Everything There is to Know About Comics

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud was one of the most intriguing books I have ever read. Before I read this all I thought of when I heard "comic book" was comics like The Incredible Hulk, Spiderman and Batman. Now my whole perspective of the definition of comic books has changed. It taught me that comic books can be about more than heroes. The real definition of comic books, or at least the one in the book is that a comic book is a juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer. Before this, I had thought that only nerdy guys or children read them.

There was one part of the book that I found to be the most interesting. There was a chapter about closure. The author talked about the phenomenon that even though we may only observe parts of something, we still perceive it as a whole. If we see parts of words, animals, or even see inanimate objects in the form of something real our minds perceive it as what we remember. It is a really provocative topic to me because it is incredible how our brains can make shaped and animals out of something that isn't either. It was even more interesting when the author mentioned how when one sees lines placed in a certain way it looks like a face. It may not have to be realistic at all, it could just be a really simple smiley face.

One part of the book I could really relate to was Chapter 6: Show and Tell. The author began to tell the reader about how when we all start out talking we use visuals to help us get our point across. Then as we get older we begin to use less and less visuals. This is how I used to be when I was little too. If I didn't know how to explain something I would draw it out. Then as I got older I began to be better with words and needed less visuals when I spoke to people. This is how it was when I read as well. When I was younger I read books with lots of pictures so that I could get a better understanding of what was happening in it. Now that I'm older I am able to read books with few or no pictures. This is how comic books have come over the years as well. They started out as drawings on stone walls with no writing at all. The only way readers could know what was happening was through the pictures. Today's comic books have words to describe what is happening in the picture and even have speech bubbles to allow conversation among animations.