Understanding Comics: What's Important

I always do a first look at a book when I buy it at a bookstore, and I do the same thing with magazines. I do not know if this is a common thing, and I don't even think it helps, but I do it every time no matter what.

When I bought all of my books for Mass Communications I flipped through every one like I do with any other book. Obviously one stood out because it was purely black and white comics. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud was this very book, and right away it took me by suprise...why is Mark asking us to read a really long comic book? This is what I had to figure out, and after I had read two other necessary books, Understanding Comics came along and I started to read it.

I guess you could say right away the comics explained what the book was going to be about. The third comic box in the introduction told me, "An examination of the art-form of comics what its capable of, how it works."

Two parts throughout the book interested me specifically, the first part beginning on page 24 and continuing on to page 27. These pages are all about the icon, and it starts off by talking about the painted Magnettes Pipe with a simple caption reading this is not a pipe. This is a very famous painting that deals directly with the media, because people simply think; uh yes this a pipe! When the semiotics of it are that it is a painting of a pipe which was originally a drawing of a pipe which was originally just a piece of blank canvas. In my opinion the idea of this is that their is iconic imagery in everything to do with the media today. This is what McCloud goes on to talk about on pages 26 and 27, and these two pages are simply just a bunch of icons saying that they are not what they really are. I found this effective especially because I am in image arts, icons and images are especially important to success and portrayal of images.

The next part I really liked I actually used as a reference in my semiotic paper, there is one part of the book that is all in color, and through flipping and eventually getting to this part, it just seemed more interesting and more effective. Chapter 8 talks about how colors are more effective, and using them in comics and such is more pleasing to the eye, and this is particularly true in my vision of what is a successful image. I love black and white photography and I love the classic sense to it, but color images are where photography is going, and where it always will continue to go.

Understanding Comics was a great book to read, and it really opened my eyes to the different portrayals of images in different medias and how they differ from writing...very effective!