Understanding Comics (1993) by Scott McCloud
REVIEW BY RICH KREINER:
When the venerable Will Eisner (see entries #15 and #57) offered his insightful Comics & Sequential Art (1985), he addressed the student and the academic with a hard-won how-to of explanations and examples that focused on the mechanics of the vehicle. Eight years later, Scott McCloud used comics to explain comics and, in effect, slipped the reader behind the wheel of the powerful and stylish medium. He congenially chatted about the wholly unique properties and wonderful accessories possible even while continually revealing the dazzling scenery that panel-by-panel narrative provides.
Using the vernacular to explicate the vernacular was an audacious, yet ultimately self-validating technique. For matters both philosophically ambitious and precisely concrete, McCloud not only pointed but effectively demonstrated comics' ability to convey and captivate. His topic may have attracted the attention of the cartoon cognoscenti, but it was the comics format that provided the hook for the casual reader. In deference to both audiences, McCloud made his treatise incisive, inclusive, democratic, and accessible, opening up the investigation of mysteries to common sense, common speech and masterful comics. Even as he exposed the tricks of the magical medium, he magnified the artistry involved. As the discussion progressed, McCloud proved congenially yet intellectually rigorous, a cartooning cross between Will Rogers and Umberto Eco.
While the book may turn down some roads there was no great need to travel, the real disappointment is that McCloud's ruminations have yet to be met - at least in print - with the analysis and vigour they deserve. Perhaps that's why he's self-propelled and pulling away: his next book projected Reinventing Comics, rethinking the "Invisible Art" he'd so freshly fleshed out and animated.
REVIEW BY NEIL GAIMAN:
With Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics the dialogue on and about what comics are and, more importantly, what comics can be has begun. If you read, write, teach or draw comics; if you want to; or if you simply want to watch a master explainer at work, you must read this book.
REVIEW BY ALAN MOORE:
Understanding Comics is quite simply the best analysis of the medium that I have ever encountered. With this book Scott McCloud has taken breathtaking leaps towards establishing a critical language that the comic art form can work with and build upon in the future. Lucid and accessible, it is an astonishing feat of perception. Highly recommended.
REVIEW BY ART SPIEGELMAN:
Cleverly disguised as an easy-to-read comic book, Scott McCloud’s simple looking tome deconstructs the secret language of comics while casually revealing secrets of Time, Space, Art and the Cosmos! The most intelligent comics I’ve seen in a long time. Bravo.
REVIEW BY WILL EISNER:
Bravo!! Understanding Comics is a landmark dissection and intellectual consideration of comics as a valid medium. Its employment of comic art as its vehicle is brilliant. Everyone... anyone interested in this literary form must read it. Every school teacher should have one.
FURTHER READING:
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