Understanding Comics

In understanding comics, even within the first half of the book Scott McCloud makes many very interesting observations on the nature of comics as an art and the expressive power of the cartoon versus realistic drawing. Often I take comics for granted, the view inside the panel merely replacing the camera angle of film. However, McCloud sheds light on comics as a truly singular medium, with its own vocabulary and library of expressive forms. His thoughts on the nature of words and images and why comics as a reconcilliation between the two has been a marginalized art form is truly engaging and thought provoking. His triangular diagram of representation versus abstraction provides a surprisingly succinct visual aid.

After reading McCloud I picked up The Spirit packet and found myself looking for areas where closure took place. What I realized is that the mind is doing quite alot of work to tie certain panels together. Much more, in fact, than I had previously thought. In one panel, we see the two villains in a relatively undefined space, tlking to one another. In the next, we see that one of the villains is lifting a large crate. Though the two images are quite different, in a casual reading we simply accept that one character has just turned and is picking up the crate. the scene in the current panel projects itself both backward and forward, and closure fills in the gaps. When writing a comic, it must be very important to find balance between including too many or two few panels, so as not to overextend closure, but to keep the reader moving along smoothly.