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Understanding Comics The Invisible Art 1994 215 pages Complementary Texts Keywords Copyright © 2004-2006 Isabel Pedersen |
McCloud develops a vocabulary, a set of analytical resources, which he uses to investigate comics as a unique medium. After he explores several initial concepts, he sets out a working definition; comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (McCloud 20). Interestingly, McCloud communicates using comics as a medium. So the reader draws on the combination of words and images to glean insight. This sophisticated, witty, approach makes the theory much more interesting for a non-expert audience. You can pick up this book and flip to any chapter and learn about an aspect of comics without the reading the entire book. McCloud draws upon many fields of research including art history, visual gestalt, visual semiotics, and visual rhetoric to support his fascinating claims about comics. |