Week 2: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud


Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud is a comic book about comic books. It explains not only the history of comic books, but also teaches the viewers how to read and understand them. Anyone who brushes off comics as being sorely for young readers should definitely give this novel a look. Comics are a medium of which contain very different styles, and in this case, it is very important not to judge a book by its cover. Comics as an art form has endless potential, as seen through the wide variety and expanse genres of comics. The first section of Understanding Comics describes what comics are, which is sequential art. Scott McCloud expands on this notion and goes into a lot more depth. Sequential art could also be applied to moving pictures or animation; one image shown after the other. Understanding Comics explains the unique traits that make comics so different from any other medium. It is a truly visual form that you have to piece together-- panels into puzzle pieces. The way motion is shown in a comic is quite different than how motion is shown in a film. A film makes for compulsive viewing, because you don’t have to do anything other than keep your eyes open. However, for a comic book, past, present, and future are all around you. Whichever panel you’re looking at is the present, but the surrounding panels encompass both the past and the future, and what happens between one panel and the next requires you to fill in the blanks. It requires audience participation and the ability to translate context clues. Before skipping over a comic next time, be sure not to confuse the content with the medium.

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