Reading Response: Understanding Comics (ahem: chapter six)

Earlier this semester, when asked what I thought of McCloud, I ranted for a while that he seemed entirely overrated to me. "He shows up at all these conventions and talks about comics like he's the grand master, but what has he done?" Well, the answer is this, apparently, and several other works like it. So I retract that misinformed bit of punditry with apologies. (I maintain what I said about Spiegelman, though.)

As you may have guessed by now, I liked this book. I liked this book enough that when I thought I had to read the whole thing (oops), I bought it. I like this book enough that now realizing I only needed to read chapter six, I don't feel like the purchase of the book or the subsequent reading were in any way a waste. For anyone interested in comics (or maybe a little obsessive about them) this book is an excellent guide to a deeper understanding.

Chapter six is one that specifically resonated with me, because I've put a lot of thought in to the mechanics of thought over the years, and I'm the kind of person who thinks in all manner of formats interchangeably. I have long suspected that this might be why I enjoy comics so much. The interplay between the words and the pictures is one of my favorite parts to analyze, and when used effectively they make for some of the best comics. It's a large part of what I enjoyed the most about The Sandman - the artist changed regularly, sometimes every few pages, and the art styles would vary wildly between them, which works really well for Gaiman's writing style.

I should probably cite a few linkable examples, so let me see what I can come up with. For strips dominated almost entirely by words, we should take a look at Dinosaur Comics, a dailyish six panel strip that uses the same artwork in every strip, or Partially Clips, a three panel strip with the same piece of clip art in each of the three panels. A slightly more experimental take on that would be Fugue, 'drawn' by a man who freely admits he can't draw - it's basically more of a short story with abstract illustrations to drive home the words. (Fugue was a miniseries that ran for a few months and then ended; it's also adult content, though the visuals don't reflect that.)

For art-focused strips, we can take a look a Dresden Codak, specifically these two strips, or Copper (see here and here), which are two of the most visually stunning strips I've ever encountered. (Sadly they're also two of the least-often updated, which is probably due to the complexity of putting out that sort of content on a regular basis.) There's also the Owly books, which aren't online, but if you follow that link you'll see some mini strips in the right column that capture the essence very well.

What I like about webcomics, though, is how often the visuals and the text work together, often in new and unusual ways. A Softer World is an excellent example - sometimes the photos fit the text perfectly, sometimes it just provides a weird background for a brilliant thought. Digger, on the other hand, seems to have used every single one of the combinations that McCloud talked about, all to good effect. And of course there's always xkcd, which usually manages to convey more complexity with stick figures and a few speech bubbles than some teams of genius artists and genius authors could ever hope to achieve.

'In conclusion, webcomics are a land of many contrasts.' Seriously, though, McCloud hits on some excellent points that are very relevant to this class - in a medium where we can put images (or video, or schematics, or interactive flash games, or etc etc) in the midst of our text, it's important to consider how that's going to work, and it doesn't always just have to be 'this picture illustrates my point'. This is important to consider as we finish our website design.