ABSTRACT
Some of the most important writing about art comes from artists themselves, expert practitioners who develop theories to help explain and perhaps perpetuate their own creative practice. Ann Miller and Bart Beaty suggest that such border crossing has played a key role in shaping comics theory and criticism in Europe. Nicholas A. Theisen's primary focus here will be on the ways comics artists have theorized and conveyed their own ideas about their "poetics" to readers, often imagined to be other comic book artists in training but also comics fans and readers. Comics artists, especially early on, had difficulty taking their creative work seriously as art. Scott McCloud has described the deep influence Eisner exerted on his own thinking about comics. He was the only one of the artist/theorists discussed here to explore his ideas via fully adopting the comic book format, rather than a more traditional mix of texts and illustrations.
