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Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner: Will Eisner is one of the true geniuses of comic art. This is his "how to" book about comics as a medium of expression. Along with Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Eisner's Graphic Storytelling, it's the essential goods on what comics are all about. Brilliant.Anyone interested in doing comics or really knowing something about the medium would appreciate all of these books.
The height of Eisner's work, and one of the heights of comics art, was The Spirit, essentially an 8 page comic book distributed as a newspaper suppliment in the 40's and 50's. Don't let yourself be put off by what may seem at first to be an "old fashioned" comics style, this is the real thing.
Graphic Storytelling by Will Eisner: Sort of an updated companion to Comics and Sequential Art, he focuses here on the #1 skill in doing effective comics. No, it's not drawing, or even writing. It's how words and images are employed together to tell a story, which is what comics (and film, for that matter) are really all about.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics is a fun, fascinating, and highly perceptive look at the nature of the medium, told in comics form. He deconstructs the esence of what comics are and how they work, but I think the book goes well beyond that into the relationship of words and pictures, our perception of time and the fascinating mental process of "closure". If you know someone who thinks that comics are by nature juvenile and silly, try lending them this one.
I find a strong relationship between the "words and pictures in sequence telling a story" aspect of comics and the "words and pictures linked together in paths conveying information" nature of the Web, so I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Web, even though it never even mentions computers.

Drawing

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

JP Tarcher $15.95

I'm a firm proponent of the idea that drawing is a skill that can be learned, and not something magical limited only to those with "talent". I think I know what I'm talking about here because I think I have just enough "talent" to know what it is. I'll tell you though that I've had to work hard to develop my drawing skills. This book is for anyone who has doubts about their ability to draw, or who wants to sharpen their drawing skills. Look for an older copy in the library and check out the "before and after" drawings by people who have taken her classes. You'll be impressed. She goes right to the core of what makes "realistic" drawing happen: learning to actually see what's in front of you instead of what your brain wants you to think you see. If you're willing to follow her exercises and let go of your preconceptions, this course of study can work wonders. I can't recomend it highly enough.