This idea of permanence comes up often in The Sculptor: what lasts and what fades, what is seen and unseen, and whether the things we do and create need to be validated by strangers in order to have value. To him it's like an anchor that he can hold on to so he doesn't get swept away by time.' 'And he's obsessed with solidity, with something that lasts, with something that isn't ephemeral. 'The fact that my protagonist is a sculptor working in a tangible medium does seem very appropriate,' he says. I was trying to make myself a better cartoonist, because I knew I had a big job ahead of me.'Īlthough McCloud has often championed the creative potential of digital comics, he says he always saw The Sculptor as a printed book, not only because the idea for it preceded the web itself, but because David's artistic product is so tactile.

But when I wrote Making Comics, I said in the introduction that I was doing this in part to teach myself how to make comics because I had this graphic novel in mind. 'Each book painted a big target on my chest, especially the last one. 'It's hard to imagine more pressure,' says McCloud. The Sculptor, published by First Second Books, is an ambitious (nearly 500 pages) graphic novel about a struggling artist who makes a Faustian bargain to achieve his creative dreams.Īs McCloud is acutely aware, the stature and authority his books have achieved means that expectations are high. Although McCloud published a well-received superhero comic called Zot! during the late 1980s and early '90s, he hasn't released a graphic novel in nearly 25 years-until today.

Between 19, the comics theorist published Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics, an examination of sequential art that became a touchstone for countless artists, writers, teachers, and readers.īut after you've written the book on making comics, what kind of comics do you make? For a long time, it's been hard to say.

If you walk into a classroom, library, or bookstore and say you want to know more about comics, chances are that someone will hand you a book by Scott McCloud.

The sculptor graphic novel