Rating: 
Summary: less engaging for non-addicts
Review: 'understanding comics' was brilliant, insightful and conceptually stimulating to those of us who have long lost those cardboard boxes of both super-antics and underground excesses. i recommended it to a number of people in various disciplines; it spoke of visual aspects equally of value to film students and novelists. this book was sociological; the other was pschological, and i felt more inclined to dig up the comics and reread them after having read the first. this second book did little to spark any such passion. do read the first!
Rating: 
Summary: Reheated drivel
Review: Devoid of nything resembling an insight or new idea, this book is as turgid and boring as Understanding Comics was deft and clever. Having enjoyed McCloud's work for some time, I was let down to find this book full of boring "new" media and "new" business claptrap.
Rating: 
Summary: Turn the Page
Review: I bought this book with some hesitation after reading the reviews. I thoroughly enjoyed "Understanding Comics" but worried that "Reinventing Comics" would not live up to its potential. After reading it, I think that "Reinventing Comics" is just as profound of work as "Understanding Comics." The negative reviewers fail to see this book as another direction of study. It is not a sequel to "Understanding Comics." It is an excellent look at other aspects of the comics industry and communication media as a whole.
Rating:
Summary: self-referential visual communicator extraordinaire!
Review: I've just picked up Reinventing Comics and am overwhelmed with the same feeling I had when I first saw Understanding Comics.I am in the business of trying to caste new visual (and full-sensorium) idioms for understanding abstract information in scientific disciplines. Scott's books are incredible sources for insight into the discipline of communicating with other than words. Scott's view of the worlds we create with our imaginations and the way we can send consistent, rich, clear signals using minimal tools (pen & ink?) is awesome. It will take years for the rest of us to catch up with Scott's work, but in the meantime I am sure I will read and reread his work as I once did my Marvel and DC comics. This time it is work!
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading on comics and information theory
Review: In 1993, Scott McCloud published an unexpected blast of pure genius, _Understanding Comics_: a monograph on comic books in the form of a comic book. Now he has created a sequel. I was leery at first; I wasn't sure that there was much more to be said, and I feared that the freshness of the first volume would be lacking. The first half of _Reinventing Comics_ somewhat fulfilled my fears; chapters dealing with the artistic and business side of comics seemed like afterthoughts to the first book, and chapters on issues of diversity, while interesting enough, didn't really jump off the page at me. But the second half of the book, unexpectedly, brought back to me the excitement I felt in 1993. It covers new technology, especially the Internet: digital production, digital distribution, and the evolution of comics in the digital world. McCloud includes a brief history of computers, the internet, and computer graphics, and analyzes both the impact digitalization has had on comics, and the impact he expects it to have in the future. Always the optimist (see Zot!), McCloud is also terribly smart, and the future he envisions is exciting and provocative. _Reinventing Comics_ is essential reading for anybody interested in comics, in the potentials of the Internet, in information theory, or simply in thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: Competent but sometimes labored follow-up to _Understanding_
Review: Let's call this 3 1/2 stars for most people . . . add a 1/2 star if the first book floored you. Scott McCloud continues his analysis of the world of comics, this time spending more time on the history of the industry and possible future paths. The reinvention in the title refers to McCloud's suggestion that Internet will free comics from the tyranny of print distribution and retail channels. I think he makes a good case -- some really amazing online comics are starting to appear -- but it does take him a long time to do it. Many parts of _Reinventing Comics_ are just as brilliant and well-crafted as _Understanding Comics_, but as a whole it's a bit long and not as well paced as the first book.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to read, distracting format, nothing new.
Review: Maybe this review is unfair, as I could honestly not get through the entire book. This book is written in a sort of graphic-novel format, which is innovative and interesting at first. As the book gets into more complex concepts, it is INCREDIBLY distracting to have every five-to-twenty-word phrase accompanied by its own (often abstract) image, sending your eyes hunting through the comic panel for the continuation of the sentence you are trying to read. Of what I read, most was fairly obvious and basic: the three-page introduction on Understanding Comics was easily the most worthwhile part I read, and I will probably read the author's original book. This one, however, was an irritating bore.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to read, distracting format, nothing new.
Review: Maybe this review is unfair, as I could honestly not get through the entire book. This book is written in a sort of graphic-novel format, which is innovative and interesting at first. As the book gets into more complex concepts, it is INCREDIBLY distracting to have every five-to-twenty-word phrase accompanied by its own (often abstract) image, sending your eyes hunting through the comic panel for the continuation of the sentence you are trying to read. Of what I read, most was fairly obvious and basic: the three-page introduction on Understanding Comics was easily the most worthwhile part I read, and I will probably read the author's original book. This one, however, was an irritating bore.
Rating:
Summary: Insights for many disciplines
Review: McClouds analysis of comics as an art-form is incredibly insghtful, and shows how the understanding of any art can be improved by examining it's roots, and finding the various branching points in it's history when it was constrained and liberated in different ways by different mediums. In particular, I found his obsevations on how comics (as an art) were influenced and constrained by print (as a medium) and how those constraints (but not others) can be abandoned when comics make the transition to a digital medium such as the web to be spot-on, and very useful to me although I'm a web designer, and not a comics artist. The book offers a lot of other insights as well, in particular centered around how the comics industry came to be, and the disintermediating effect of the internet on that industry.
Rating:
Summary: Typical college crowd ideological faire
Review: McClouds first book was a wonderful little study of the form and function of comics. I was hoping he would continue the lesson, but instead he seems to moan and complain about the economics and politics of the CONTENT of some comic books. He, like many a whiny, disillusioned liberal before him, paints a picture of evil corporations bogging down the "pureness" of unfettered art. And no hippy rant would be complete without the standard straight white male bashing; for, as everyone knows, we are the root cause of everyones problems. McCloud conveys clearly that he wants to stay at home and create masterpeices untainted by monetary, social, or racial boundaries and very poorly any real means of attaining these ends, all while very conveintly avoiding the subject of comic art. My suggestion is to file this one under "ivory tower political bilge" and focus more on his first work (providing you were looking for a comic book in the first place).
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