On Understanding Comics...

I find Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics a completely appropriate text to conquer the task of attempting to explain comics to the reader. After all, the presentation is done in comics. So as the reader follows along, they are able to see all the different methods, ideas, and devices put into action. Page 26, where McCloud introduces "the world of Icon", I find especially important. This page would hardly be effective if it was merely written about, instead we are able to see how all the different icons in comics inspire the reader to automatically process certain information. It is much like the term in psychology called automatic processing: once literate, we are unable to not read whenever we see words. When we see certain icons, like the sound "splat" or the picture of the cow, we automatically think of the sound or the animal, even thought it is not actually either. I find the presentation of "The Gutter" starting on page 66 as another vital piece to McCloud's book. Once again, this presents another instance of automatic processing, where there is a passing of time, however short, in between the panels, and the reader "fills in the blank" to what happened in between the panels. Sometimes it's something simple as the passing of time, or in McCloud's example on page 66, where we assume something sinister happened. While I find McCloud's explanations on the conventions of comics (pun intended) vital and interesting, his exploration of comics' history and its struggle today is just as important. Such as on page 140, when he addresses the idea of comics as a juvenile form of literature, "real" books being ones with no pictures at all. it reminded me of the comic strip "Cheerleaders for the Cause" found in the Introduction from McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, that comics is just a bridge between simple entertainment and "real reading". I found McCloud's graphic textbook a great way to start the semester because it is a great starting point for people new to the idea of comics, and is inundated with so much information that even those that feel as if they are veterans to the genre probably could learn a few things.