We are discussing comics as an art form, their power in presenting information, and involving the viewer in class. Here are some of the discussion questions...
“To be honest, when I was writing these stories a million years ago, I never thought about movies at all one way or another. It would have seemed almost miraculous for these things to be movies someday. To me, they were just comic books that I hoped would sell so I could keep my job.” - Stan Lee
- Many film makers/actors are comic devotees or writers (Tim Burton, Steven Speilberg, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Zack Snyder, JJ Abrams, Sam Jackson, Seth Rogan, Bill Hader, Guillero Del Toro, Jerry Seinfeld, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Simon Pegg, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Howard Stern), even Barack Obama is known to be a lover of Spiderman, Star Trek, and a comic book collector. How do you think reading and writing comics helps the creative process? Are creative people attracted to comics or do comics help make someone creative?
- Capes and Cowls are the predominant subject of comics in the western world. Are there some types of writing and storytelling that can not work in comic form? Could comics tell nonfiction, a diary?
- As you can probably tell I think that there is no other form of print as versatile and interesting as comicbooks. Comics come together best when text and art are mixed together. They are a sum or their parts and when a piece is missing, it can be unnerving (take Garfield Minus Garfield). What are the positive sides to this? What are the negatives? Why to so many do children's books have to be the only books that can use images and be taken seriously?
- Some comment that movies and television are so violent, but they are truthfully over-shadowed by the violence in comics and even cartoons like looney tunes. Why do you think we are more accepting of violence when a cartoon does it?
- McCloud discusses how comics have always been a subtractive art, less is more. With the internet, we are learning the same thing. What can we learn from comics that we can use in designing and writing for the web?
- McCloud mentions how comics use type as a visual. On the web, we have unlimited options in how how text can be presented. What can we learn from how comics use text?
- At the end of the book, McCloud describes how one day comics will finally be shown for their power and versatility. With comicbooks becoming increasingly mainstream, is sequential art finally break through? How will this change the way information is presented?
- In what place do you think comics will be in 10 years?
- With your new found knowledge or comics, will you try reading a trade paperback, a floppy?
I never realized how complex the construction process is for comics. Every nuance, line, color, panel is constructed for a particular purpose to tell a story in a specific way.
There are some interesting points Scott McCloud makes in his book "Understanding Comics" that I feel necessary to share with my readers. He makes great points about iconic and non-iconic representation. In regards to letters and words, "Words are totally abstract icons, that is, they bear no resemblance to the real mccoy." (28)
In addition, McCloud discusses in Chapter Three how the comic reader interprets spaces between panels, nicknamed "the gutter". He describes how comic book artists will draw panels hinting some sort of action takes place and the reader assumes that action took place between two sets of panels, yet there is no proof it did. McCloud calls this phenomenon "closure". "If visual iconography is the vocabulary of comics, closure is its grammar. And since our definition of comics hinges on the arrangement of elements--then, in a very real sense, comics is closure." (67) This is but one way that comics brings readers closure.
The most amazing observation McCloud made I felt, was how the comic book artist made the brief pause of a silent panel seem longer. In the three panel set he uses as an example on page one hundred one, he says, "As unlikely as it sounds, the panel shape can actually make a difference in our perception of time. Even though this long panel as the same basic 'meaning' as its shorter versions, still it has the feeling of greater length!"
My interpretation of comics changed forever upon concluding this text. Given my experience, I felt that the perception of comics as a medium "for children" was most likely false. But I never even bothered to think about it, I just felt that comics weren't for me. I know that comics are really a mass medium that is just as complex as either film or television.
I've always found the concept of advertising to be sort of curious. Why, after all, would I want a company's best pitch-man/woman selling me their wares? That opinion is going to be light on criticism and high on hyperbole. I've always preferred to get my information from "experts" of one kind or another who can give me an educated opinion on what types of products I should buy. By this, I don't mean I have no mind of my own; rather I seek out information about whatever item I wish to buy.
I will take notice of ads if they are executed with the same level of elegance and sophistication of this 1983 commercial for the Atari game Pole Position .
When I (unofficially) graduated from Rowan in 2006, I wanted to buy a new television. So I did research online, and settled on a Sony Bravia. I never saw ads for the set I wanted, but that had little sway over me. I did see Panasonic, Samsung, and even Hitachi ads, however. But the ads didn't mean anything to me because I educated myself about the product I was buying. Considering the dearth of websites that are devoted to educating their audiences, I'm guessing I'm not alone. Lots of other people want to be informed about the products they are buying.
