McCloud, S. Understanding Comics. New York. Harper Paperbacks. 1994. 1 – 117.
Chapter One: Setting the Record Straight
The writer of Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud, begins his mega comic book by describing his personal evolution from believing comic books were not real books into becoming “totally obsessed” with them (3). He suggests people have too narrow a view about what comic books are and he sets out to define and elaborate the power of the comic book.
The first definition quoted is from Will Eisner who describes comics as “sequential art” (5). When any part of an art sequence, whether two frames or many frames, transforms an image into an expanded idea, then the art of comics is a vehicle of visual communication to enact an aesthetic response. Then, enlisting writing surgery upon comics, the reader is enlightened about the vessel of comics that has every element of many other media art forms such as writers, trends, genres, subjects, themes, and styles. The author moves from pre-Columbian manuscripts to Egyptian scribes and continues by citing William Hogarth’s panel picture-story and Rudolphe Tőpffer’s satire-ridden picture stories as laying the groundwork for modern comics. Because this form of illustration with images with and without words seemingly went unsung, the word “comic” reeked of “negative connotations” (18).
The author also shares the rich history of Lynd Ward’s and Frans Masereel’s woodcut novels and the natural progression to the acclaimed one hundred eighty two plate sequence of collages created by Max Ernst, now considered a “masterpiece of 20th century art (19). McCloud shares the detail of these woodcut designs within his own comic sequences and the artwork contained is sublime and powerful. The definition within a dictionary may attempt to define “comic,” but there is no mention of elements such as superhero, humor, satire, erotica, or science fiction in the definition. There is not a glass ceiling for what comics are or what they can be because comics are a creative tool to share one poignant thought in a single frame or a huge lifetime of adventure in a very long series of comic books. Defining comics may be a moot point, and the “great debate” concerning comics is an “on-going process” (23).
Chapter Two: The Vocabulary of Comics
Chapter begins by the author exhibiting the dimensions of what we see and how we prescribe a definition to our visions, but he stealthily points out that what we see in his book, a painting of a pipe, is not a pipe, or a painting of a pipe, but a drawing of a painting of a pipe. Thus, much more detail than we as readers usually take the time to analyze, but this example helps the reader understand how people can minimalize what they see and thus, miss the intent altogether. On the humorous side, the author also asks “do you hear what I am saying” and then follows up by asking the reading to check their ears, because the comic shared a statement, but no one said anything! What fun!
The icon is the next topic of discussion, that is, subject matter being written about because there is no discussion, really. The icons of life are everywhere and exist as specified jargon for specific topics or simply visual pictures society identifies with certain companies, messages, and products such as a swastika, a stop sign, or an Exxon gas sign. These are symbols representing a person, place, or thing. These ideas are further clarified as Mr. McCloud describes letters and numerical symbols as “non-pictorial icons” and “pictorial icons” that are resemblances of human likenesses, but only representations of the real thing (28). I enjoyed this dissection of the stages from an actual face and the morphed steps into a comic. The image becomes simplified, yet remains acceptable as a person. We as readers are involved in this process because we tend to see the world as representing us. People can see a face on animals, on cars, even on an electrical outlet. This tendency lends to the connections readers form with their world, and the universal habit of putting a human face on the objects and things around us. When we do place an identity on objects, an emotion is often attached to this process. Furthermore, readers often assign themselves within simplified drawn faces and the author suggests comic to be “a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled” (36). These ideas translate into connections with inanimate objects because we, as humans, extend our identity outward to our vehicles and clothing. We experience feelings and emotions based upon visual cues and our senses are stimulated by our cerebral experiences. The connections the author describes seem so obvious to me as a reader, but I do not normally set down and analyze my experiences on a moment-to-moment basis. This chapter effectively pushes me to look, and think, and then look and think again.
What the reader sees as a whole is really just a series of lines, and the author describes different drawing techniques that add shape, structure, and depth to drawings enlisted by famous illustrators such as Jacques Tardi, Carl Barks, Jaime Hernandez, Dave Sim, and Osamu Tezuka (43). Therefore, simplification can assist in enhancement of specific details that promotes a meaning while diminishing resemblance! Quality comics enlist words, pictures, and icons as their vocabulary and our human instincts make the leap to a perceived message via these “received information” (49). Ink is used to form a “pictorial vocabulary” (51) and the author’s “picture plane” on pages 52 and 53 shows the reader a pyramid of faces showing the meaning in the reality of illustration. By adding landscapes that are either realistic or abstract, the comic retains a foot in reality while expressing abstract ideas. Even the border of a single frame for a comic serves a purpose and what is required is reader interaction to assign meaning to conveyed ideas. This definition of comics clearly explains the relationship between illustrator and reader as quite a volleyball game!
