Thing 78 Complete!

I decided to re-read Scott McCloud's three books on comics now as I was trying to decide whether or not to write a script for a graphic novel/series of strips during Script Frenzy (starting Wednesday!!!). I've had a great time re-reading them, and it's certainly given me a lot to think about in terms of telling stories with sequential art. However, after a bit of reflection I don't think that I am quite there yet in terms of being able to write something like that. I have ideas which I am still trying to draw together - and they are coming together, slowly but surely - but I think for Script Frenzy I am going to go in the direction of a film... More on that in another post.

One thing that the three books have done is to make me realise that I definitely do want to do some kind of comics project in the near future. The ideas I've had might not be in a shape where I feel ready and able to do something with them, but I know that I want to achieve something.

And I will. Watch this space.

Making Comics

The final book in Scott McCloud's trilogy on comics is more of a follow-on to his first book, but also finds time to expand a little on webcomics and digital delivery without making the speculations about the future that I found a bit problematic in Reinventing Comics. Some of the practical things in the book go into maybe a little more detail than I would possibly have liked - it is his longest book of the three - but then that would be really useful to someone who is seriously interested in going into the field and looking for good places to start and exercises that would be helpful to get them going.

The sections on composition and differences in approaches to showing things greatly expands on some of the basic "philosophy of comics" that he talks about in Understanding Comics. The sections which cover webcomics and talk about things that online creators are doing go into a good amount of detail, without going overboard. While he mentions a few times that he now largely uses digital methods for producing comics this is no call to arms to just leave behind pencil and paper.

I really liked the mini-essays towards the end of the book on Japanese comics, genres and thoughts on comics culture. Once again, as I re-read it I was struck by many examples of books which make me think, "Ooooh, I really need to read that." The first time I read it this lead me to Black Hole by Charles Burns, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware and eventually to Maus by Art Spiegelman: all of these have something amazing to offer the reader, and there were many more which have stuck in my mind this time as books I need to track down.

Making Comics does make me want to make comics, but also makes me want to go and read comics - no bad thing.

Reinventing Comics

While Understanding Comics is considered to be a bona fide classic, I get the impression from what little I have gleaned from the comics world that Reinventing Comics is seen as a sophomore slump in Scott McCloud's trilogy (well, a trilogy so far, who knows what he has planned for the future) of books on comics. I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it that, but in some respects it hasn't aged well compared to Understanding Comics. Whereas that is still thought of as a definite work when considering comics and comics theory, there are aspects of Reinventing Comics that have lost some of their impact in the decade following its publication.

That's not to say that McCloud doesn't make a number of interesting points about the potential for comics. We do need to get away from thinking that comics are either

• people in spandex
• or those funny strips in newspapers
  

and we certainly need to get away from the a priori condition that comics are for kids. The truth, of course, is that for a long time there have been many instances of material that were comics but which satisfied none of those conditions. The problem of course is that there was kind of a collective consensus among people who don't read them that "that isn't comics... And in fact to call it comics is very dangerous indeed."

(although, seriously, let's not have any more newspaper stories with headlines like "Pow! Comics Not Just For Kids!" going on about how comics have grown up... Seriously)

The areas where Reinventing Comics falls down is when McCloud speculates about the future. Anyone with more than a passing interest in webcomics might have heard about micropayments - an idea which has a lot to offer in some respects but which is difficult to implement from what I have understood in the past; it's an idea for revenue generation which doesn't seem to work nearly as well as other models for generating income from webcomics (such as selling adspace on pages, and selling t-shirts etc).

Also, on this, my second read through (or is it my third?) I'm still not 100% convinced on the idea of using laptops/screens of some description as "windows" to look at comics: McCloud's thesis on this is that there are examples of comics which are hundreds, even thousands, of years old, from the Bayeaux Tapestry through to Egyptian paintings; these older examples were not bounded, but all through the last 150 or so years we have done just that, and bound comics within paper and borders on pages, breaking up the continuous flow of sequential pictures and words. A return to the possibilities of the past then could be done using a computer screen as a window on to a larger sequence, no four panel strips, no standard American/Japanese page size... I don't quite see it. Because at the end of the day, a person is still limited by the screen, this is now the border. Sure, you move along, but is this really any different than if we printed a comic as a concertina arrangement of pages?

Reinventing Comics is still a great read though, and where it might not succeed in my eyes it might be a wake up call and a brilliant idea to others. Even given what I have read about micropayments, there is part of me that still wonders if there is something to it. But more than anything, people working in comics and people reading comics need to be open to new ideas and new expressions of comics - and we need to share our enthusiasm with others.

Thing 78: Understanding Comics

In an effort to try and generate some creative momentum for myself I'm pushing on with a few different things at the moment. My broad idea for Script Frenzy - the first time that I've taken part in it - is going to be something comic-related. Kind of. More on that soon.

To try and get some of the philosophy of comics going through my veins, apart from reading them on a daily and weekly basis as I do, I thought that now would be a good time to tackle Thing 78 on my list of 101 things, to re-read Scott McCloud's three books on comics, Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics.

I'm currently reading Reinventing Comics, I finished reading Understanding Comics over the weekend. It was just as interesting as I remember it being when I got it some years back. I can't quite remember when that was. Within the last five years probably. The central points of it (in my opinion) are that:

1. comics are not a new phenomenon, although they are taken that way because of the various genres that adopted comics as a framework for telling stories in the last century;
2. there is something very special going on when people read comics - which isn't to say that there isn't something special going on in your mind when you read a book or watch a play or film, but there is something about comics that is universally understandable - paradoxical since so many people partition off comics as being just for kids;
3. comics are an artform, comics have a value.

It's certainly given me a lot to think about again, and following hot on the heels of it are the ideas of Reinventing Comics, which focuses a lot more on the ideas and situation as it was in the 90s, as well as pointing out what might happen in the future.

(of course, Reinventing Comics was written in 2000 or so, so we are already seeing whether or not some of McCloud's predictions or ideas are coming true)

Hopefully this will give me some inspiration as I sit down to map out my Script Frenzy; it's not a graphic novel - well it's only going to be scripts in any case, not illustrated except in my own notes maybe - and it's not intended to be a comic strip in the traditional sense. The working title is "Emergence" - and that's all I'm going to say for now, I've got off topic!

Understanding Comics is a brilliant piece of work, presenting in a simple way some really complicated ideas about what comics are. If you have any interest at all in comics and what they can be, you should give it a read.