Aside from sites such as US News and World Report, CNET, Wired, and any number of other specialty sites that review and evaluate products, many seek other people's opinions via message boards. Whereas I don't trust ads, some people may not trust "expert" websites, and would opt instead to seek out other "regular" users' opinions.
Ad blockers such as AdsCleaner (pictured above) remove ads from the html, letting browsers decode sites, now ad-free. The growing use of such applications further makes online ads less relevant.
Either way, ads are becoming less relevant. When we look at the growth of enthusiast sites and the speed in which word-of-mouth information can travel online, it's clear that ads can only have so much influence. When we remember that the web audience is no longer captive to any site for content, it would probably signal the death knell of ads. A recent article on Techdirt sums up the situation.
While people can always gripe about the relevance of a particular expert's opinion of a product compared to a non-expert, I find this development encouraging because now, companies must be held accountable, and produce good products, or else be blasted on the web. If I have $100 to spend on item X, and there are five versions of item X, but with varying build quality and features, I have the choice. The ball's in my court, and any company that produces and inferior product will be ignored.
I hope companies will spend more money making their products worthwhile and less time selling them to me. If I'm in the market, and their wares are the best value I can get, I'll buy.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud is an informative book about the history, styles, techniques and meaning of comics. Interestingly enough the book itself is written entirely in comic book form. Not being or having even been a comic book reader, reading this book took a little getting used to.However once I had read the book it taught me to look at comics in an entirely new way.
The book begins with defining comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (p. 9). While the author admits that such a specific definition is rarely necessary, I agree that it is important to have one.The author goes to great length to show us the possibilities of what can be done with images and the blank spaces in between them.Even just a simple line can communicate movement and speed.Through images, we can visually show sound, smell, the passage of time, even moods and emotion.Although there are always limitations, why have not comic books become a more popular vessel for communication?
I was fascinated to see that because of the constant use of images which is key in comic books the author was able to communicate the message more easily.If reading this book taught me anything is was how cumbersome words can be.(Well maybe cumbersome is not the right word.)But in some cases it seems much easier, and less time consuming to show the reader what you mean than to say it in words.For example the idea that we see the image of a face in things that do not actually have one such as a socket, car, and two dots and two lines is easier to show with an example of how our minds immediately create a face than to tell us about in words (p. 33).
I thought that the power icons have to evoke feeling and understanding in the viewer was very interesting.When we see for example the Exxon symbol from page 27, we actually see letters on a board colored to match the American flag that represented a brand of gasoline.But, for many of us the image reminds of us of a hugely powerful corporation, the merger with Mobil, a culture of consumerism, the effect oil has had on our foreign policy, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, environmental issues, the list goes on and on.Obviously, a person’s view depends on their background I’m going to assume that Rex Tillerson may have a different opinion on this icon than I would. I chose this particular icon to use as an example but the idea would be the same for any number of others.Similarly, I have learned through this program that every word brings with it all of its baggage and because of that each and every word should be considered to project the intended idea.
Therefore, every aspect of a comic book is carefully and purposefully chosen to deliver a certain response.For example, the level of detail given to an image can help the reader see that image differently.Detail or the lack of it in characters, background, and objects varies depending of the purpose of the illustration.In many cases backgrounds tend to have more detail than the characters themselves so that the viewer can more easily relate to or see themselves as the character and place themselves into the environment.This book has certainly taught me to see comics differently.Before I read this I thought of comics as childish cartons of superheroes or other characters with melodramatic plots and meager illustrations.This book got me to see comics as an art form.
At the end of Understanding Comics, McCloud describes that the power of comics as an artform have been hidden and one day will shine through. With the biggest blockbusters of the last few years being based on comic book properties and an admited comic book collector, Barack Obama in the White House, we are close to McCloud's vision becoming a reality.
Last month, the film adaptation of Watchmen was released. This graphic novel is almost universally acknowldged for evolving the form of comics to the next level. It pushed what sequential art could do and demonstrated how comics could not only cover adult themes, but do it in it own unique fashion. Watchmen ended up on Time Magazines top ten best novels (not graphic novels) of all time. The movie version was faithful to the novel frame by frame, word balloon by word ballon.
When the Watchmen movie was released and started to hit blockbuster sales, Jeff Canata of the geek-culture podcast The Totally Rad Show, in near tears gushed:
"this movie is proof that we won...we as geeks have officially inherited the earth. The fact that someone gave $100 Million for someone to make an adaptation of the most dense comicbook, and do it completely uncompromising proves it."
So how does this change things and how can comics evolve to survive in a non-print world?
