There are really only two blogs that give it to you straight on what its like to create comics. One is, on course, Tom Brevoort’s over at Marvel.com. This is such a realistic day-to-day explanation of what it’s like to make comics for a big comic book company that we can only read it in bits and pieces. In a new series of posts entitled COMIC TUTORIAL, Brevoort takes you step by step with DR STRANGE: THE OATH #1 by Brian K Vaughan and Marcos Martin, starting with the script.

The other interesting blog is 52 cover artist JG Jones diary over at Wizard. Jeff doesn’t tell tales out of school, but you get an idea of the logistical challenges of this project, and how a creator deals with it, well, creatively. Here he talks about the cover for #27.

I was originally going for a straight-up Kaluta composition, where everything is centered. Mike Kaluta sometimes composes in a formal way, very parallel to the picture plain and centered. He is really amazing at that, but me, not so much. I always have to go a little off kilter. I think centered composition looks fine, and that’s the sketch that was approved. But at the last minute I thought, “Let me try a couple of other things.” I went down and shot some reference photos in the basement with my lamp again, because the light is so good down there. I tried a few poses, and this 3/4 view was just sort of an afterthought pose. I did two or three from the side instead of straight on, and when I looked at them, I thought, “Yeah, that’s the way I want to go.” I rotated everything off to the side a little and changed the composition up.

The result is quite tasty.