Response to Understanding Comics [and "Time, Space, Art, and the Cosmos!"]

Apologies for the wait, folks! Here's a big, long response (and two more responses soon to come) to make up for it. I have now nearly recovered from the AWP aftermath.

For the sake of organization and clarification, I am including a synopsis of each chapter in italics before my responses.

Chapter One: "Setting the Record Straight"
Scott McCloud defines comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer." He then gives a history of comics as he has defined them; he asserts that the art comics dates back to codices and cave paintings.

In picking apart McCloud's definition, one can recognize some important things. Begin even with the word juxtaposed. Placed next to. This has an implication of a relationship between the images that are juxtaposed. This is why juxtaposition is very important to the definition. This idea of a relationship between panels is further explored in chapter three. He specifies that the images may be "pictorial and other." This leaves the definition very broad (less defined, perhaps,) allowing for poetry to fit, even though it is not necessarily pictorial. Ellen Forney's "How to. . ." series is a good example. The comics are composed primarily of text--but are still considered to be comics rather than merely expository essays. However, would they still be considered comics without the pictorial elements? It seems arguable that there must at least be some deliberation about the text, even if that is simply to use a specific font or layout. McCloud's broad inclusion could still be argued by the points made in chapter two about the evolution of language from pictures to alphabets.

Chapter Two: "The Vocabulary of Comics"
McCloud introduces his theory of vocabulary. Images are obviously not what they represent. They may be something simple as ink on paper. However, these images represent persons, places, things, or ideas (where symbols represent more abstract things such as concepts, ideas, or philosophies). Further, images vary from the realistic (a photograph) to the iconic (a cartoon). The former is more specific and objective, the latter is more vague and subjective (and so, prone to interpretation and reflection). The ultimate subjective icon would in this case be words, as they look nothing like what they represent, but represent it nonetheless. He brings this theory even further by laying icons out on a diagram he calls the "pictorial vocabulary," as shown below (pp 51-57, some text omitted).

This is such a clear way of diagramming something that seems subtle when one is unfamiliar with comics. The points made in this chapter about images as icons are applicable to more than comics, art, and language, but and perception as a whole as well. The brain makes connections all the time, be they filling in spaces or silhouettes, or accepting a symbol as a stand-in for an actual thing. For example, anyone can picture a pine tree, but the tree that one pictures is compiled from memories, and thus does not actually exist as one remembers it to. Also, this tree is taken as an icon of any tree. In a forest, no two trees are exactly the same. I may know of a pine tree, but I do not know of a specific tree that I never actually perceived. There are plenty of trees that have passed into my vision, but I wouldn't necessarily say that I've actually seen them as they are, but rather filled in the blanks with my mind in accordance with trees I've seen in the past. Perhaps in this way, the mind uses metonymy toward intuition. I can guess at what a tree I've never seen might look like, and come at least to a similar image.

In this way, comics and poetry can act as icons toward things that may not actually exist, or they might exercise plasticity by being iconic enough to cater toward each reader's interpretation.

Chapter Three: "Blood in the Gutter"McCloud explains the function panels as story fragments of various sorts. He explains a phenomenon he dubs "closure" as something of a Gestalt effect in the "gutters" of comics (that the mind pieces the fragments/panels of the story together to form a cohesive whole).

pg 74

*At this point, the wysiwyg REFUSED to mess with italicized texts. Ah html, if only I understood you a little better.

More filling in blanks. One might say that the "gutters" are icons in this way, just as a ceasura in poetry or a rest in a musical phrase. The mind fills in seperation with time, space, or an idea. I think there may be more links though. One can use colors and shapes to connect two panels. Some forms, like the villanelle, cohere a poem through the repetition of words. It doesn't seem that McCloud covers the element of repetition much. In fact, the plasticity of an image or icon could be represented through its repetition in different contexts

Chapter Four: "Time Frames"
McCloud describes how time may weave through a comic by means of words, repeated panels, space/gutters, etc.

