Jun 10, 2008
What made you decide to create this book? Why do it now?
Jessica Abel: The immediate inspiration came when Matt was pitching his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style to publishers. Our agent, Bob Mecoy, found that lots of editors were intrigued but thought the book was a bit too esoteric. But if Matt could write a “how to write a graphic novel” book, well, that would be another story. When I heard this, I jumped right in. We didn’t want to write the book they were asking for, but we’d already thought of trying to write a real textbook on comics—someday—and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
