Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.
McCloud's observations are very often trivial – but nobody before him has made them
5 stars
Everything you may have heard about this book is true: this is the most breathtakingly intelligent look at comics there will ever be, and it will give you an alarming number of new insights. McCloud's observations are very often downright trivial – but nobody before him has made them. Quite fittingly, he uses the medium he discusses to illustrate his points, and by giving his explanations in comic form, he can utilise a rich array of rhetorical methods.
An excellent narrative on comics and their place in history, literature and art. It includes a great explanation of what the elements are and the broad ranges of those elements that goes into comics. A thoroughly informative and entertaining read.
I never thought I needed this—do you need a guide for understanding chocolate or ice cream? (Now that I mention it, though, I bet those exist). I like what I like, and enjoy it, and that’s that, right? Well, now I wish I’d read this twenty years ago. McCloud adds new dimensions to my appreciation: he offers context, history, design insights, and makes it all accessible and enjoyable. It’s too early to tell how/if this will change my future reading of comics, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Scott McCloud's love and understanding of comics is beautifully and simply expressed here. So much so that it increased my love and understanding of comics I read in the past and definitely comics I will read in the future.
As I was reading other peoples reviews and discussions about this book I noticed that most people are intrigued with the idea that the simpler the character on the page is, the easier it is for the reader to identify with the character. This is something that I noticed myself long before I read this book, so it wasn't so revolutionary to me... BUT his chapter on time and expressing time in space in comics truly blew my mind when I read it. It made me see and truly understand so much about pacing in comics. It helped me form, what I like to call, my internal gear shift. As a …
Scott McCloud's love and understanding of comics is beautifully and simply expressed here. So much so that it increased my love and understanding of comics I read in the past and definitely comics I will read in the future.
As I was reading other peoples reviews and discussions about this book I noticed that most people are intrigued with the idea that the simpler the character on the page is, the easier it is for the reader to identify with the character. This is something that I noticed myself long before I read this book, so it wasn't so revolutionary to me... BUT his chapter on time and expressing time in space in comics truly blew my mind when I read it. It made me see and truly understand so much about pacing in comics. It helped me form, what I like to call, my internal gear shift. As a reader I didn't focus on speed of my reading and over time the only speed for reading became as fast as possible, but in comics this can be a huge disadvantage especially when going through slower and more solemn scenes. Now when I see a comic page and take a look at the composition of the panels I know when the story demands of me to go faster or slower and I am grateful for this new found knowledge.
This book is an excellent start for anyone who wants to learn about comics, and I certainly will continue my research on this topic.
I have been getting into comics lately and I am quickly discovering there is so much about this medium that I do not know. When trying to review a comic or graphic novel, I find it easy to talk about plot but talking about the art is difficult. I picked up Understanding Comics because there is so much to learn and I wanted a better grasp on the art form. And it is art, it might not be as highbrow as artists like Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet or my personal favourite Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, but it is still art. To exclude comics as an art form would be like removing Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack or René Magritte from the art world because you 'don't get it'.
Now that I have had a little rant about art, let’s talk about comics and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. …
I have been getting into comics lately and I am quickly discovering there is so much about this medium that I do not know. When trying to review a comic or graphic novel, I find it easy to talk about plot but talking about the art is difficult. I picked up Understanding Comics because there is so much to learn and I wanted a better grasp on the art form. And it is art, it might not be as highbrow as artists like Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet or my personal favourite Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, but it is still art. To exclude comics as an art form would be like removing Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack or René Magritte from the art world because you 'don't get it'.
Now that I have had a little rant about art, let’s talk about comics and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. This book is a graphical look into comics as an art form, exploring the history of comics and tries to explain the meaning behind the art. It starts off trying to define what a comic is, which I quickly realised was an impossible feat. McCloud ended saying “Comics are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” but then went on to explain how problematic that definition can be.
A highlight for me was found in chapter two where Scott McCloud explored the vocabulary of comics. The chapter begins with explain René Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images (1928-29), an artist I am a big fan of. I actually went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the hope to see The Treachery of Images, but it was currently on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago. What I liked about this chapter was how he took the meaning of this painting and expanded on it to help explain comics. He took something easy to explain and built upon that to the more complex ideas.
Reading Understanding Comics makes comics sound like highbrow pieces of art and maybe that is how we should view them. Instead of thinking about comics as a lowbrow medium, it is about time we experience the art and what it can tell us. In this book six major ideas around the art. Idea/purpose, form, idiom/style, structure, craft and surface; explaining how they can all work together to make great pieces.
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.
There is a reason so many smart people mention this book. It is a foundational book for thinking about HOW sequential art works and appreciating the choices and techniques it uses.
It's not an instructional book for making comics - it is instructional for getting a deeper understanding of what's happening in front of your eyes. What choices are being made, what does that mean for the story, for the artist, for you?
I had to pause often to appreciate this, like a rich dessert or a smoky scotch.
Like reading dumbed-down version of early film theory. McCloud desires to establish comics as a legitimate artistic and narrative medium, and he largely succeeds in doing that. However, he apparently couldn't (or didn't want to) get the rights to use other comics as examples. Because of this, the book operates almost exclusively in the abstract, rather than providing concrete examples to fully explain his theoretical musings.
