McCloud Chapter's 6/7: the six steps and what's color got to do with it?

According to McCloud in chapter 7, Art is anything that doesn't grow out of our basic instincts of reproduction and survival. Art is the way we assert our individual identities and narrow the roles given to us by nature. From an evolutionary standpoint art: is a way for us to receive outside stimuli, provide an outlet for emotional imbalances, and our exploration lead to useful discoreries. In almost everything we do theres an element of art. "Pure" art is tied to the question of purpose, of the path you are choosing to take. This path has six steps which are: idea/purpose(content), form(medium), idiom(genre), structure(composition), craft(construction), surface(superficial exposure). "Why am I doing this" is the most important question an artist can ask themselves and something a lot of successful artists have not answered. According to McCloud, every creator learns to command every aspect of their work and to understand their relationship to it and it's the degree in which they do this is their personal success as an artist.

In chapter eight McCloud talks about color and its "spotty" relationship with comics which he says can be summed up with "commerce"(money) and "technology". Colors objectify their subjects and allow us to become more aware of their presence. The "four-color process" is why we think of Superman as wearing red, blue and gold and batman as black, grey, and gold, the main characters were bold while their surroundings were not. Apparently while flat colors were a necessity in American comics, they were a preference in European comics. Black and White and Color comics are now extremely different from each other, while colored comics are more direct, b&w must rely more on textures and shapes to get their points across.