Your medium is sequential storytelling, and you love the artistry of comics. Whether on-campus or remotely, you’ll collaborate with peers and faculty, find publishing opportunities, and hone your style.
MFA Comics Studios
Media Gallery
Write and Draw Comics at CCA | MFA in Comics program
About MFA Comics
Spaces for world-building
▪️ About MFA Comics
Comics students are storytellers, and our low-residency program provides the time, space, and flexibility to create and independently publish your impactful work. The only program like it on the West Coast, our curriculum supports wide-ranging practices as you work toward a long-form thesis project, whether a web-based comic or graphic novel. With one-on-one support from faculty, you’ll focus on process, craft, and critical analysis.
Low-residency structure
Students spend a month in San Francisco for three consecutive summers, collaborating with peers and taking advantage of our many spaces for artmaking on campus. In between these intensive summer sessions, you will complete thesis projects and coursework either on campus or at a distance, working one-on-one with faculty and taking part in online group critiques with the entire cohort.
Get published
As you dive deeply into comics making and pedagogy, you will connect with agents and editors, learn about digital distribution channels, and explore grassroots self-publishing options. Within CCA, the biannual digital publication Electric Squeak amplifies the stories from the program—memoir to fantasy to every experiment in between. The Comics in the City speaker series brings vibrant creators to campus, highlighting topics from independent publishing to the craft of writing and the future of digital comics.
▪️ Spaces for world-building
During summer intensives, you have access to all CCA shops and studios to deepen your individual practice. Our students tell complex, expansive, and often personal stories about identity and culture, often blending image-making, writing, and more. Recent MFA graduates A.G. Moore and Mowen Guo’s theses ranged from a graphic novel about queerness to a nonlinear memoir reflecting on art and life.
Drawing Studios
The Drawing Studios are welcoming, generous, and multipurpose rooms designed with adjustable lighting. Our energized painting community hosts events like figure drawing nights and the small-talk lecture series Notes from the Studio.
FlatLab
Located on the second floor of our main building, the FlatLab houses several different types of professional-grade printers. It features two Risograph printers, a Xerox color phaser, and a 24-inch-wide Epson P7000 inkjet printer. You can produce your comics and make zines in this space.
