I am not sure where to begin on my blog regarding McCloud’s review on comics. I guess I can start on my early childhood—while I never recall going to buy comics or being highly interested in them, I was exposed to them early on. I had a few close friends, one was interested in video games, another liked reptiles and other animals and the third liked comic books. Therefore, whenever I had visited my friend I would checkout the various comic books that were lying around. Some comic books were wrapped in plastic jackets and were not meant to be opened. While I understand the meaning to keep a first edition copy or valuable book in a jacket, how does that help someone explore comic books if you never open it up?
I have read a few comics here and there in my early childhood; however as far as I remember I did not ever own any—they were more of a curiosity to me, something I checked out at the bookstore. However, in the local paper, I used to read one or two of them, the ones that were in color in my early teens, I believe there was a comic that had related to technology and back in the early 1990s, it was quite funny to see comical depictions of technology in the newspapers.
Reading this book so far is an interesting experience; I learned a few new things and have a little bit more appreciation for comics than I did. First off, the author’s main gripe is authors of comics do not get any respect, this seems true, based on his evidence and there are not many awards for them as compared to music artists or actors in movies. I thought the introduction was excellent going back to the first comic-like depictions and then disseminating what they mean, this was very interesting.
A couple notes on the physical layout and form of the book for the part to read for next week. First, a couple nice touches were added to this, one example is when you open the page for the first chapter — both sides are completely black. I am not sure the last time I saw something like this before, it brings a unique quality to this, I think it gets the reader ready, telling him that this is not going to be a normal read. I think telling the story of comic books within the format of one is an excellent way to get the reader both interested and help the reader understand the concepts presented. If we were to read a textbook-like paper about this with few or no graphical images dealing with the comics themselves, it would be much more difficult to understand.
A few other notes, around page 32-34, the author explains our perception of the world and how we perceive everything as a face or having emotion in some way and then he provides examples, this was very funny and true. And ahh..! on page 36, there is the picture of the author himself! He is very right in his point as well when he asks “Would you have listened to me if I looked like this?” So true! I find his generic equivalent much more interesting, according to him because I relate that imagery more to myself. The car accident analogy was also a good—when one gets in a car accident, it’s the other person hit “me” and not their car hit my car, etc, this helped to ingrain his point even more (38). One last item, something new I learned, the space in between the imagery in comics is called the “gutter” (66). Another new item learned was the different types of comics outlined on page 74 and how most follow the formats in 2-4. Overall, a fun and enjoyable read, although I think he noted on the first page it took him 15 months to put it together, yet it does not take very long to get through the first part of the book!