Chapter Three: Blood in the Gutter
The author begins chapter three with the egocentric sentiments of childhood that made him feel like the center of the universe, and unless he was present, the world must cease to exist. I have a feeling right away that this chapter is going to filled with humorous insights.
Therefore, moving beyond the idea that life is theoretical, our perception of the world comes to us through our senses in fragments leaving the mind to fill in the blanks with faith. This “closure” is the vehicle for the perceptions we form and leads us to draw conclusions based upon previous knowledge. All that a human experiences becomes the foundation for the future experiences and electronic media, daily experiences, and well, all visual input is fodder for where our brains can take us in an illustrated world. I personally loved this analogy because I felt engaged by the author as he explained the collaboration of everyone and everything to create a perceived reality.
“The Gutter” is the space between the panels of comics (66). Hm, is this another application of the saying, “get your mind out of the gutter?” I will need to go look that up. The fracture of the panels allows a fluid yet separate account of activities. “Closure” as a term is further analyzed. This term is not finite in comics, though the word seems to portray an ending. The author interjects his ideas that comics present ideas and images to share a message, which is closure but not an ending, per se, and the craft of closure uses moment-to-moment happenings, action-to-action scenarios, subject-to-subject interactions, scene-to-scene transitions, aspect-to-aspect connections, and throws in non-sequitur perspectives to question the logic of transitional thoughts and behaviors. While no evidence of connections may be suggested by specific ideas represented within a comic, there is always a relation regardless of the jolt of a change or the portrayal of a disconnect (73). This description sounds much like the workings of a human brain, if you ask me.
Transitions are the meat of a comic because the author details for the reader the process of sharing ideas and closures for a massive meaning or ah-ha moment….whether there is one of these or many within a sequence of panels. The forms of transitions formally described are the tools enlisted for the expressing and delivery of meaning. Through use of icons, and interactions, and flow to surprising events or predictable endings, a comic is prose with an artful twist of subconscious tools and visual illustrations. This book is wonderfully driving home for me as a reader and a student that I can enjoy comics beyond my own little appreciation of one-panel jabs at politicians and society.
Comics are an art. Illustrating sounds, movements, and surprises while conveying ideas are exactly what brain food should be. As readers, we experience the portrayed scene within the construct of the illustrations as formed within the transitions and affect our own reactions and understanding to the images and messages we see and read. The sense of seeing is simply the delivery system of emotions and reactions a reader implants within their own experience as they view a comic story. With a little effort on the reader’s side, a two-dimensional visual experience enters an emotional realm where thoughts can be analyzed and synthesized, activity is experienced, and conclusions are drawn, even if we as readers do not always foresee the direction of the artistic vessel. Furthermore, what we see may not always be what we perceive because our minds fill in the blanks from a personal viewpoint. The experience of reading is the leap we take as readers by following given images and meaning to draw upon our own reality and expectations and thus, collaborating our own thoughts with the art and messages presented by the illustrator.
Chapter Four: Time Frames
Chapter 4 begins by describing how time is portrayed and experienced in comics. The ideas my seem instantaneous, but they are more likely quick bursts of icons, written messages, or sounds and activities stretching through the panels. What the reader reads cannot be actual time, yet a portrayal of a sequence of events shared before us. This is why one can enjoy a series of panels presented on different days and remain in the flow of the illustrated story. Time can be “held” or time can speed up or even stop in a comic. Depicted time and perceived time is the focus of what the author is sharing. The comic illustrates a space and time continuum, and this perception by the reader allows a flow of ideas within the construct of the illustrated messages. A sequence of panels can share a thousand years of history simply by staging the images and messages within the constructs of the shape of the panels and the gutters between them. This perception of time continues into multidimensional perspectives where the artist offers borderless panels and seamless transitions, thus a readers experience is not contained within a time construct, rather a new dimension of reality of mood and reality blending into a collage of a perceived reality.
“Viewer Participation” is required in many forms of media. In fact, this is the point of media: to engage in discussion and communication with a reader with the aid of images and messages and eliciting a response or an emotional reaction, regardless if this reaction is conscious or unconscious. Motions are portrayed by illustrations and writings of sounds, and a linear progression of time and space is not always required for a full personal experience with a comic. The series of closures, wrapped within transitions, and laced with icons presenting preconceived notions collide into a phantasmagorical display of art, meaning, time, movement, substance, interaction, reaction, and understanding. Whew, I think I forgot to include something in that sentence! Comics are a stylized diagrammatic and mobile drama streaking multiple images in a portrayed time with landscapes and icons to exhibit motion, message, and meaning to assigned images. Comic panels may stand alone or rely on a series of panels, but bubbles of information and stages set to create time and space for the reader ultimately cause an interaction between illustrator and reader, depending on one’s “frame of mind” (117) when viewing the comic.
