Understanding Comics

The Invisible Art

215 pages

English language

Published Nov. 21, 1993 by Kitchen Sink Press.

ISBN:
978-0-87816-244-4
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OCLC Number:
42685467

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4 stars (11 reviews)

Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.

14 editions

Review of 'Understanding Comics' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

awesome book/graphic non-fiction (how do i describe this genre anyhow?)
although i'm a recent convert to the graphic format, as well as a huge fan, i didn't truly appreciate the amount of thought and work that goes into panelled sequential art :)

where to start?
how about the japanese style being so different from the western form - it's isolation allowed them to form entirely new ways of visual expression. and not just what they put of the paper - how they tell a story. the transition between panel to panel can be expressed as 6 types and the relative proportions in japan are very different from american and european comics.
even the space between panels - where we, as the audience fill in with closure - or the length of panels have meaning. heck, the actual panel itself, or the lack there of, is an artistic and story telling …

Subjects

  • Comic books, strips, etc. -- Juvenile literature.
  • Periodicals -- Publishing -- Juvenile literature.
  • Comic books, strips, etc. -- Authorship -- Comic books, strips, etc.
  • Cartoons and comics -- History and criticism.