#Understanding Comics

[curtvilescomic]

page from Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

[balu8]

Scott McCloud

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[theexaltedmarthmallow]

Picked up a couple of very cool books today. (Only £22 for the DGS art book! Lucky me!)

[idonttakethislightly]

A Light Take on Understanding Comics, Part 1

All right, I'm going to do something dangerous and write one post that promises eight more to come. It's been a while since I reread Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, a groundbreaking nonfiction comic on the techniques, theory, and potential of comics as a medium. It was first published in 1993, and it's aged... interestingly, but going back through it is giving me a lot of thoughts. Specifically, thoughts about The Power Fantasy, the comic that's been occupying 99% of my brain for four months now. So I'm going to (try and) do a post for each chapter of UC, write about what I think McCloud got right and wrong, and apply that to TPF.

Chapter One is about "What is the definition of comics?" but more specifically, it's McCloud being very clear that comics can be so much more than just the (direct quote) "crude, poorly-drawn, semiliterate, cheap, disposable kiddie fare" that they usually were. Comics can be manga, or comic strips, or graphic novels, or any number of other things, McCloud tells us! There's precedents for comics in Ancient Egyptian wall art, medieval stained glass, all kinds of things! Comics is a medium, not a single genre! It's not just all superheroes!

...and look, this is what I mean by UC having aged interestingly. I want to remind everyone this book was published in 1993, and also point out that Watchmen launched in 1986. UC was groundbreaking in 1993, because lots of people had never seen someone write and draw seriously about comics as a medium. If we take comics seriously today, and we don't feel overly defensive about it, we probably owe some of that credibility to McCloud's defensiveness once upon a time. And he's right that "comics" is best defined as "sequential art", rather than "magazines about superheroes". You can tell all kinds of stories in comic form.

But that defensiveness about "comics can be more than just that superhero junk" is kind of funhouse-mirrored in The Power Fantasy and in its predecessor, Watchmen. I'm admittedly only on the fringes of conversations about superhero comics and their evolution over time... but I know Watchmen was also a groundbreaking comic that shaped comics culture forever. It's a deconstruction of the lighthearted heroic fantasies that came before it, and it inspired a lot of grimdark comics that matched its bleak tone but not its depth and insight.

...or so I'm told. I only read Watchmen once, years ago. I tried rereading it earlier this year, but I couldn't get into it. I just still know all this stuff because that's the level of cultural impact it's had. Also, because so many TPF reviews and blurbs say stuff like, "It's the next Watchmen! It's superhero comics finally moving out of Watchmen's shadow and onto the next thing! It's capturing the true spirit of Watchmen's deconstructionism, not just the surface tone!"

Understanding Comics is one of the best-regarded nonfiction comics of all time. Watchmen is one of the best-regarded comic books of all times. The Power Fantasy is one of the buzziest indie comic books being published right now. All of them roast classic superhero comics pretty hard, and maybe you could read it as an affectionate roast, but I don't know.

Superhero comic books are still usually the face of comics to people who don't read them. Probably not so much as in 1993, but still. How many more comics classics are going to get ahead by throwing them under the bus?

[EDIT: I later took back a lot of this in a follow-up post that you can read here. Writing late at night and not revising your posts has mixed results!]

[kaithonks]

So I’ve had some Thoughts about Witch Hat Atelier

I mentioned recently, rather kind of casually, the difference in the reading experiences between things like infinite scroll comics and paged comics, and I really wanted to talk more about this. I personally really enjoyed Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, and part of that was the time he took to explain what the gutters and empty space do for comics.

And while I don't feel super comfortable talking about webcomics and their large white space because a lot of webcomics are manhwa and manhua. I don't know enough about Korean and Chinese comic publishing to say much on how those trends developed. Especially at the current time because I don't like them that much, and often I feel they add too much time between panels. It is probably better that these are scrolling comics because if I did have to do the physical act of having to move a page instead of flicking my thumb, I would be so much more annoyed. Now something I try to think about when reading comics is why something is a comic, and I realized some of my issues with these types of manhwa and manhuas are because they start life as light novels. And that is putting us in the realm of adaptation, where the the mediums differ and don't always make it.

