Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
- ISBN13: 9780060976255
- Condition: New
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Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, this innovative comic book provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning.A comic book about comic books. McCloud, in an incredibly accessible style, explains the details of how comics work: how they’re composed, read and understood. More than just a book about comics, this gets to the heart of how we deal with visual languages in general. “The pot
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Bronze Age Comics (1970-1985)
Article by Comic Book Blog
Collecting Bronze Age Comics:
For comic book fans who grew up in the 1970′s and early 80′s, bronze age comics will always have a place in their comic collections.
Comic books were a major source of entertainment for kids (and adults)in the 1970′s. TV’s only had 3 or 4 channels available, and Atari video game systems were only just beginning to make their way into homes. Without home computers, DVD/Blu-Ray players and today’s super-involved (and addicting) video/pc games, you needed something to do, and reading comic books were a common way to entertain yourself an hour or two.
For kids and who grew up in small towns, many have fond memories of heading down to the corner newsstand or convenience store and checking out the comic books on the spinner-rack. For kids in larger cities or busy suburbs, they may have been lucky enough to have one or two comic speciality comic stores that were just starting emerge to visit.
I can remember going to some of the earlier comic conventions that were held in New York and buying some older comics that were wrapped in saranwrap, because the modern comic bag and board hadn’t been marketed yet. Before that, a common method to protect comics was to wrap them individually in newspaper.
Today, 1970′s comic books are becoming the new 60′s comics, meaning that the prices of many bronze age comic books have gone through the roof in the last 10-15 years. In the 80′s and 90′s many 1970′s comics sat in four-for-a-dollar boxes in comic shops and at comic conventions. In a recent online auction, a graded copy of Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #1 sold for over 0.00! This would have been impossible to believe 10 years ago. A copy of Star Wars #1 from Marvel Comics recently sold for 0.00!
Original comic book art from this era has also become highly sought-after. Works from bronze age artists like Frank Miller, George Perez, Neal Adams, John Byrne, Dave Cockrum and Gene Colan tend to run anywhere from 0-,500 for each page. I’ve had customers tell me that they can recall seeing pages of original art from some of these artists on comic shop walls with price tags 25 years ago.
With the popularity of the internet and major comic conventions happening so often, it has become relatively simple for fans of bronze age comics to put recreate their childhood comic collections. Lower grade copies of most of these books can be had at reasonable prices, so if you are looking to increase your bronze age comic collection, visit some comic conventions this summer or surf the internet and give a bronze age comic a new home today!
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A profound book about more than comix,
This is one of my favorite books and one of the most insightful, unique, and enjoyable books that I’ve ever read. I have recommended it to many people, bought copies for several of them, and own two copies myself so that I can lend out one. I recommend it VERY strongly to anyone who’s involved with designing Internet sites. Although it’s not about that subject directly, it has more wisdom about the design of sites than any Web design book I’ve ever read or seen. Afterall, the Web is basically a ‘page’ structure, with text and graphics, just like a comic. Also, you’ll learn more about art history from this book than you will from most art history classes (I know, I went to art school…). And did I mention that it’s funny too! -E
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|Nobody takes comic books more seriously than Scott McCloud,
I like to take things apart and figure out how they work, except instead of doing internal combustion engines or pocket watches I like to play with books, movies and television shows. In “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” Scott McCloud not only takes apart comic books, he puts them back together again. Certainly comics are a neglected art form. Put Superman, Batman, Spawn and Spider-Man on the big screen and there will be some cursory comments about the actual all-in-color-for-a-dime, and names like Stan Lee and Frank Miller will get kicked around, but nobody really talks about how comics work (the exception that proves the rule would be the Hughes brothers talking about adapting the “From Hell” graphic novels). Part of the problem is conceptual vocabulary: we can explain in excruciating detail how the shower scene in “Psycho” works in terms of shot composition, montage, scoring, etc. That sort of conceptual vocabulary really does not exist and McCloud takes it upon himself to pretty much create it from scratch.
That, of course, is an impressive achievement, especially since he deals with functions as well as forms. To that we add McCloud’s knowledge of art history, which allows him to go back in time and find the origins of comics in pre-Columbian picture manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Bayeux Tapestry. Topping all of this off is McCloud’s grand and rather obvious conceit, that his book about the art of comic books is done AS a comic book. This might seem an obvious approach, but that does not take away from the fact that the result is a perfect marriage of substance and form.
This volume is divided into nine chapters: (1) Setting the Record Straight, which develops a proper dictionary-style definition of “comics”; (2) The Vocabulary of Comics, detailing the iconic nature of comic art; (3) Blood in the Gutter, establishing the different types of transitions between frames of comic art, which are the building blocks of how comics work; (4) Time Frames, covers the ways in which comics manipulate time, including depictions of speed and motion; (5) Living in Line, explores how emotions and other things are made visible in comics; (6) Show and Tell, looks at the interchangeability of words and pictures in various combinations; (7) The Six Steps, details the path comic book creators take in moving from idea/purpose to form to idiom to structure to craft to surface (but not necessarily in that order); (8) A Word About Color, reminds us that even though this particular book is primarily in black & white, color has its uses in comic books; and (9) Putting It All Together, finds McCloud getting philosophical about the peculiar place of comic books in the universe.
“Understanding Comics” works for both those who are reading pretty much every comic book done by anyone on the face of the planet and those who have never heard of Wil Eisner and Art Spigelman, let alone recognize their artwork. Which ever end of the spectrum you gravitate towards McCloud incorporates brief examples of some of the artwork of the greatest comic book artists, such as Kirby, Herge, Schultz, etc., as well as work by more conventional artists, including Rembrandt, Hokusai, and Van Gogh. “Understanding Comics” is a superb look at the form and functions of the most underexplored art form in popular culture.
I am using Spider-Man comic books in my Popular Culture class this year and will be using some of McCloud’s key points to help the cherubs in their appreciation of what they are reading. If you have devoted hundreds of hours of your life to reading comic books, then you can take a couple of hours to go through this book and have a better understanding and appreciation of why you take funny books so seriously.
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|Deep and Clear,
I expected this book to be a witty and well-done presentation of mostly stuff that I already knew; but it was much more than that. McCloud has a deep understanding of art and society and people, and a completely lucid presentation.
There are neat and useful new ways of thinking about comics here (his comparisons of American and Japanese comics, his theories of panel transitions and why comic characters are sometimes drawn more simply than the backgrounds, his comments on the psychological impact of color), and for that matter ways of thinking about art in general, and design in general. And he makes masterly use of the comic medium itself to present the material in a way that never drags or confuses.
I hope someone programs the Orbital Mind Control Lasers so that McCloud extends this book into a whole series on the theory and practice of comics, and another on general visual design. The world needs it!
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