2: Understanding Comic Books

Understanding Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud

I like to take things apart and figure out how they work. In "Understanding Comics” Scott McCloud not only takes apart comic books, he puts them back together again. Certainly comics are a neglected art form. Talk about Superman and Batman and big names like Stan Lee and Frank Miller will get kicked around, but nobody really talks about how comics work. Part of the problem is the conceptual vocabulary behind comics: we can explain in detail how a scene in a film works in terms of shot composition, montage, blah blah but that sort of conceptual vocabulary really does not exist in comics and McCloud takes it upon himself to pretty much create it from scratch. That, of course, is an impressive achievement. On top of that McCloud's knowledge of art history is so expansive that we can visualize the beginnings of comics. Topping all of this off is McCloud's grand and rather obvious conceit that his book about the art of comic books is done as a comic book. This might seem an obvious approach, but that does not take away from the fact that the result is a perfect marriage of substance and form. "Understanding Comics" works for both those who are reading pretty much every comic book done by anyone on the face of the planet and those who have never heard of Wil Eisner or Art Spigelman.