STEVE LIEBER’S DILLETANTE Dilettante 019: What Makes an Artist Say Yes to a Script? What I describe here are choices made in ideal situations. The truth is that sometimes artists agree to draw a script for less than ideal reasons. They owe a writer a favor. They need to replace the transmission on their 2003 […]

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 018: Make No Mistake Last month I published a Dilettante column on creative advice that my peers and I wish we could give to our younger selves. It was unusually well received and brought in a ton of positive feedback. I like to think that by now I’m old and wise […]

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 017: Mistakes Were Made I try to approach my career as a work in progress. I know I’m going to make any number of bad choices as I go along on a panel, a page, a project. The trick is to eventually recognize them so I don’t make them again. That’s […]

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 016: From One Artist to Another: Convention Advice I’ve been asked for this month’s column to write some more about conventions. It’s become traditional in essays like these for a writer to establish his bona fides, so let me start out by saying that I’ve been attending conventions as a professional […]

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 015: Analyzing Eisner When I was in art school in the 1980s there were very few texts on how to tell stories in comics. My instructors were focused on drilling us in the absolute basics of drawing, but I was obsessed with figuring out how comics storytelling worked, how laying one […]

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 014: Building the Low-budget World When I was a teen comics reader in the 80s, I remember asking the owner of my local comics shop (Jeff Yandora of Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh) to recommend some other comics like Moore, Bissette & Totleben’s Swamp Thing, Simonson’s Thor, and Chaykin’s American Flagg. When he asked me what […]