The trouble with guides to writing comics

I'm busy acquiring every guide I can find to writing comics and graphic novels, for use in my Writing Graphic Fiction module.

This blurry photo captures half a dozen of the tomes in my meagre collection to date [not pictured are volumes by Scott McCloud, Will Esiner, Dennis O'Neill, Brain Michael Bendis and an early, slender essay by Alan Moore on the subject].

My problem is most such books are either too simplistic and generalised [Lee, O'Neill, several others], or designed specifically for writer/artists [McCloud, Eisner, et al] rather than for people who only seek to write.

I had high hopes for the Bendis and it has plenty of sage advice in it, but is as much about the business and career building as it is about writing.

By comparison, the two Groensteen's on top of the pile above are so densely theoretical as to put everyone but the most academic of minds off comics for life!

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking about crafting my own guide to writing comics, but that seems like an act of almighty ego/hubris.

I certainly don't claim to be a great writer of comics, but more than a decade as an editor and another 15 years of writing them have given me plenty of insights into what not to do, at least!