GroshLink

Thank-you to Andy for referring me to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. What a text or should I say what a comic (or should I say both) which attempts to define comics (going all the way back to pre-Columbian and Ancient Egyptian picture manuscripts, not to be confused w/hieroglyphics which are the precursors to some written word), decifer visual iconography, explain the relationship of writer-comic-reader in the unfolding of story/meaning/time!

For those who are interested, here's some highlights:

Comics:  juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer (p.9)

Icon:  any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea (p.27)

Cartooning as a form of amplication through simplification:  When we abstract an image through cartooning, we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details.  By stripping down an image to its essential "meaning," an artist can amplify in a way that realist art can't (p.30)

Comics panels fracture both time and space offering a jagged, staccato rhythm or unconnected moments.  But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.  If visual iconography is the vocabularly of comics, closure is its grammar.  And since our definition of comics hinges on the arrangement of elements -- then, in a very real sense, comics is closure! (p.67)

Categorization of comic storytelling techniques:  moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, non-sequitur (p.74)

Six steps of creating comics:  Idea/purpose, form, idiom, structure, craft, surface (pp.170-1)

But that's not the half of it if one has the desire to be heard, the will to learn, and the ability to see (p.212-13).  Although I would comment with regard to the last chapter, our ability to communicate and see is not endless.  Instead, we receive these gifts through the Logos ... yes, the live, action, incarnated Word which has been passed down to us not only through a number of media sources but the very Word and Spirit of God which lives, moves, and breathes in the creation! 

God-fearers are shaped into Christ-likeness, may I even say holiness, in the daily interplay of culture, work, play, and family (note:  the comic ends in a familial conversation regarding working at home which is the very setting in which I'm furiously typing so I can return Understanding Comics to the library, as I'll be making a trip with the twins when they come home from school around 4pm).  Our walk with God, what a story to share through fast-forwards and flashbacks, frame-by-frame ...

I wish I had more time to read other pieces such as Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, and Alan McKenzie's How to draw and sell comic strips for newspapers and comic books.  I guess that I'll just have to settle for reviews such as The Not-So-Untold Story of the Great Comic-Book Scare, special publications such as Catapult Magazine's Draw Me A Story, OR you, the reader of this post ;-)