Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”

This segment was a fascinating read, not only for the specific definition of what, precisely, comics are, but for the examples of what McCloud thinks qualify as comics. The ancient pictures certainly fit if you go by his definition of sequential art, but it’s odd to mentally equate the Egyptian record with modern superhero comics. I couldn’t even follow the South American comic – people died? The hero killed a nine year old and took over his kingdom?

For a professional comics author and aficionado, McCloud’s art is very simple, or perhaps I should say stylized. His author avatar is a cartoon with opaque lenses which hide his eyes. The lines on his checkered shirt don’t follow its folds but instead remain static, like a separate textured layer in Photoshop. McCloud’s avatar emotes primarily through its mouth and limited body language. Despite this, McCloud displays the possibilities of visual art through exotic angles and backgrounds. His avatar stands in the vastness of space or hovers above photographs of classical art, in deliberate contrast with complex artistic vision taking place around it. He skips from stick figures to photorealism and back, but the his representational self remains reliably static, providing a common thread through the shifting planes of art. This keeps the reader grounded.

The historical overview of comics was a good one. It was obviously not exhaustive, but it spanned a surprising expanse of time and touched on a few key developments in sequential storytelling. I’m now curious about searching out some of the artworks he mentioned, such as “A Week of Kindness.” I was also excited to see a few obscure works in the timeline with which I was familiar.

The page that most stuck in my head was the one where McCloud lists different genres, materials and styles that are included within his definition. It showed how far outside the mainstream comics can potentially go, starkly displayed on a black background studded with stars in a somewhat surrealist manner. He shows a variety of materials and artists, suggesting that you could make art through quilting and graffiti as well as classic pen and ink. It’s food for thought.