Understanding Comics : Scott McCloud

This week I read Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, a non-fiction discussion on comics theory by Scott McCloud.

In Understanding Comics, a cartoon McCloud guides the reader through an exploration of the theory, psychology, and tools of comics. Drawing upon the wisdom of masters like Will Eisner, McCloud authored a book that has become a fundamental part of many comics educations.

One of the most interesting discussions McCloud covers in his book is iconography and the sense of self in comics. It's well known that cartoon representations are more endearing and relatable to audiences than realistic representations. Out of all the posts on my own art page, for example, the piece that got the most mention from family and friends was a doodled cartoon rather than one of my more "serious" illustrations.

Most will recognize that emotional bias towards cartoons comes from the simplicity of the characters. However, McCloud goes one step further in this explanation by dissecting what makes simplicity so appealing to us.

Understanding Comics tells us that we are fascinated by simple caricatures because we find them more easy to insert ourselves into. We are only consciously aware of a very limited amount of our own features (eyes, mouth, etc.) instead of the entire picture we see of others. Vague depictions of humans, therefore, are much easier to think of as "me," instead of a detailed rendering of a face, which we only see as "them."

Cartoons, therefore, are not just for children. They can be used for any situation in which a reader needs to, as McCloud says, pay more attention to the message than the messenger.

These principles are also not limited to comics. When considering figure paintings for a gallery, work that shows the model's face in detail tends to be much harder to sell than those with the face more obscured or generalized, such as in this painting by artist Zhaoming Wu.

Comments

Comic Strips : Winsor McCay & Bill Watterson

This week's reading is a series of comic strips from Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. While I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes, I had only heard mention of McCay's work. So, I decided to read both comics to see how they would compare as two strips featuring the adventures of a young boy. Breaking into McCay's work was very surprising. I was expecting traditional pen-and-ink strips, but instead found a comic in which each panel is its own painstakingly designed, full-color illustration. McCays's style is strongly informed by classical illustrators. His work joins the curving designs of art nouveau with Maxfield Parrish's lush classical backdrops. While these illustrators' work was quite realistic, however, the world of Slumberland is abound with highly designed creatures. While cartoonists tend to caricature, McCay truly takes his designs one more step forward. One character from McCay's strip ...

European Comics: Blacksad

Today I read the first book of Blacksad , an edgy French comic written by Juan Diaz Canales and illustrated by Juanjo Guarnido. The comics follow a panther detective through a series of anthropomorphic noir mysteries. I really enjoyed Blacksad . The story is a fairly standard mystery, but Blacksad's voice is engaging and authentic as a noir narrator, and the artwork is amazing. I felt that the art style was especially effective because it helps immediately establish character personalities--the criminals are rats and scaly creatures, the sheriff is a border collie, etc. I also tend to find that in noir movies or comics all the characters tend to look the same (all the men are square-jawed and serious, the women attractive and curvy) and the style of Blacksad helped prevent this from happening for me. Guarnido also does a fantastic job at using different shot angles and engaging acting within the panels. I enjoy this kind of visual storytelling much ...

Stereotypes and Representation: March

For this week's talk on representation in comics I read March, a graphic novel by Andrew Aydin and Roy Lewis in which Congressman and Civil Rights activist John Lewis tells the story of his life. When reading March , I found myself constantly comparing it to Art Spiegelman's Maus. Both comics deal with a man narrating his experiences navigating a time of great turmoil in human rights, but they are executed in very different ways. Where Spiegelman tends to transcribe everything about his father in Maus regardless of whether or not those details are directly relevant, March is more streamlined. Even when it deals with issues in Lewis's life that aren't directly related to the Civil Rights movement, those details are a vital part of understanding Lewis himself and how he came to be the activist and Congressman--like when we see him preaching to his chickens and protesting their deaths. I think March can have this tighter focus (which I found to be very pr...

Lauren's Literature of the Graphic Narrative

Search This Blog