Drawing Comic Books and Graphic Novels for a Living

What artistically inclined kid has not dreamed of one day drawing comic books for a living? To be able to sell your doodling and make a great living seems too good to be true. Imagine finishing your first comic book for Marvel or DC and becoming an international sensation. You can then go back to your grammar school teachers and wave the comics in their face while lighting your cigar with a $100 bill.

Comic books are worth tons of money these days and all the movies and animations that they have spawned make billions of dollars worldwide. Spiderman, X-Men, Wolverine, Superman, Batman and Robin, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, and Iron Man are just some of the big name comic heroes that have graduated from the pulp pages to the big screen with enormous success.

One of the first great comic book movies was Superman starring the late Christopher Reeves. This movie had a gigantic impact because it was the first real movie to use those types of special effects that later became common. It came out right around the same time as Star Wars and featured our hero flying in a very realistic way. Prior to that incarnation on the big screen the only super heroes we saw on film or TV was the old Batman and Robin series from the sixties. This was pretty schlocky and had miserably poor effects but yet was wildly popular in its heyday. It is strange that it took Hollywood so long to realize that they were sitting on a gold mine with comic book titles.

Stan Lee started Marvel Comics Group and turned it into a juggernaut in the sixties with creations such as Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. This was the Silver Age of comics and featured some of the best artists and writers in the business. Drawing comic books became an art form when Jack Kirby (Thor, Fantastic Four) decided to lift his pencil for the first time. He and fellow Marvel artists such as John Romita (Spiderman) and John Buscema (Spiderman) took drawing comic books to another level of artistry. For the fist time in history comic books were considered modern and pop art masterpieces.

Drawing comic books really came into a new phase with great artists such as Barry Smith who exploded onto the scene with the dynamic renditions of Conan the Barbarian. Many budding artists were inspired in the early days to make a career out of drawing comic books. Drawing comic books for a living is a great way to go if you have the talent and the ambition. There are several great schools where you can learn how to draw comics for a living including the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. There are wonderful books available on Amazon.com that will give you some training in how to draw comic books. So go ahead and make your dreams come true. You never know, one day you could be the inventor of the next Spiderman or Batman.