How do you navigate the enormous variety of comic book styles and genres when teaching how to create comics?
Jessica: Basically, we simply don’t. As Matt said, it’s our view that comics is a language, and that the basic principles of (at the most essential level) conveying information from panel to panel, depicting time passing, and clarity of action, apply to any kind of comics, from the bloodiest adventure tale, to the sweetest shoujo manga, to the most esoteric art comic. Whatever genre or style students want to work in ultimately is fine with us. That said, we do teach things like traditional inking and basic narrative arc, on the theory that these are tools everyone will be able to use and learn from, and that learning more is better, even if you ultimately decide not to use these tools most of the time.
