Atomic Basement, Downtown’s newly minted comic book store, invites artists, storytellers or anyone who knows how to hold a pencil to a free comic book making class at 3 p.m., today.

Leading today’s workshop are the two creators of sci-fi western comic book “Guns A’ Blazin’,” artist Rafael Navarro and writer Mike Wellman, co-owner of Atomic. They promise to reveal all their tips, tricks, rules and shortcuts on how to make a dazzling picture driven story.

They’ll illustrate storytelling concepts based on popular series (Harry Potter, Spiderman, Star Wars), and artist Navarro will explain the basic steps of character design, page layout and putting together a page for comics.

This new session dubbed, “Makin’ Comics” is a two-part series in partnership with Brickersville, a studio in Shoreline Village dedicated to the art and craft of building with LEGOs. Together they aim to create a LEGO-based comic book series dedicated to the city of Long Beach.

Part two of the series will be held at Brickersville in March (TBD) where Wellman, Navarro and Patricia Tsoiasue, Brickersville’s director, will hash out characters and a basic storyline for the comic book series devoted to the history of Long Beach.

The unique series will be formatted in an Italian-style of comic book making known as Fumetti, a photographic driven style of comics. So even if you’re not interested in having a hand in the Long Beach LEGO story, there’s much to be learned from Italy’s artistic photonovel version.

Brickersville and Atomic Basement present “Makin’ Comics” event is from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Atomic Basement Comics and Creator’s Lab at 400 E. 3rd St. The all-ages event is free to attend. For more information, click here.