Understanding Comics 1

Chapter 1-3 Prior to this course, my only exposure to comics consisted of skimming through my brother’s manga and perusing the comics section in the newspaper. Scott McCloud’s passion for comics as an art form and medium immediately piqued my excitement for this semester’s coming journey of exploring comics. My limited view of comics, complete with a specific style of art and subject matter has been enlightened by his broad approach to the medium of comics. The concept of the separation between the art and the medium itself was a very radical thought and it took me some thinking after seeing the panel regarding comics as a vessel/pitcher for the art (McCloud 6) to fully understand his proposal. Although the art is definitely essential to our interpretation of comics, McCloud’s attempt to begin establishing the foundations of comics, away from all the complications of genre, styles, and trends, is a brilliant idea. While I admire his interest to legitimize comic by defining it and broadening it to a full art form, his definition of “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence” is very broad. Expanding comics to encompass more forms of art helps it find footing in the art world, however it also creates a meaning that is confusing and hard to define. The specialty of comics loses its unique qualities when McCloud boils it down to juxtaposed images. Hieroglyphics and other ancient art that would not otherwise be considered comics and that have already been rooted in other categories only add confusion and fractures in the full understanding of the medium of comics. When he counts diagrams as comics (McCloud 20), I felt he had breached the line and overgeneralized the medium. Regardless his three panels on page 22 redeemed his argument, where he drew spheres of genres, art forms, and styles orbiting around the central idea of sequential art. Again, the liberating and unifying aspect of his argument cannot be missed. The definition he created provides comics as a home for all the similar yet different forms that have a common thread of telling stories by the juxtaposition of images. Another page that caught my attention was page 26, because it reminded me of the power of icons. This is the portion of comics that I can relate to most, coming from a background of graphic design. Sometimes it is so inherent in our thinking to interpret these icons into real-world meanings that we overlook the work in its symbolism and communication of ideas. Whenever I analyze company logos, I try to think of alternate methods to convey the message and feel of the business. The communication of ideas in a concise space such as an icon requires an attention to detail and an ability to strip an idea down to its

basic, universal representation. Icons speak in a universal language that almost all can understand and their specialty often helps them define an idea in a more powerful manner than words can do alone. McCloud says that “’Symbol’ is a bit too loaded for me” on page 27 though and that made me wonder about the differences between the two terms, which I had previously held as somewhat synonyms. As I read on, I found that symbols have a rather straightforward image to sound reference, in the sense of the alphabet, rather than the evocation of an idea through imagery found in icons. The power of the icon truly cannot be discounted and as he shows in the interesting progression of the drawing of a man on page 30, lines, stroke, and fill can convey messages in many different forms. At every level of simplification, we can identify the man, because the icon of the face is clearly engrained in our minds. An artist makes a decision of style and the more nuanced meaning portrayed by the specific manner in which he/she draws an icon to further hone their craft. Simplification is not always a negative aspect of art, and in a system where we are trained to believe more is more, we often forget the beauty of simplicity that McCloud spotlights in this section. Relatable characters are drawn simply and evoke a sense of normalcy that people of all backgrounds can connect to. It reminds me of the finding that people with average facial features are often found as the most pleasant to look at, not the supermodel with a distinct pout or nose. Understanding requires an important connection of emotions and storytelling in the medium of comics. McCloud further drives the message of universal communication in comics by discussing about how comics evoke sensory and personal reactions. Based on their experiences, an artist can expect certain responses but also leave room for the readers’ own interpretation to transform the comics experience to their own (McCloud 62). Our minds hold fragments of the experience and compile the fragments into logical and holistic ideas. This process is coined as “closure” by McCloud and he emphasizes repeatedly of the major place closure has in the art of comics. Images and words are interpreted and created by the artists, but the readers bring the stories to life and in the case of a brutal murder, “all of you participated in the murder. All of you held the axe and chose your spot” (McCloud 68). Previously, I never saw the reader experience in such a light and now I am growing increasingly aware of my input to the experience of a comic. In reflecting on McCloud’s work, I bring in my lack of experience in comics, interest in graphic design, preference for happy endings and optimism, and cultural background to inject a secondary story alongside his explicit

primary story in a comic. The partnership of the artist and reader communicated through various avenues panel-to-panel transitions is a very interesting subject in itself. As a lover of all graphs and infographics, I enjoyed his statistics about the usage of each transition in popular genres of comics (McCloud 76). The points he brought up especially regarding Japanese manga and its aspect-to-aspect transitions were ones I can agree with in reference to my past experiences reading manga and watching anime (McCloud 79). After he made the distinction of this unique feature in Japanese comics, I realized that this feature is the reason why I particularly enjoy Japanese comics over their American counterparts. In real life, I love observing the smaller details and frames of the world around me and that applies itself in my comic reading preferences as well.