Chapter One: Setting the Record Straight
The writer of Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud, begins his mega comic book by describing his personal evolution from believing comic books were not real books into becoming “totally obsessed” with them (3). He suggests people have too narrow a view about what comic books are and he sets out to define and elaborate the power of the comic book.
The first definition quoted is from Will Eisner who describes comics as “sequential art” (5). When any part of an art sequence, whether two frames or many frames, transforms an image into an expanded idea, then the art of comics is a vehicle of visual communication to enact an aesthetic response. Then, enlisting writing surgery upon comics, the reader is enlightened about the vessel of comics that has every element of many other media art forms such as writers, trends, genres, subjects, themes, and styles. The author moves from pre-Columbian manuscripts to Egyptian scribes and continues by citing William Hogarth’s panel picture-story and Rudolphe Tőpffer’s satire-ridden picture stories as laying the groundwork for modern comics. Because this form of illustration with images with and without words seemingly went unsung, the word “comic” reeked of “negative connotations” (18).
The author also shares the rich history of Lynd Ward’s and Frans Masereel’s woodcut novels and the natural progression to the acclaimed one hundred eighty two plate sequence of collages created by Max Ernst, now considered a “masterpiece of 20th century art (19). McCloud shares the detail of these woodcut designs within his own comic sequences and the artwork contained is sublime and powerful. The definition within a dictionary may attempt to define “comic,” but there is no mention of elements such as superhero, humor, satire, erotica, or science fiction in the definition. There is not a glass ceiling for what comics are or what they can be because comics are a creative tool to share one poignant thought in a single frame or a huge lifetime of adventure in a very long series of comic books. Defining comics may be a moot point, and the “great debate” concerning comics is an “on-going process” (23).
Chapter Two: The Vocabulary of Comics
Chapter begins by the author exhibiting the dimensions of what we see and how we prescribe a definition to our visions, but he stealthily points out that what we see in his book, a painting of a pipe, is not a pipe, or a painting of a pipe, but a drawing of a painting of a pipe. Thus, much more detail than we as readers usually take the time to analyze, but this example helps the reader understand how people can minimalize what they see and thus, miss the intent altogether. On the humorous side, the author also asks “do you hear what I am saying” and then follows up by asking the reading to check their ears, because the comic shared a statement, but no one said anything! What fun!
The icon is the next topic of discussion, that is, subject matter being written about because there is no discussion, really. The icons of life are everywhere and exist as specified jargon for specific topics or simply visual pictures society identifies with certain companies, messages, and products such as a swastika, a stop sign, or an Exxon gas sign. These are symbols representing a person, place, or thing. These ideas are further clarified as Mr. McCloud describes letters and numerical symbols as “non-pictorial icons” and “pictorial icons” that are resemblances of human likenesses, but only representations of the real thing (28). I enjoyed this dissection of the stages from an actual face and the morphed steps into a comic. The image becomes simplified, yet remains acceptable as a person. We as readers are involved in this process because we tend to see the world as representing us. People can see a face on animals, on cars, even on an electrical outlet. This tendency lends to the connections readers form with their world, and the universal habit of putting a human face on the objects and things around us. When we do place an identity on objects, an emotion is often attached to this process. Furthermore, readers often assign themselves within simplified drawn faces and the author suggests comic to be “a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled” (36). These ideas translate into connections with inanimate objects because we, as humans, extend our identity outward to our vehicles and clothing. We experience feelings and emotions based upon visual cues and our senses are stimulated by our cerebral experiences. The connections the author describes seem so obvious to me as a reader, but I do not normally set down and analyze my experiences on a moment-to-moment basis. This chapter effectively pushes me to look, and think, and then look and think again.
What the reader sees as a whole is really just a series of lines, and the author describes different drawing techniques that add shape, structure, and depth to drawings enlisted by famous illustrators such as Jacques Tardi, Carl Barks, Jaime Hernandez, Dave Sim, and Osamu Tezuka (43). Therefore, simplification can assist in enhancement of specific details that promotes a meaning while diminishing resemblance! Quality comics enlist words, pictures, and icons as their vocabulary and our human instincts make the leap to a perceived message via these “received information” (49). Ink is used to form a “pictorial vocabulary” (51) and the author’s “picture plane” on pages 52 and 53 shows the reader a pyramid of faces showing the meaning in the reality of illustration. By adding landscapes that are either realistic or abstract, the comic retains a foot in reality while expressing abstract ideas. Even the border of a single frame for a comic serves a purpose and what is required is reader interaction to assign meaning to conveyed ideas. This definition of comics clearly explains the relationship between illustrator and reader as quite a volleyball game!
