I am not sure where to begin on my blog regarding McCloud\u2019s review on comics.\u00a0 I guess I can start on my early childhood\u2014while I never recall going to buy comics or being highly interested in them, I was exposed to them early on.\u00a0 I had a few close friends, one was interested in video games, another liked reptiles and other animals and the third liked comic books.\u00a0 Therefore, whenever I had visited my friend I would checkout the various comic books that were lying around.\u00a0 Some comic books were wrapped in plastic jackets and were not meant to be opened.\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
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\u2014they were more of a curiosity to me, something I checked out at the bookstore.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 First off, the author\u2019s 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.\u00a0 I thought the introduction was excellent going back to the first comic-like depictions and then disseminating what they mean, this was very interesting.<\/p>\n
A couple notes on the physical layout and form of the book for the part to read for next week.\u00a0 First, a couple nice touches were added to this, one example is when you open the page for the first chapter \u2014 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 And ahh..! on page 36, there is the picture of the author himself!\u00a0 He is very right in his point as well when he asks \u201cWould you have listened to me if I looked like this?\u201d\u00a0 So true!\u00a0 I find his generic equivalent much more interesting, according to him because I relate that imagery more to myself.\u00a0 The car accident analogy was also a good\u2014when one gets in a car accident, it\u2019s the other person hit \u201cme\u201d and not their car hit my car, etc, this helped to ingrain his point even more (38).\u00a0 One last item, something new I learned, the space in between the imagery in comics is called the \u201cgutter\u201d (66).\u00a0 Another new item learned was the different types of comics outlined on page 74 and how most follow the formats in 2-4.\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am not sure where to begin on my blog regarding McCloud\u2019s review on comics.\u00a0 I guess I can start on my early childhood\u2014while I never recall going to buy comics or being highly interested in them, I was exposed to them early on.\u00a0 I had a few close friends, one was interested in video … Continue reading Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, pages 1-137<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}