Review: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm fairly disappointed in "Understanding Comics." In the best lit course I ever took, we read the second chapter, "The Vocabulary of Comics," and it was a mind-blowing read that has shaped the way I read comics since. Unfortunately, it's easily the best chapter in the book and only two or three other chapters are anywhere near as fascinating. The meat of the book is in a few central chapters, and the rest is insubstantial fluff about how amazing comics are - or could be, if the medium were taken seriously. It's also clearly dated. While comics are still looked down upon and not generally treated as equal to written literature, the genre has gained a significant amount of prestige in the past twenty years, so McCloud's frequent protestations against how maligned comics are and his insistence that comics are worth respect are now unnecessary.

Several chapters are certainly worth reading. The aforementioned "Vocabulary of Comics" introduces the basic elements of comics writing and the idea of symbols, signs, and icons. McCloud goes into serious depth about how variation in style can be used to deliberately evoke either distance or empathy with characters, to 'other' or include the reader. The section on panels and the spaces between them is another highlight. Essentially, any time he digs into the structure of comics, how that structure can be used, and how that structure is different from literature and useful in ways that written literature can't match, I'm sold on comics as a medium all over again. When he's waxing eloquent about how amazing comics are, he loses me, because I don't need to be told: I want to be shown. The book starts out strong in this regard while the last several chapters are a bear to get through.

I like his frequent references to important comic artists, stories and styles (and his reproductions), because as someone with little knowledge of the history of comics, those moments do a great job of illustrating his point while simultaneously broadening my knowledge. He disclaims at the beginning that this isn't a history of comics, but I could have used a bit more history nonetheless. Still, he cites some great sources that I immediately read and were great resources in themselves for understanding comics, art, and history.

I also love his efforts to tie comics back to visual sequential art throughout history; it's one of those things you don't think about until it's pointed out to you, and then it makes a world of sense. The book is full of such things and I don't ever tire of them.

Overall, I recommend at least the first half of the book. If you have a bit more patience or indulgence for dated ideology than I do, then the whole thing might be a home run for you.

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