There are various books that can very useful for creating comics.
1. Scott McCloud’s “Comic Trilogy” – Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics — are perhaps the most famous books on analyzing the comic book medium, all done in the comic book format with a cartoon icon of Scott McCloud himself explaining the nuances of each section. Understanding Comics studies the history and format of comic books, showing the art form developed and how all the panels on every page work together to present the story. While that book looks at the medium, Reinventing Comics explores the industry, what business models comics have relied on in the past, how they can push towards the future, and especially how they can take advantage of computers and the Internet. Lastly, Making Comics carefully analyzes the various artistic and mechanical steps to product a comic book, showing aspiring artists the paths they can take, and providing various lessons and activities to help them develop their craft. On their own, each of the books are terrific sources of information and taken together, their benefits are immense.
2. Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner. One of the first texts to analyze comics as a serious art form,written by one of the first and greatest cartoonists to create comics in such a manner.
3. Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics by Alan Moore. A writing guide by one of comics’ biggest legends. Moore delivers a lot of excellent advice on how to develop ideas and places them on the page.
4. Drawing Words & Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. The book is written like a 15-lesson course in creating comics. Information, examples, “in-class” activities, and homework on all areas of the craft. There are sections on panel transitions, penciling, story structure, page layout and composition, inking, and numerous other things. Though the activities assume that there is a “classroom” of participants, variations are provided so people can instead do them on their own if they so desire.
5. Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel by Daniel Cooney. An extensive book that explores all aspects of the graphic novel process, from developing the idea, to drawing, inking, and colouring the images, to trying to break into the industry. Numerous well-illustrated examples are provided, as well as useful books for further research. Most interesting are a variety of sections in which various comic book experts discuss particular elements of the process, such as Jason McNamara on how to write for an artist or Nate Piekos on designing comic book logos.
6. Sandman: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman. The third collection of Gaiman’s incredibly popular Sandman comic, Dream Country includes the script for “Calliope,” one of the four stories featured in the collection. This script provides great insight into the workings of one of the most influential comic book authors and can serve as a useful model for aspiring comic book writers when formatting their own scripts.
7. Baby Name Books. There are numerous books on names to give your babies, with information on the names’ meaning, their cultural heritages,and often prominent historical figures who share the same names. Many of the name books are divided into chapters,with each chapter devoted to the names of a particular ethnicity (so a chapter on Jewish names,one on German names,one on Japanese names, etc.). These can be a superb resource for naming your fictional characters, especially if you want to give them a particular ethnic feel (in one fantasy story I wrote, all the werewolves had German names, the giants Norwegian ones, and the fairies Irish).