WEEK 2: UNDERSTANDING COMICS

This week I read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and it was quite an eye-opening experience. At first I thought the book would be more of a history lesson, going through famous comics through the years almost like a textbook. However, McCloud provided something much more insightful than that. He was able to explain the structure, iconography, style, pipeline, and so much more all in approximately 200 pages. I really enjoyed the structure of the book as well—teaching about the world of comics in the form of a comic. This visual approach really helped to carry his points across the page in a simple, fun way. The pacing of his lecture was well-written too, being informative but also captivating.

I learned a lot of new terms and ideas from McCloud, but I really enjoyed reading about the different transitions used in comics. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of Western comics primarily use 3 out of 6 transitions (action, subject, and scene), with action-to-action being the most popular. Learning about these transitions reminded me a lot about storyboarding, which is similar to comics in a way. When you read a comic book or watch a film, you never really notice how the movie progresses in a technical sense. I believe that the same types of transitions are used with a similar ratio (for example, cutting on action is similar to action-to-action). McCloud commented that these 3 types of transitions are used the most because they tell the story in a more concise manner. He used the term “straightforward storytelling” (McCloud 45), which I thought was the perfect phrase for describing modern media. Using the same formula to appeal to the mass public is much safer than going the experimental route. This is like how animation studios, like Pixar, tend to follow a strict story formula because they know that it will get a good response from their audience. If it isn’t broken, then why bother fixing it right? But using the same formula over and over again tends to get repetitive and predictable, and it makes me feel more appreciative of experimental comics and even manga. In the book, McCloud discussed the difference between Eastern (Japanese comics) and Western comics. He showed how the fifth transition type, aspect-to-aspect, is frequently used in manga to “establish a mood or sense of place” (McCloud, 47). He also mentioned how Western culture is more about getting to the destination, and that Eastern cultures tend to focus on the journey. Upon reading this, I immediately understood why I fell in love with Japanese comics. I love the way that storylines play in manga. They don’t stay on one straight story arc, they like to deviate and have multiple arcs. Even though this prolongs the ending, it suddenly brings more value to it. I don’t think that I would’ve come to these conclusions without reading this book, so I’m pretty grateful to McCloud’s wisdom.