In that train of thought, I remembered one of my current favorite mangas, Witch Hat Atelier. Witch Hat Atelier is a manga, and I'd argue to a certain extent it knows it's a manga, and it loves what it is. Shirahama Kamome's detailed art conveys a deep level of love for her craft. Not just of drawing but of the art of manga. In volume 9 of Witch Hat Atelier on pages 30 and 31, the cast arrives in a city getting ready for a festival. It starts with the standard establishing shots, but then you see the cast looking out excitedly and poking out of their panel. They are looking at the next page, which is this scene of the town and its people excitedly getting ready for the festival. It uses its panels on that page like a window the characters are using to look out onto the large scene. And at the corner, it looked like the page was being turned; you could even see the hint of a speech bubble on the next page.

TikTok user Sir Supervillian/Sir Superhero did a series called "Into the Mangaverse," where he randomly read the first volume of a manga. One of these was the first volume of Witch Hat, in which he said:

"This story could be adapted into pretty much any other medium—Western comics, novels, or whatever—with no real change. And that speaks to the strength of the narrative."

While I agree Witch Hat Atelier's writing is incredibly strong, I don't think it truly could be in any other format without losing part of its depth. It is a story where magic is cast by drawing, and it itself is told in a medium where it is being drawn. The introduction to chapter one is a two-page spread of Coco at the lake, but it's in a book and still in the process of being drawn; a hand holding a pen is there drawing and coloring the scene. That is the core of what Witch Hat Atelier is.

On top of that, Shirahama's panels in general are done with a lot of care and artistry. Some panels have fancy boards or bigger scenes that are broken up by panels or by gutters. It's used most effectively when Shirahama is telling the lore of the world, going the extra mile to show that this is a story in the story and this is a history of this world. Yes, some of this could translate to an anime, but we still would lose that magnificent paneling. I am not even convinced this could be translated to a western comic. Partly because of the size, color, and Witch Hat Atelier's paneling, it feels simply too dynamic to fit within a western standard. The art is too detailed. I find it hard to change anything of Witch Hat Atelier without it losing something that makes it a special and beautiful thing to read. Hell, it did win an Eisner Award in 2020 for its English release.

Yes, Witch Hat Atelier is an amazing piece of fiction, but it's a piece of fiction that is at its best in its original form, a manga.

[missbliss12]

About rage, confusion, or being heard. (Scroll down)

A comics exercise.

[danaclese]

This book changed how I viewed media

When I was younger than I am on the day I type this (and certainly the day you read it) and was just learning how to appreciate art on a level beyond the superficial, I heard about this book.

It taught me to consider things about art, why the art took a certain form and why it didn't take another, depending on its purpose.

What is the art trying to communicate, how is it doing so, and how easy does it want the understanding to come to you?

Its fascinating on a historical level.

It's educational.

its free if you're clever

idk, book recs, that would make a better case if the sentences i wrote actually connected to the pages i chose.

check it out its on the archive

[gemstone-gynoid]

[smashedpages]

Happy Birthday to Scott McCloud!

[some0newithapen]

Just finished Understanding Comics and I feel like the author, Scott McCloud, would love Homestuck.

Like, maybe he wouldn’t like it for the plot or characters, but I think he would be absolutely fascinated by how Homestuck combines video games, audio, and animation with comics. Honestly, I think he would love interactive webcomics in general. Homestuck is just the first one I thought of lol

Just a thought I guess

[crashhole]

The axe killer closure example in Understanding Comics is the moon card. Not just in its appearance but in how mccloud explains that imagination passes through the gutter to make sense the panels through closure. But visually, we see two figures fighting ~ the victim as the dog and the killer as the wolf, the moon, and some towers (in addition to the panels acting as the real towers). McCloud himself takes the position of the crab, which represents emerging consciousness (evolution from aquatic life to land). You can even read the face of the moon as the reader looking down into the page.

I feel like that’s just coincidence, or like the collective consciousness doing its thing, but McCloud’s avatar plays the Magician archetype too well. Hard to ignore lol

[ko-conner]

INKTOBER Day 12 - Scott McCloud

[morganiscoolaf]

I think my final takeaway from Understanding Comics is that most of it is kind of dull or obvious but the chapters on time and panel work (generally the middle third of the book) kind of make me hate how little thought is put into that at the behest of splash pages. This goes for indie comics too.

[evilhorse]

Understanding Comics ad from the back of Trencher #1 circa May 1993

[reasonablydrawn]

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