Reinventing Comics Is Not Meant For You
Written: Jun 18 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Smart, thoughtful, passionate
Cons: Can feel a bit like taking one's medicine
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| peterme's Full Review: Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology... |
So, I'm finally getting around to discussing Scott McCloud's latest. Unless you draw comics, the book is not meant for you. Whereas Understanding Comics is an exploration of a communications medium, and thus has bearing an all communications media, RC is an open letter to the comics community (creators, publishers, sellers, and, to a much smaller extent, readers). A treatise that if the community doesn't get its act together, it could very well go away. And a proposal for how to solve the problem, step-by-step, and ensure the medium's vitality and longevity.
RC is much simpler than UC. In UC Scott McCloud was an explorer in the New World, reporting back to the old world what he'd found. There was an ecstatic quality in detailing the discoveries, and an impressive attempt to capture everything about this new place.
In RC Scott is a settler on the east coast in the 1840s, and his writings are a diary the mess that he witnesses around him. The book's first half details the failings of the comics industry, its inability to transcend pulp schlock, its willingness to squander a vast audience in favor of the locked-in market of pimply white boys, and its refusal to give artists a fair shake.
But, Scott feels all is not lost--there's a vast frontier to explore, and he urges his colleagues in the comics community to "go west."
Scott's "west" is cyberspace, and the second half of RC is devoted to the coming impact of digital media and distribution on comics. This is the section with most relevance to whomever reads my site, particularly Scott's discussion of "the infinite canvas," the notion that comics must no longer be confined to the bounds of a printed page, but can stretch and unfold endlessly, in any direction. Of particular note is Scott's belief that hypertext will give way to a more spatial mode of display and navigation; that the link will be seen more as an artifact of a low-bandwidth age, to be replaced by information spaces that provide context and holism.
Very little of what Scott has to say will be new to computer-savvy types. Anyone who's read Wired at any point over the last 6 years has already heard plenty about the miracles of the net for allowing creators to go straight to consumers. About the fluidity of the new economy. And folks who've been designing for computers learned long ago to think of the display not as a screen, not as a page, but as a window.
But, that's okay. Those parts aren't meant for you. Those parts are meant for Scott's colleagues, many of whom are wilfully ignorant about anything cybernetic. Whose tongues and fingers are blackened by inkstains, who will give up their Koh-I-Noors only when you pry it from their cold, dead hands. Scott does a good job of scaring them into realizing the dimness of the future if they don't pay attention and do something to save themselves.
I want to finish by discussing some of the form of RC. The presentation, matching the exposition, is straightforward--far less play with panels and borders than exhibited in UC. Also, there's a notable difference in drawing style, borne of the fact that RC was produced all-digitally. If I'm not mistaken, Scott even sketches using a Wacom tablet--no drawing on paper and scanning it in. This provides a remarkable precision in the lines, though causes some bezier artifacts to ruin smooth curves. It also frees Scott to exploit some helpful visual effects--smooth blurs, transparencies, and endless cut 'n pasting help him get his points across in ways too cumbersome for ink and paper.
My last point is a suggestion for Scott to continue drawing information graphics. His dissection of the supply chain (how print comics get from creator to consumer), his mastery of iconography in telling a story, basically, his ability to use comics to explain abstraction (comics are almost *always* narrative) demonstrates a remarkable skill for visualizing ideas that hadn't yet seen full flower with UC. Any magazine art directors should have Scott's name and number in their rolodex, for when they need to get across a particularly tricky notion.
So anyway, I liked it. And while it's not meant for you, you might very well enjoy it. So pick up a copy.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
peterme
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Member: Peter Merholz
Location: San Francisco, CA
Reviews written: 28
Trusted by: 148 members
About Me:
I'm not a Jew. I'm Jew-ish.
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