Understanding Comics

After the previous post, Jason took me to Rocketship Comics on Smith Street. Despite being a great, open and some what minimal store, I still found myself overwhelmed with lots of unfamiliar magazines. The thrill though, was having great variety of non-superhero, non-Archie comics to look through.

Hesitant to commit to single issues, I turned instead to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics from 1993. It's a great read: interesting, varied, meta. Take a look at his attempts to reinvent comics for the internet.

It nicely discusses of how comics work, contrasted with other art forms. In particular he discusses the trade offs of highly representational art in comics which brought to mind Gamble's comic project, Running D.O.G. Also interesting is how comics convey or play with time. It's also a great survey of styles and history and is pointing me towards other comic artists. (I'm open to recommendations!)

I rank this up with the giants in discussions of their art and craft: like the Norton Lecture series (ee cummings, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, et cetera), Rem Koohaas, Susan Sontag and onward.

Also, Rocketship's first posting was this manifesto.