Comic Book Creator 2 (**** out of four) is a cool program that lets you create your own comic books by combining screen shots, photos, speech balloons, caption boxes, clip art, audio and video clips and more. You can use the included images and other options or import your own photos and the like to make lively, colorful books you can use in any number of ways. The program uses drag and drop technology to make it easy to create your comic book, and clear and intuitive on-screen options let you get started as soon as you load the program.

Start by selecting from the options on screen: the page style, number of pages and cover page if you want one. The included page layouts offer a variety of boxes of various shapes and sizes for placing anywhere from 1 to 10 images on your page, and you can use the same layout for all pages or select different layouts for each page. Then just click in the box you want to fill, select the background you want from the wide selection included and drag and drop your selection to the box. Next choose what to put in the box: text, images, clip art, audio, video. The program includes licensed versions of images from Marvel, Sony Online Entertainment, Paramount Pictures and TOKYOPOP; use these or choose from the included clip art images and text and other options, or import your own images, photos or screen shots. Drag and drop the images or whatever into each box, and, if you want, add a balloon and fill it with any type of text. Repeat until all the boxes are filled and go on to the next page. Then scroll through what you’ve created to see how it looks, make any changes you want, and the pages are ready to print or share. It’s that simple.

Your comic book can be simple or complex--your choice. Either way, it’s easy to create your book and to change or delete individual boxes or entire pages at any time. The included selections of balloon styles, caption boxes, backgrounds, fonts, colors and the like give you a wide variety of choices for whatever look you want, and it’s easy to change selections at any time.

The possibilities are endless: create a comic book based on your favorite video game, or one with images of a sports team or player, make a souvenir book of a trip, or—you could even use it for a school project to illustrate a concept or offer instructions, dramatize a book you’re reviewing, and much more.

Once you’ve created your comic book, you can save it as a JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIF, or HTML file, or make a Flash Flip-Book to put on your computer browser so you can "peel" over the pages. You can also post your book on a blog, email it to a friend or family, print it yourself or send it to a professional digital printer.

The program includes more than 1,200 screenshots, caption boxes, clip art, audio clips and artwork and more than 100 professional templates. Help is available from callout boxes and a tutorial.

We made a comic book with some of the clip art and then used our own photos for a more personal and fun look. We created a comic book of some sports shots, complete with balloons for what we thought players were thinking or saying and then created another one with photos of a dog and friend and captions for "words" from the dog and friend. Each one was a big hit, and fun and easy to do.