Comics Undertood

I just finished reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics this evening, and it was quite informative. I'm glad he presented all that information in the form of a comic to best illustrate his explanations. It's a lot easier to grasp the concepts he presents when you can see them for yourself.

There are two concepts/ideas that stuck out to me. One was the breaking down of panel transitions into types, and the formulas comics tend to show on average in the West compared to the East. The categories include moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to aspect, and non-sequitur. In the West, action-to-action is the most common transition, followed by subject-to-subject and scene-to-scene. In the East, the levels are somewhat more evened out, with more attention in moment-to-moment and aspect-to-aspect transitions. This difference is due to a culture gap, where in the west we tend to be more goal-oriented and in the east there's a greater focus on rich tradition and ambience.

The other idea I found interesting was the secret of the cartoon. The simplification of a face, or the focus on the details that really matter the most, allow a greater audience to identify with it. Human beings tend to reflect their characteristics on inanimate objects. Other times, objects can easily become an extension of self, like the car you drive or the hat you wear. People enjoy being able to identify with characters in a story. It allows us to enter another realm, which might seem inviting.

I read some Peanuts strips and I still can't say I'm fond of them. I never found them funny enough and the style didn't appeal to me. I didn't really relate to them as maybe I ought to have. A lot of them have to do with hanging out before and after school, or dealing with that time in your life when you're just a kid with a ton of friends that are never really up to anything that interesting. I didn't have a lot of friends. I had very few misadventures to recount. I just didn't really care for Peanuts then and I don't really care for it now. I'm going to get started reading Little Nemo now to give it a whir.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan.

I didn't have the opportunity to see a hard copy of this book, but I will attempt to do so. I read it on the e-comic application for my Mac, but I'm sure no real justice was done for it.

The drawings were fantastic, as well as the imagery portrayed. It was not difficult to determine what was going on at any given time, even without any dialogue. The progression of images tells the story, through body language, symbols, and the slight or dramatic changes from one image to the next. This seems to me as the perfect poster child for what a graphic narrative is at its very heart. Whereas many resort to using text to explain a situation, the pictures are meant to bring it to life. In Shaun Tan's The Arrival, the life is there, and without a word you know what the story is about and how many of the characters are feeling.