynamics are much better) or any new sensitivity to modern storytelling. This book CAN NOT prepare you for any MODERN styles. Ranks slightly better than a Christopher Hart book (need I say more...?).