Chapter Three: Blood in the Gutter
The author begins chapter three with the egocentric sentiments of childhood that made him feel like the center of the universe, and unless he was present, the world must cease to exist. I have a feeling right away that this chapter is going to filled with humorous insights.
Therefore, moving beyond the idea that life is theoretical, our perception of the world comes to us through our senses in fragments leaving the mind to fill in the blanks with faith. This “closure” is the vehicle for the perceptions we form and leads us to draw conclusions based upon previous knowledge. All that a human experiences becomes the foundation for the future experiences and electronic media, daily experiences, and well, all visual input is fodder for where our brains can take us in an illustrated world. I personally loved this analogy because I felt engaged by the author as he explained the collaboration of everyone and everything to create a perceived reality.
“The Gutter” is the space between the panels of comics (66). Hm, is this another application of the saying, “get your mind out of the gutter?” I will need to go look that up. The fracture of the panels allows a fluid yet separate account of activities. “Closure” as a term is further analyzed. This term is not finite in comics, though the word seems to portray an ending. The author interjects his ideas that comics present ideas and images to share a message, which is closure but not an ending, per se, and the craft of closure uses moment-to-moment happenings, action-to-action scenarios, subject-to-subject interactions, scene-to-scene transitions, aspect-to-aspect connections, and throws in non-sequitur perspectives to question the logic of transitional thoughts and behaviors. While no evidence of connections may be suggested by specific ideas represented within a comic, there is always a relation regardless of the jolt of a change or the portrayal of a disconnect (73). This description sounds much like the workings of a human brain, if you ask me.
Transitions are the meat of a comic because the author details for the reader the process of sharing ideas and closures for a massive meaning or ah-ha moment….whether there is one of these or many within a sequence of panels. The forms of transitions formally described are the tools enlisted for the expressing and delivery of meaning. Through use of icons, and interactions, and flow to surprising events or predictable endings, a comic is prose with an artful twist of subconscious tools and visual illustrations. This book is wonderfully driving home for me as a reader and a student that I can enjoy comics beyond my own little appreciation of one-panel jabs at politicians and society.
Comics are an art. Illustrating sounds, movements, and surprises while conveying ideas are exactly what brain food should be. As readers, we experience the portrayed scene within the construct of the illustrations as formed within the transitions and affect our own reactions and understanding to the images and messages we see and read. The sense of seeing is simply the delivery system of emotions and reactions a reader implants within their own experience as they view a comic story. With a little effort on the reader’s side, a two-dimensional visual experience enters an emotional realm where thoughts can be analyzed and synthesized, activity is experienced, and conclusions are drawn, even if we as readers do not always foresee the direction of the artistic vessel. Furthermore, what we see may not always be what we perceive because our minds fill in the blanks from a personal viewpoint. The experience of reading is the leap we take as readers by following given images and meaning to draw upon our own reality and expectations and thus, collaborating our own thoughts with the art and messages presented by the illustrator.
Chapter Four: Time Frames
Chapter 4 begins by describing how time is portrayed and experienced in comics. The ideas my seem instantaneous, but they are more likely quick bursts of icons, written messages, or sounds and activities stretching through the panels. What the reader reads cannot be actual time, yet a portrayal of a sequence of events shared before us. This is why one can enjoy a series of panels presented on different days and remain in the flow of the illustrated story. Time can be “held” or time can speed up or even stop in a comic. Depicted time and perceived time is the focus of what the author is sharing. The comic illustrates a space and time continuum, and this perception by the reader allows a flow of ideas within the construct of the illustrated messages. A sequence of panels can share a thousand years of history simply by staging the images and messages within the constructs of the shape of the panels and the gutters between them. This perception of time continues into multidimensional perspectives where the artist offers borderless panels and seamless transitions, thus a readers experience is not contained within a time construct, rather a new dimension of reality of mood and reality blending into a collage of a perceived reality.
“Viewer Participation” is required in many forms of media. In fact, this is the point of media: to engage in discussion and communication with a reader with the aid of images and messages and eliciting a response or an emotional reaction, regardless if this reaction is conscious or unconscious. Motions are portrayed by illustrations and writings of sounds, and a linear progression of time and space is not always required for a full personal experience with a comic. The series of closures, wrapped within transitions, and laced with icons presenting preconceived notions collide into a phantasmagorical display of art, meaning, time, movement, substance, interaction, reaction, and understanding. Whew, I think I forgot to include something in that sentence! Comics are a stylized diagrammatic and mobile drama streaking multiple images in a portrayed time with landscapes and icons to exhibit motion, message, and meaning to assigned images. Comic panels may stand alone or rely on a series of panels, but bubbles of information and stages set to create time and space for the reader ultimately cause an interaction between illustrator and reader, depending on one’s “frame of mind” (117) when viewing the comic.
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