Understanding Comics
There is so much that we do not see. Experiencing art1 is the act of seeing and yet most of us look at it casually, ignoring undertones, overtones, and details. For this reason I always like to read about an artistic medium deconstructed and explained, distilled for me to go back to what I have and look again, closer. Understanding Comics is about "comics" as an art form, with all the nuances stitched together in simple, concise explanation.
The starting point for the author, Scott McCloud2, is a definition, one which excludes common misapplications like cartoons and film. It takes a full chapter for him to reach his full conclusion of how to define comics: "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer."
He continues from the definition to a basic explanation of the vocabulary of comics and how it straddles the ideas of realism, symbolism, and iconography. McCloud is an excellent teacher; he takes his time in introducing, layer by layer, the concepts behind what make comics work and how. His tell is evocative: the pages span topics like Mayan pictographs (which he argues are comics), René Magritte's The Betrayal of Images, communication theory, and Japanese culture, all woven together in simple transitions.
I liked his section on closure, the process where the reader completes a work of art in their mind. In comics the reader sees a series of frames and in their mind they put it all together; a medium where the audience is a willing and conscious collaborator and closure is the agent of change, time, and motion.
Perhaps the best of the book was towards the end when McCloud shows that all art is layered beyond its surface. He shows art as the following onion:
| (Idea | Purpose) > Form > Idiom > Structure > Craft > Surface |
We are too often limited by surface, working our way from right to left instead of seeing beyond the obvious to the core. This is perhaps what plagues comics as simplistic, boyish, and shallow. Beyond comics we can see these layers present in what we put our hands to: film, literature, writing, photography, even play.
McCloud's final frames conclude with wisdom that could be applied to any art, that ultimately any form must be precluded with our will to learn accompanied with our ability to see.
1This post is rife with generalizations about art. It is true that art is an undefinable (next time you're at a boring party have the "how do you define art" conversation) but generalizations are a starting point for any discussion.
2If you want a taste of McCloud, he's got some free online comics. I especially liked the one about chess.
12:37:14 PM 
|