I had not considered how words translate into time in comics, but I think that McCloud is onto something with this. Often, when I see large text bubbles, I can picture the panel coming to life and the characters using expression and body language while they speak.

Chapter Five: "Living in Line"
McCloud explains the poetential of a line to portray emotion and sensual effects.

This chapter reminded me of past drawing and design classes. The question that comes to my mind is: why do we associate certain types lines with certain emotions?

Chapter Six: "Show and Tell"

McCloud shows different methods of balancing/blending word and graphic.

This is very interesting. I used to think about this when considering other interdisciplinary arts. Does the picture support the text? Does the text support the picture? Are they interdependent? Can each one stand alone--and when they do, how do they change? Comics become a more dialectical art when picture and text combine like this. They are two elements, but the whole produced by the relationship between these elements may be far greater (or variable) than the elements themselves.

Chapter Seven: "The Six Steps"
McCloud lays out the necessary steps of effective comics.

Although I usually prefer art that is thorough and conscious, I argue against the merits in filling up each step to the brim as one would a set of rubrics. Rather, some of these things may be emphasized over others, or some may be isolated and focused upon. A work of art may excel in one area, and it may still be "good." However, the artist would do best to experiment with different categories and aim to strengthen all of them. An artist becomes a manipulator of the art, but only after he/she learns technique fully.

Poets do this too, when they play with language. But--they must know language well in order to effectively manipulate it.

Chapter Eight: "A Word About Color"

McCloud describes the influences of printing cost on color, as well as other decisions about color. Technology has some effect on the way in which we make our art.

One might also note that words are technology in themselves.

Chapter Nine: "Putting it all together"

McCloud explains the importance of comics in the context of humanity.

"Yes, yes most definitely."

I agree with what McCloud is asserting about line and color (in the previous chapters). I also made some connections to physiology in what he writes about.
In memory the brain, as I understand it, pieces together many small things to form whole. A whole memory is not stored in one spot, but rather is composed (encoded, you might say) of many seperate processes. Like an impressionist painting, they combine to produce a whole picture that is greater than the sum of many daubs of paint. A smell or a shape may trigger memory. Have you ever left a thought in a room, only walk back into the room and remember it? Some sensation in that room was a little piece of that thought. Icons, shapes, words, and colors can do the same. The ability of the brain to compile things as such shows that we can break down barriers.

Art can manipulate those things, and in that way it can communicate ideas that are otherwise very difficult to share.

Re: Sweetn'o, an experiment with image

Apologies for doing this out of order, but since I have finished it, I might as well post it. In response to your comment about Sweetn'o, here's a comic made of text followed by a solitary image:

(This is also card for my dad's Birthday, which is today!)

Eureka!

I just realized I can post, too, not just leave comments. Ha ha, she laughed evilly, like a superhero villain, the power is mine!

Anyway, I wanted to say that your thoughts about memory and poems, image and memory, image and comics made me think of how both comics and poems rely on shorthand, on icons or metonyms, to say what they need to say, and in this way are like memories or dreams: you don't conjure up a whole, but the parts do the same work. Does that make sense?

This is one of the things poems and comics have in common, to my mind: their spare and precise use of shorthand--be it visual or language shorthand--toward the most evocative ends possible.

What do you think, Abi?

(And I did leave you a comment with an assingment in it under the "sweetn'o" post, before I realized I could post...)

Brain Damage: like waking up in the Twilight Zone.

Another sketch for my Self-Identity/Mind-Brain class. I'm reading about L. Zasetsky. He was drafted into the Russian army during WWII. He gained severe brain damage from a piece of shrapnel lodged into his head during combat. As a result, he had to re-learn many things, though some of his most human faculties (imagination, self-awareness, longing for meaning) were left entirely intact. I think this is what drove him to do everything he could to make himself meaningful.

The book is The Man with a Shattered World, put together by A.R. Luria.