Scott McCloud, in “Understanding Comics” defines comics as, “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and\/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” This definition has two distinct problems: It is two encompassing, and\u00a0 it fails to grasp the comic as a medium.<\/p>\n
Kanji are Japanese written characters that are pictoral in nature. Unlike English characters, they are not purely symbolic images, but are most often extremely simplified and abstracted versions of the objects. They do not symbolize sounds like our characters, but actual objects and concepts. When written, they are juxtaposed in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information. Calligraphy is an accepted form of art in many countries, including Japan, and so in many cases, the words are intended to produce and aesthetic response in the viewer. By his definition, Kanji and any written language like it are comics.<\/p>\n
McCloud himself uses this definition to question the whether forms of art never classified as comics, are. By expanding the territory so far, he loses the medium of the comic – or at least the medium as we’ve seen manifested throughout the past century. McCloud defines comics as art. But perhaps the most important item we need to define comics is what they are exclusively produced on – paper and monitors.<\/p>\n
This is key to defining the comic as a medium, and separtating it from, say, hieroglyphs or Kanji. The term “comics” is specifically designed to distinguish works of art like “X-Men” from any other genre of art by their apperance, manifestation, and distribution. To take that element out of its definition is to destroy its meaning and purpose entirely.<\/p>\n
Finally, the word “comics” also inherently implies a triviality to the work. This doesn’t mean that the art lacks merit, but even McCloud is quick to acknowledge that the comic makes an almost unique usage of simplicity in the search for universiality. This aspect of comics should be included in any definition of comics, as stripping down of reality to build something else is inherit in the art and its imagery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scott McCloud, in “Understanding Comics” defines comics as, “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and\/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” This definition has two distinct problems: It is two encompassing, and\u00a0 it fails to grasp the comic as a medium. Kanji are Japanese written characters that … Continue reading Classifying Comics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}