McCloud Part Two


I chose to take a look at Tia's blog. http://girlswannahavfun.blogspot.com/ This comic, like Tia described, displays exactly what we all were/are thinking in the process of building our first website. McCloud wanted to share his art form online, so he had to learn the 'html' process. I am in the process of doing this myself (making my own real site aside a simple web page) and it has definitely been a challenge. So I thought Tia's blog was the fitting choice. Like Tia, this book has also rekindled my interest in comics, and opened my eyes to things that I never viewed as comics before. Like the pre-Columbian picture manuscript that was "discovered" by Cortes. McCloud states, "This 36-foot long, brightly-colored, painted screenfold tells of the great military and political hero 8-Deer "Tiger's Claw. Is it comics? You bet it is!" (10) Comics can range from, art, to manuals, to books, to many other means of communicating, McCloud makes the variety in Understanding Comics quite clear.

In chapter six McCloud went on to explore when and why pictures and words drifted apart. By the early 1800's "Pictures and words, once together in the center of our iconic abstraction chart, have at this point drifted to opposite corners" (145). He went on to elaborate on how pictures went up in a sense, and evolved toward having deeper meaning. The written word was evolving too, conveying meanings quickly and easily like pictures. McCloud describes this as a collision that is most prevalent in none other than the modern comic. In today's society, the old artform of the comic is just that, archaic. Today we are mesmerized by the media, movies, television shows. Try to think of something that you enjoy with both words and pictures, it's pretty hard to come up with. People today for the most either enjoy pictures alone (ex. movies) or words alone (ex. Books). McCloud states that, "words and pictures have great powers to tell stories when creators fully exploit them both" (152).

McCloud does a great job of depicting the word and picture relationship and lack there of. He shows a girl in the rain walking into a store, she buys some ice cream and proceeds to eat it, this is all shown without any written words. The next page adds text to each scene. Some show it as an advertisement, others as an outlandish statement that has nothing to do with what's going on, and the other an integral point in a possible monologue. Then the following page shows written words describing all the actions taking place, but there are no pictures. When the proper scenes are linked up with the proper words, it all works out in the end. He even goes beyond this and showing different scenes with a more emotional impact, and others shift back in time displaying a previous action. It's all in the delivery.

McCloud, Comics, and Me




I'm not a big fan of comics in general, it's not something that I read on an everyday basis, but I found one I liked,the Boondocks. After reading Scott McClouds book, I'll see if I'll become a more avid reader. So what is the Boondocks Comics you ask? Well I did some research, and I am really into it. The Boondocks is a comic, and now television show, by Aaron McGruber. It features two main characters, two African American boys, who are the first Black kids in a previously all-white suburb. One of the characters, "Huey Freeman, the radical scholar," spends most of his time questioning perceptions of African Americans and the ways they are treated in the United States. The comic has always been distinguished by its willingness to raise tough questions and express dissenting opinions. This comic has been banned by certain newspapers and praised by others, it's controversial to some and hailed by others. I personally don;t think it's as political as some people say, it's funny and not every strip is serious, it's a comic, people seem to forget that. Here is a link to several Boondocks comics http://community.livejournal.com/boondocks_comic/

McCloud made a statement that I never thought about. "Space does for comics what time does for film"(7). Since the Boondocks is both a comic and a show, I can relate to and see the validity of this statement. Moving directly into the discussion on sequential visual art, comics don't have to contain words to be a comic. On the link provided there is a Boondocks comic 3/09/06 and the first three frames have no words, but I bet everyone knows exactly what is going on. Actually it is the comic I have shown above. The character 'Grandad' has taken all kinds of different pictures of himself in different outfits and poses. This communicates better to us than any words would. I think I'm getting it. McCloud pointed out the picture manuscript from the 1500's. I immediately though of Ancient Egypt and 'the pictures an symbols engraved on the walls' and never thought once of this being a comic, but it is. I turn the page and there it is, Ancient Egypt. This is really the sequence of occurrences, I thought of it before I turned the page. He elaborates on this when he talks about the Normandy Conquest scene. "Reading left to right we see the events of the conquest, in deliberate chronological order unfold before our eyes. As with the Mexican Codex, there are no panel borders per se, but there are clear division of scene and subject matter" (13).

Looking at many of the Boondocks Comic strips, everything that McCloud touches on in chapter one is relevant. I didn't know anything about the Boondocks prior to reading it, but I could relate to it and it made sense. Something that would usually not be considered a comic and that can be understood by everyone is the flight information 'diagram' in which the pictures show how to properly secure your mask incase air pressure changes in the cabin, and then to do the same for the person next to you. Now from what I just said, you would think all of the words were right there in the diagram, but they weren't it's just pictures of a woman and her child going through the actions. With that, comics really do have a way of communicating without words, and even greater chance of accurate communication with words. Who would of thought.