Understanding Comics

For my birthday, my oldest daughter Erica the Brooklyn software designer/geek got me "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud, 1993, 215 pages. He has a great website.

It is of course a comic book. Very interesting stuff - the science of comic books. If you've ever been a fan of comics or graphic novels, I recommend it to you highly. I'm going to highlight a little of the science.

[I had ~1000 DC comics when I was 12 (1963). My favorites were Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Justice League, and Adam Strange in "Mystery in Space" comics. Periodically I try to figure out how to read these old comics online and so far have always failed.

I must have wanted some other toy in 1963 because I had a big sale and sold all my comics.

In high school I started reading Marvel, and continued through college. I had 6-7 straight years of Fantastic Four, Thor, etc. Doctor Strange was my fav. I sold those all off to a comic store for $40 when I was preparing to move from Cambridge MA back to Jeffersonville IN in 1974. None of these comics would have been worth much if I had kept them - they were all very well read, never stored in plastic envelopes.]

Definition of "comics":

Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

A shorter version: "Sequential Art".

Comics have been around for most of human history. Who knew?

Chapter 2 introduces us to The Big Triangle. There is a sequence of 10 slides explaining it on his website - but, too bad, not 1 good image of The Big Triangle. Here's a screenshot of 1 of them; I'll try to explain the missing stuff.

The lower left corner contains photo-realistic images which become more "iconically abstract" as you move to the right. Finally you cross the dotted line and are in the land of text. As you move up you increase non-iconic abstraction - dadaism, cubism, etc. Very instructive.

In Chapter 3 we learn that playing "peek-a-boo" as kids teaches us closure: "the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole". This leads to defining the 6 types of transitions between panels in a comic strip:

1. Moment-to-moment
2. Action-to-action
3. Subject-to-subject
4. Scene-to-scene
5. Aspect-to-aspect
6. Non-sequitur

Various schools of comics use widely varying amounts of the transition types.

The discussion of "motion lines" is fun. Plus "smoke lines" and "smell lines".

Chapter 6 is "Show and Tell". Again McCloud uses a common childhood occurrence as a teaching tool. This chapter is about how words and images are combined in comics. Oh boy, another numbered list!

1. Word specific
2. Picture specific
3. Duo-specific
4. Additive
5. Parallel
6. Montage
7. Interdependent

I was surprised that he never mentioned the conventions regarding speech bubbles vs. thought bubbles vs. telepathic bubbles vs. ...

Chapter 7 explores the Six Steps in the creation of art in any medium:

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

McCloud's exploration of the paths that different artists take through these steps is really interesting.

As you would surely expect, there are so many striking images in this book. Reading it is definitely 2-3 hours well spent.