Scott McCoud's Understanding Comics

Prior to reading this book, I was unfamiliar with Scott McCloud and his work. With this book, he tries to create a fun environment for the reader by writing and illustrating it as a comic itself. However, despite his attempts, it still comes off to me as a bit of a text book. He seems to touch on every possible element of comics that he can. This is obviously in attempt to be as thorough as he can, so that we as the reader get a comprehensive view of the subject. However, there were a handful of facts and techniques that I was not aware of, that seemed to catch my attention during this read.

Earlier in my life, I have been an avid reader of comics, specifically superhero comics from MARVEL. When selecting what I wanted to read, I went solely by how cool I thought the hero was, or even more so, how detailed and exciting the drawings were. When McCloud talks about how artists choose their level of detail in drawings, I had no idea that thoughts of psychological effects on the reader went into the equation. It makes me wonder about exciting stories that I may of missed out on because they were simply drawn much too simply for my tastes.

My interest was also peaked when McCloud discusses the layouts of pages, and the spaces in between frames on a page. I had noticed prior to reading this that comics seem to take more and more liberties with breaking the edge of frames in more current issues than in years past.