Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

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The title of Understanding Comics is an homage to Marshall McLuhan's seminal 1964 work Understanding Media. [ citation needed] Publication history [ edit ] Brenner, Robin (March–April 2006). "Graphic novels 101: where to start". The Horn Book Guide. 82 (2): 240 . Retrieved 23 June 2014. I love the idea of this conversation more than I love the application--at least in this book. While I find the concepts themselves fascinating, I found the book tedious. The overall art and style employed by McCloud just wasn't compelling to me. I really struggled to finish this book. Yes, it’s an auditory medium, but transcripts increase access to a lot of listeners, including Deaf/HoH people, those with lower language proficiency, and many others. Several lower production level podcasts make them available. a b c "1994 Harvey Award Nominees and Winners". Hahn Library Comic Book Awards Almanac. Retrieved November 16, 2011.

Four-Fingered Hands: The narrator had these initially in Understanding Comics, but Making Comics graduated his design to include an extra finger. It’s about the way we interpret images. When things are close to eachother we group them, you see this in text as well: letters that are grouped from words or sentences grouped to form paragraphs.

There is a lot of information within Understanding Comics and I don’t think I have explored it all yet. It has equipped me with some new tools when reading and reviewing comics. The best thing about this book is the way Scott McCloud changes his art style and methods to explore the different ways you can execute the theories behind this book. I am glad he referenced all his work, especially when talking about other artists and how they write comics. The graphical representation of the art theory in the book helped me to understand comics a little better but there is just so much here that I will need to reread this a few times before it sinks in. The French translation of the book, titled L'Art invisible and published by Vertige Graphic, won the Prix Bloody Mary at the 2000 Angoulême International Comics Festival. In addition, it was nominated for that year's Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album.

I remember when this book came out in 1993. My fifteen year old self scoffed. "I've been reading comics for years. What can this book teach me?" Twenty five years later and a thousand comics later, on the heels of rereading Zot!, I decided to finally give it a shot. I was apprehensive at first since you really have to scrape to find a negative review of Understanding Comics. Did so many people like it or were they afraid to admit they didn't? In-Universe. The chapter on color mentions how a superhero's color scheme becomes inextricably linked with the character in the reader's mind. Author Tract: A non-political one, and rather well-executed at that. The three books are essentially long essays in comic book format.It's amateurish, but I believe if you're aware of how great a book is while you're reading it, it's not working at its best. You can go 'oh wow that's such a clever way to illustrate this idea, and the text is so effective', but it's a bit like reading an instruction manual, and nothing personal or particularly poignant. I guess the idea is to understand the basic structure and potential of comic art, but must it be so academic and dry? The book doesn't limit itself to the conventional art theory, but rather ventures into fundamental epistemological and phenomenological debates. It's informative and eye opening, but not particularly relevant, like every single other art theory textbook. Except this one has pictures (or should I say, integrated with pictures?) hours of everything I can teach you through lectures and hands-on exercises. An intense look at the art of telling stories visually. this book was intriguing, but also annoying. a comic book about comics! what a great idea! i wanted it to be better than it was. Older Than They Think ( In-Universe): In Understanding Comics, Scott challenges the view that comics are merely Older Than Radio—he defines comics as a series of juxtaposed images to be read in sequence—and makes a case for things like William Hogarth's serial paintings, a 16th-century Central American manuscript, the Twelfth-Century Bayeux Tapestry, and name-drops the Second-Century Trajan's column. He even gives an example of Egyptian tomb paintings, making comics Older Than Dirt!

Brooks, Kevin (2009). "More 'Seriously Visible' Reading: McCloud, McLuhan, and the Visual Language of "The Medium Is the Massage" ". College Composition and Communication. 61 (1): 180. JSTOR 40593531. Scott needs his own podcast. This was a great episode — and then in the ‘afterword’ where he was discussing his daughter and how her condition changes the way she perceives the world, that turned it into an awesome episode. Salamanca, Daniel Gómez; Rodríguez, Josep Rom (27 April 2017). "The Drama of Caricature: Simplification and Deofrmation as Avant-garde Rhetorical Devices". In Claudio, Esther; Cañero, Julio (eds.). Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays. University Press of Mississippi. pp.94–108. ISBN 9781443881999.McCloud, Scott (27 April 1994). Martin, Mark (ed.). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. McCloud, Scott; Lappan, Bob (illus.) (1sted.). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-097625-5.