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Summary: If you like comics, you need these books.
Review: Understanding Comics is a chronicle of the infinitely weird connection of words and pictures that is comics. It tells usabout the heart of the concept of moving your eyes across panels, looking at the pictures, reading the words, and perceiving them all as a unified, flowing entity. It told us how and why the concept of reading and creating comics works.
Reinventing comics, on the other hand, focuses more on the public's attitude toward comics, the comic industry, and the varied possibilities of new ways of creating, distributing, marketing, purchasing, and reading comics. It contains many of Scott's theories as to how comics are and could be influenced by the internet and the new way of thinking it has brought us. These are two very different books with two very different subject matters. However, they link hand in hand to aid us in viewing the medium of comics as a whole. If you liked Understanding Comics, you may or may not like Reinventing Comics. If you liked Reinventing Comics, you may or may not like Understanding Comics. But if you want to view the authors opinions and ideas on everything and anything that did, does, and will apply to Comics, I advise you get them both. (...)
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Summary: KabONG-Ong-ong! Passionate and informed rant
Review: Comic author and artist Scott McCloud's crusade to make comics respectable apparently annoys the living hell out of a lot of other comic authors and artists, as well as many fans. To heck with 'em! I'm pretty much convinced that McCloud knows what of which he draws, but even if this dazzling analysis of past, present, and potential future of comics is balderdash, it's wonderfully entertaining and persuasive balderdash that's a wonderful read in its own right. I especially recommend this if you _don't like_ comics or think they're beneath you. That largely described me! I can't say that it converted me into a fan who hangs around shops waiting for tne new issue of ___ to come in, but since reading _Understanding Comics_ I'm open to the idea that there's Something There. Read this in chunks; the 'memetic load' is something fearsome and taking in more than a chapter at a sitting is asking for serious brain hurt.
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Summary: The art and science of comics revealed
Review: Scott McCloud has done a wonderful job of presenting the rather nebulous world of sequential art (commonly called comics) to the layman and comic fan alike. Formatting the book as a comic book was inspired. It definitely helped to make the concepts he presented in the book clearer. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in that learning comics are more than just "funny pictures."
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Summary: A brilliant manifesto
Review: This is a fundamental book for anyone interested in comics. And anyone interested in words or representation. Period. A history, anthropology, guide, and critique to the medium of comics *in* the medium that transcends the medium. Scott is brilliant -- both as a thinker and as an artist. Buy this book. Read this work. (Then go out and read his other stuff, like Zot! or visit his website at www.scottmccould.com -- And no. I do not know Scott personally, I have not been paid to say these things, and I have no other interest than as a critical fan and (pardon the onomotopoeia) thinking man.)
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Summary: Amplification through Simplification
Review: A non-fiction comic book-style book about comics and how they work. Theories about representing time, space, story, art, and more, in an approachable and useful style. You owe it to yourself to read this one. There is a sequel, Reinventing Comics, which that is more concerned with the comic book market and how comics can work with the web.
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Summary: A fascinating and entertaining exploration of comic art
Review: I was interested in this book because I am a collector of vintage romance comics and I wanted more background in their development, but I was suprised to find that it fascinated me just as much as a professional fine artist. Very clear & great read, too. Highly recommended.
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Summary: An Insightful and Thoughtful Book...
Review: How better to discuss comics than through the use of comics? And who better to discuss this art form than artist/writer, Scott McCloud who is the creator of Zot!. In addition to this, he also has a website @ http://www.scottmccloud.com/. It is obvious that Mr. McCloud spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the evolution and the mechanics of comics (check out the statistics in Chapter 3, "Blood in the Gutter"). In his discussion of the development of comics, Mr. McCloud takes us through a timeline beginning with ancient civilizations and ending in the modern age. In this exploration, he also stops at Japan where a different way of creating comics developed in isolation from western influences. A broad overview of comics is given to help the reader understand and appreciate the importance of comics and its place in history. The mechanics of comics are analyzed --from cartoon bubbles, to frames, to what's going on between the frames and to composition. From reading this book, there's a definite sense that there's more to comics than mere picture-making and words. Other factors and talents are needed such as pacing, which can be found in the realm of movie making,, and composition and line quality, both of which are tools of the sensitive artist. Pacing and frames are devices employed in film/animation. But exclusive to comics is how it is portrayed in a 2-dimensional fashion. Time is visual and moves forward within a defined space. With film, there are frames take up the same space, rendering the film animate. Time and mood are defined within a two dimensional space through the artistic use of layouts. Psychological factors such as closure is also discussed in the context of the use of gutters. Color and lines can be found in the general world of art and have been explored, researched and discussed in depth by many fine artists. Both are expressive, conveying mood and feeling. For those who scoff at the comic artist because they believe that (s)he is not capable of great art because they draw "simple pictures", Mr. McCloud talks about an important, but perhaps little thought of, device called "iconic representation" which plays a role in helping to render a character more universal among other things. McCloud takes a complicated subject and through the use of an art form which clearly communicates these ideas, drives them home to the reader. With all the work and history that goes behind creating comics, comics is definitely an under appreciated art form.
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Summary: It rocks...
Review: simple as that. It's clear, concise and informative. I never knew there was so much "in between" the panels. It's a great resource for anyone who wants to write or draw.
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Summary: Unique insights and ideas
Review: Unique insights and ideas ...and practically on every page, too. What can I say? This book, and the sequel Reinventing Comics, are damn important, and yet they are entertaining and a pleasure to read as well. Get 'em.
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Summary: A Real Eye-Opener
Review: "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud is a real eye-opener. I have spent as much time reading comics as the next guy, but I have never thought of the theories and principles behind the medium. The book takes the reader on a spectacular journey through the underlying structure of comics, and although I don't share all of McCloud's views I have certainly gained a whole new awareness of this structure. One can always nit-pick, of course. McCloud seems to have a closer relationship to pictures than to words, and his analysis of the pictorial component of comics is much more thorough than that of the literal one. He also claims that no other medium makes its receiver into such an active co-creator, since the reader of comics must fill in the "blanks" between the panels, but I believe that the reader of prose is even more active - when there are no sounds or pictures AT ALL, the receiver has to imagine EVERYTHING himself. There are a few obscurities as well, as when McCloud says "language" but seems to mean "writing system". These and other complaints are all about details, however, and doesn't alter the fact that the work as such is very good.
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