Drawing Comics is Easy! by
Alexa
Kitchen
A "How to Draw
Comics" Book for Kids by a kid.
ALEXA S. KITCHEN BIOGRAPHY
DRAWING COMICS
IS EASY!
(Except When It’s Hard) by Alexa's Kitchen
is entirely (and remarkably) the work of a prodigy cartoonist while in
second grade - when she was 7 years-old.
The 176 page book, with color throughout,
is presumably aimed at a peer audience of other children, but the
idiosyncratic How-To book will appeal to readers of any age, especially
those interested in cartooning, the creative process and the innocence
of youth.
Alexa, has already received
considerable acclaim for her precocious cartooning. She was interviewed
in Comic Book Artist at age 6, featured in Comics Buyer's
Guide, praised several times in Publishers Weekly,
caricatured in Print magazine and featured last year in the
Dark Horse anthology Sexy Chix with Joyce Carol Oates among
others.
Alexa has been prominently
featured in The New
York Times, Boston Globe, London Sunday
Telegraph and Publishers Weekly and her cartoons have been praised by
librarians as well as such diverse luminaries as Will Eisner,
Neil Gaiman, Mark Schultz (who wrote the
Introduction to her new book), Patrick McDonnell and R.
Crumb. (See Industry
Quotes.)
Her later titles include
“Kidding
Around,” her
postcard book (age 9) and “Grown-Ups are Dumb!” from Disney/Hyperion
(age 10).
5-3/4”
x 6.5” (176
pages)
Published 2006 First Printing
ISBN # 0-9710080-6-X Price: $19.95
Sample
Pages:
Industry Feedback:
"Alexa Kitchen,
Comics' Child Prodigy This
book [Drawing Comics Is Easy!] is mind boggling. There are
plenty of cartoonists 3, 4 or 6 times Alexa's age who are not this good
and observant. Seriously. Wait until you see the page of how to tell
what people are thinking by their expressions. Call it outsider art,
call it a phenom, call it a book on making comics [but] check this out."
---Heidi MacDonald
in The
Beat column, comicon.con 6/9/06
* * *
"Alexa's Drawing
Comics Is Easy (Except
When It's Hard) debuted at MoCCA, and definitely qualified as one
of the biggest buzz books of the show."
--Publishers Weekly
6/13/06
* * *
"When Denis Kitchen
first told me that his
daughter (then about 5) was drawing comics I made the kind of noises
that you make when your friends tell you that their five year old
daughters are writing operas, performing brain surgery or designing
shopping malls a sort of 'how very sweet and I hope you aren't
going to actually show me any of this please god' sort of noise. And
then one day Denis showed me her comics. Which were good. Really
honestly actually good, rather than something you say is good to keep a
proud parent happy. So now Alexa has moved into Scott McCloud territory
with a book called Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Except When
It's Hard!). I plan to buy a copy for myself, and another copy or
two for local schools and godchildren and suchlike."
---Neil Gaiman 6/12/06
blog
* * *
"The third annual
MoCCA Festival, held the
weekend of June 26-27 [2004] in New York City, focused on small press
and self-published comics and graphic novels And the talk of the show
was a pair of new titles (the Early Years, Volumes 1 and 2) by a
very young cartoonist, six-year-old Alexa Kitchen."
- Publishers
Weekly 7/12/04
* * *
"A genius! [Harvey
Kurtzman's] 'Hey Look!'
Lives!" -Batton Lash (Supernatural Law)
* * *
"She's the Tiger
Woods of cartooning!" - Jay
Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, King Features Syndicate
* * *
"[At] this year's
MoCCA Festival ---the
only thing that I was saying 'omigod did you SEE THAT?!' about was
Alexa Kitchen's how-to-draw-comics-the-Alexa-Kitchen way book
---actually a blank book on which she'd drawn detailed instructions on
the first eighty pages or so, including sections on e.g. color theory
and facial expressions and background patterns. (Alexa is seven years
old.) She's the first person I've ever paid to commission a sketch from
---$10 for a 'fancy sketch.' 'Is there anything you want in your
sketch?' she asked. 'How about putting a brick in it somewhere,' I
said. 'Like the brick in Krazy Kat?' Exactly like the
brick in Krazy Kat."
- Doug Wolk
in lacunae.com
6/16/05
* * *
"A marvelous talent,
with so much yet to
come." - Will Eisner
* * *
"Everyone [is] pretty
flabbergasted by
Alexa's work. Not only does she write and letter all her own work but
she has an eye for detail and composition that many grown artists can
barely match." -Heidi MacDonald in Comics Buyer's Guide (2004)
* * *
"She's incredible!" -
R. Crumb
* * *
"Alexa is young and
has a lot of drawing,
and a lot of comic stories, ahead of her. Personally, I'm hoping that
every so often she decides to do an updated Drawing Comics Is Easy!
If she does I, for one, will be learning from every new edition."
- Mark Schultz,
from his
Introduction
* * *
"Alexa has genuine
talent, to put it
mildly. I swear her drawings/staging about the teddy bear could pass
for [my boss's] boards at Pixar. I'm really struck by her catching a
number of attitudes in one character in the 'Cats' and the ones about
dance lessons, not just through expression but through strong posing.
And the sense of composition is very, very sophisticated, as is the
story structuring - really remarkable."
---Animator Joe
Suggs
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