review
Book Review: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
I wrote this review for the introduction of the most recent London User Experience Book Club (#uxbcldn is the hashtag of choice) on the 22nd April, and thought I’d share it here for anyone who might be interested.
I should preface this with a couple of admissions: First, I hadn’t heard of this book before we discussed it at the previous meeting. I hadn’t heard of Scott McCloud either. I hadn’t seen any of his work. Actually I discovered preparing for this that I had seen his work before. If you remember when google launched their web browser Chrome, the launch was accompanied by a comic which explained it’s creation. That comic was done by Scott McCloud. Second, I’m not a comic book fan. I don’t dislike them, and I have no prejudices against comic book readers. Indeed I sit very much in the comic book reading demographic as a nerdy, techy, game playing male. But comics were never a part of my childhood, they were not something that I grew up with, and I don’t believe I’ve ever bought a comic book or read a graphic novel.
With those confessions off my chest, I can continue. While I never read comic books I’ve always been a lover of cartoons or comic strips (the four panel strips you see in a newspaper beside the crossword). It is perhaps interesting that the distinction that I draw between cartoons or short comic strips on one side and comic books or graphic novels on the other is broken by ScottMcClouds definition (which he goes to rather extensive lengths to explain and validate). In fact one of my hands has been severed down the middle. I’m not very happy about this for a few reasons. The main one is that it doesn’t feel right, or to put it in a slightly more intellectual way: it doesn’t fit with my mental model of comics. The other reason is that a lot of my favourite cartoons or comics (he groups the two as “comic art” though I thought “cartoomics” would be much better) regularly alternate between a single panel and multiple panel format. Gary Larsson’s The Far Side or webcomics such as Ctrl + Alt + Del, Penny Arcade or xkcd.
While on the topic of webcomics I had a look at his TED talk as part of my extensive research for this evening (I’d highly recommend it to anyone in this room), and I concluded that Scott’s is probably a bit disappointed with the state of webcomics today. That with all the potential that digital interactive media brings with it that the majority of comics are still basically reproductions of the format of cartoons for print, and bring with them all the restrictions that that brings. They see the web simply as a new distribution channel rather than a new medium for their art. It’s funny to hear in the book how the flat colour of the comics was dictated by the cost and print technology of the time and yet while webcomics have no such limitations (with the exception of time to add the extra detail) still confine themselves to that style of flat bold colour.
I found the experience of reading this book very different to reading Bill Buxton’s book. Particularly on the tube or in other public spaces I often felt the desire to assert for myself “That actually this is a rather intellectual deconstruction of the comic book art form and the philosophies behind it. I’m not just reading a comic book.” And I must admit that it’s a bit odd that I felt this given the large point behind the book I was reading was justifying comics books as a valid art form. And yet there is still a bit of a stigma around comic books. Though whether that is because of the comics books themselves or the people who you think of as reading comics books (the aforementioned nerdy,techy , game playing slightly obsessive males) it’s hard to say. Indeed it’s likely a vicious circle (or should I say a virtuous circle now I’ve been converted).
And yet I do think comics have matured greatly in the last few years (it’s worth remembering that this book was published in 1994). Since then, rarely a Summer has passed without a couple of the blockbuster titles in our cinema featuring a comic such as X-Men, Spiderman, or Batman. In recent years we’ve moved passed the action blockbusters into the deeper darker underbelly of the world of comics. And the production values of those films is moving towards the vision and style of the comics. 300, The Watchmen or Sin City are prime examples which are thought provoking and do not need to justify themselves the way that comics may have done so before the writing of this book.
Using the artform to explain itself is incredibly clever (unfortunately I had neither the time nor the ability to write my review in a comic format). It also demonstrates how this is an insider’s view, the view of someone who has not just been and observer of the medium but also acontributor . It also means that the illustration of his examples is incredibly clear and can often do in a couple of panels what might take a book a couple of pages to describe.
His discussion of seeing the world through masks which are our faces, and how simplification can increase empathy between the reader and the character is extremely powerful, and links nicely between our previous discussion of simplification through sketching. I enjoyed the explanations of cultural differences between different schools of comics both culturally (such as the Japanese method of storytelling through comics) and historically. His insights about how space and time are moulded together in a comic book and words and pictures interact were also enlightening. I found it hard to totally grasp all his stages of creating a work in any medium since they are quite abstracted to all them to be sufficiently general but they were a useful way to break down the creative process. And some of the taxonomies he uses (he LOVES taxonomies) gave a useful basis for thinking about the differences between comics.
So he does give an excellent deconstruction of the comic book art form, the components and the ideas which underlie it, and he certainly justifies is as a legitimate art form. But I must admit I was left quite unfulfilled at the end of the book. There had been all this wonderful foreplay as Scott lured me in with his insightsbeautifully explained through words and images and now he just rolls over and goes to sleep while I’m left to have a cold shower and write a review of our evening’s passionate affair. Well my complaint is that after his wonderful deconstruction he doesn’t really build anything with the pieces. It’s never formulated into a new idea or theory or direction for comics. The TED talk goes some way towards this and I believe his other books Reinventing Comics and Making Comics might be able to fill this desire.
I’ve tried to think about what I’ve learned from the book that might have changed how I do what I do (since this is the UX book club). While it seems to be a great fit to extend to the forms we work with: Don’t we also deal with the juxtaposition of words and images in our presentations and interactive media? Don’t we also tell stories? Don’t we also deal with questions about time and space and motion? We do but I don’t feel that the book has better informed me in a way that applies to what I do. The best reason that I can think of for this is that comics are a one way communication. They talk to their reader but they don’t listen. The interaction and interactivity in the things we design and build is what defines us and our medium. But I’m sure some of you disagree and I’d love to be told how wrong I am on this.