It shows that the masses are ready for content that truly breaks the mold and does things differently. The power of sequential art comes from the merging of text and image over time. The internet offers to all media these same advantages that comic books held in their pages since their invention.
So what of comics? As McCloud explained at the TED conference that Joe Sabatini posted earlier that comics too need to find no conventions for the screen, just as all other forms of media are experiencing. Marvel's digital comics service and DC's Motion Comics are beginning to address this issue.
On all sites, Still pictures and illustrations no longer need to be motionless and inside a box on a piece of paper. Text no longer needs to be static non-interactive, it can now be any where in the design that the designer needs it to be to better communicate the point, like word balloons on a comic page. The audience is ready, we just need to make it happen.
When I think of comics, I usually think of its content, and ignore the potential its form- the marriage of text and picture- has to convey information, mount arguments, and entertain audiences. While I have always liked superheroes, and I understand well the Comics Code of 1954 and the political undercurrents that underpin Marvel's comics of the 1960s and 1970s, I won't make this mistake in the future. Comics are a unique and wonderful medium whose purpose has generally been to entertain adolescent boys. But, when we separate the most ubiquitous- and famous content from comics as a medium, we are left to wonder at how powerful a medium they can be. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud does just that: it leverages the medium to explain its form, its content, and its potential.
Comics in many ways has been a victim of its own success. It was, after all, the popularization of superheroes such as Batman and Superman that fostered comics' early success. Adolescent boys (and grown up ones, too) love these superheroes, and the box office success of Batman, Spiderman, and the X-Men are proof that those characters are still popular today. At face values, superheroes comics seem to be mere distractions, "low art" as it were. I'm not going to discuss that here as I am not nearly well-versed in the history of comics to make that claim. Also, when X-Men is viewed in front of the politically tumultuous political backdrop of the 1960s, it isn't hard to imagine how a group of people who are born different (the mutants) and treated poorly by society, then find a safe-haven with Professor Xavier, might serve as a metaphor for the social problems with which the US was dealing. Aside from that caveat, I try to stay away from whether popular comics have had anything important to say. And McCloud doesn't touch on what types of messages comics are best-suited to convey; rather he explains that comics can, indeed, convey messages of great sophistication and nuance.
In the X-Men universe, Magneto (pictured) and Professor Xavier have diametrically opposed positions on gaining mutants inclusion into mainstream society. Magneto doesn't want equality; he wished for mutants to fight for their rights, with force, if necessary. Prof. X wanted to co-exist with humans. This slogan was coined in support of Magneto's position.
One reason comics can convey sophisticated messages is because they have a highly-developed set of symbols. These symbols have become synonymous with the medium, and are easily understood by any experienced reader. Examples include lines surrounding a character or an object, which means the item is moving, or symbols that are drawn on the face of a character to convey a particular emotion. Comic artists don't need to say that a character was driving, they can simply draw a picture. This is helpful as comic writers can cut down on exposition and focus on his or her message. As comics mature, they will likes devlop their system of symbols further, making the creation of messages more effortless for creators.
It's doubtful that early artists were as heady as McCloud is; these artists probably developed these symbols because of the technical limitations the comics provided. Space was limited. Prose had to be short and to the point. Also, artists had to use the space on each page economically. McCloud also says that cost was an issue as well, and that limited the number of colors artists used help cut down on costs. McCloud sums it up the problem with using color: "So, while the expressive art of line was subjected to the subtractive filter of commerce on its way to comics, color was subjected to the filters of both commerce and technology" (p. 187). It's clear that comics in the US developed to a degree as a result of financial and technical constraints. And so artists had to get their messages across in very careful ways.
Reading Understanding Comics reminded me of Marshall McLuhan's famous saying "The medium is the message". I have always grappled with this idea, for the notion of a particular medium carrying a message has always been foreign to me. McCloud's book doesn't shed any light on the idea, but it may bring the saying into question. While I understand that any medium or technology is embedded with certain values, and comics is no exception, it is also important to separate the form of a medium from its contents. So, while superhero comics are a common and poplar item to put into a comic (and you have to love how when McCloud talks about different media forms, he uses a pitcher as a metaphor to describe them), and they have more or less become synonymous with comics, this assumption doesn't need to hold true for all comics. We should instead look at comics as a pitcher of sorts, as McCloud does, which can be filled with any type of liquid.
McCloud recently spoke at the TED conference. His talk is well-work seeing.
At the end of Understanding Comics, McCloud describes that the power of comics as an artform have been hidden and one day will shine through. With the biggest blockbusters of the last few years being based on comic book properties and an admited comic book collector, Barack Obama in the White House, we are close to McCloud's vision becoming a reality.
