Introducing Understanding Comics

Introduction CHAPTER? Not so sure. Introduction, definitely. The introduction page serves as a good abstract of what we can expect from this book? comic? not a graphic novel...because those are fiction, graphic textbook...not quite...graphic text. We'll stick with that. What I like about this introduction is that McCloud blatantly says that the book is hard to describe but does his best to do so in the most conversational of terms. I already know I will learn things from this book, I'm not very well versed in the comic genre though I did read Jughead comics when I was little as well as the newspaper comic section until college (when I stopped getting the paper altogether). I really like that the intro starts off with a general overview with defining comics and examining it as an art form then the conversation starts picking up pace as he talks about time in comics and the relationship between words and images and what changes between panel and he eventually gets super excited as he mentions the theories he will talk about and builds and build and builds until finally…”oh.” It’s as if McCloud knows that I was like ok, cool…ok, cool…ok, cool…ok, uh loosing me... I hope I am as increasingly pleased while reading this book as McCloud is taking to his old tie and stripe pants clad friend, Matt.