Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Comic Book
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Comic Book
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is a comprehensive text highlighting different elements, aspects, as well as the style of comics. The author provides a chronological analysis of the different features and properties of comics for an enhanced understanding of the entertaining art. He begins by making some clarifications about the misleading conception of comic art by providing a framework for the definition of comics in chapter one, Setting the Record Straight. The common belief that comics constitute illiterate or semi-illiterate combinations of words and pictures is misleading, as it is sequential art covering various aspects of life and using equally diverse styles for development depending on the generation of artists.
The second chapter, The Vocabulary of Comics, sheds light on the language or rather the means of communication used in comics. The images, words, or symbols used in the diverse forms of sequential art are referred to as icons and representative of different meanings depending on the context of the icon used. Hence, they reflect the reality as they create vivid pictures or imaginations of the same based on the context presented. The third chapter, Blood in the Gutter, portrays one of the techniques employed by comic artists in developing their works. Comics make use of the audience’s ability to perceive the whole concept behind a particular illustration from a simple presentation of a slight part of the main object. McCloud defines the concept as Closure and goes on to define it across various contexts of comics. Chapter four goes on to elaborate on the representation of time frames in comics, which often indicates a simultaneous occurrence of event...