book data
2,214 ratings,
4.31
average rating, 304 reviews
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published
April 27th 1994
(first published 1993)
by Harper Paperbacks
binding
Paperback, 224 pages
isbn
006097625X
(isbn13: 9780060976255)
description
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 un...more
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| Required reading for cartoonists and art historians | 1 | 6 | 06/29/2008 09:32AM |
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avg 4.31
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in September, 2008
recommended to Miss Michael by:
Matt. And Matt.recommends it for: comics fans, artists (of all varieties), future comics fans . . .
I really appreciate that this book exists. It's nice that something was created to help people understand the language of comics, what they are, what they can be, what makes them special, and so forth.
That said, there are parts which are a little convoluted (Chapter 2, I'm looking at you), and there are parts that are a little dated by now (such as the chapter on color, which I think has come a long way since the early '90s, particularly due to the use of computers). But there are so...more
That said, there are parts which are a little convoluted (Chapter 2, I'm looking at you), and there are parts that are a little dated by now (such as the chapter on color, which I think has come a long way since the early '90s, particularly due to the use of computers). But there are so...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
comic lovers
amazing homage to an art form as old as the carved stories on borobudur temples and the papyrus scrolls of pharaoh - the unassuming geeky guide dissects the media format (worthy of mcluhan) and history of comic and walks us through its tiniest elements to be able to fully appreciate it as an art form - down to the technical and philosophical levels - not just comic but also how human mind works to allow the storytelling to happen through sequencing, line, and meaning... all the things we take fo...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommended to Christy by:
Matthew V and the GNLrecommends it for: fans of comics and graphic novels
I love the idea of this conversation more than I love the application--at least in this book. While I find the concepts themselves fascinating, I found the book tedious. The overall art and style employed by McCloud just wasn't compelling to me. I really struggled to finish this book.
But as I said, the conversation is a good one, and the concepts explored--particularly the role of the reader and the required brain work involved in reading comics--were interesting. I'm glad this book...more
But as I said, the conversation is a good one, and the concepts explored--particularly the role of the reader and the required brain work involved in reading comics--were interesting. I'm glad this book...more
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Read in March, 2009
Well, I also think this book was brilliant, just like everybody else. I was like, 'how could he possible have two hundred and fourteen pages of things to say about comics?' but then I'd heard it was brilliant for so long from so many people that I gave it a shot. And it is just theory! It's like reading Roland Barthes or somebody, but in comics, which makes it easier/more fun, which I think is in keeping with Mr. McCloud's idea that comics are the best thing in the whole universe. I mean, some o...more
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Read in December, 2008
this book was intriguing, but also annoying. a comic book about comics! what a great idea! i wanted it to be better than it was.
ultimately, i'm glad i read it, but only to the extent it identified a bunch of interesting topics/themes that i'm now inclined to think about on my own as i read more comics (and reflect on the ones i've already read)--i.e. issues of time, motion, panel sequence, reader perception, artistic style etc. but on the whole i was not thrilled with mccloud's ow...more
ultimately, i'm glad i read it, but only to the extent it identified a bunch of interesting topics/themes that i'm now inclined to think about on my own as i read more comics (and reflect on the ones i've already read)--i.e. issues of time, motion, panel sequence, reader perception, artistic style etc. but on the whole i was not thrilled with mccloud's ow...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
everyone -- not just comic book fans
FASCINATING book!
I'd heard excellent things about this book ever since I got into comics way back in 1993, but never decided to sit down and read it until a few months ago. It took me a week to go through it (reading a bit every night before bed), but it's honestly a pretty quick read. Most people could probably get through it in a couple of hours.
What I found in the pages of this book is an excellent explanation of what happens to us as we read comics, how our mind int...more
I'd heard excellent things about this book ever since I got into comics way back in 1993, but never decided to sit down and read it until a few months ago. It took me a week to go through it (reading a bit every night before bed), but it's honestly a pretty quick read. Most people could probably get through it in a couple of hours.
What I found in the pages of this book is an excellent explanation of what happens to us as we read comics, how our mind int...more
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Read in January, 1999
recommends it for:
disaffected college students
it's one of the best examples i've found of someone writing so specifically about a topic that the observations and implications become absolutely universal.
think about it: hamlet is completely consumed in his little world, and the stakes are all about what will happen to denmark and only denmark. and centuries later, we still perform the play and read it and think that that is us up there struggling with our problems, just with a different name.
this is what mccloud achie...more
think about it: hamlet is completely consumed in his little world, and the stakes are all about what will happen to denmark and only denmark. and centuries later, we still perform the play and read it and think that that is us up there struggling with our problems, just with a different name.
this is what mccloud achie...more
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Perhaps the best explanation of how a particular artistic medium works that I've ever seen. McCloud wrote this at a time when the artistic merit of comics/graphic novels was still in doubt in some corners, so clearly that animates a lot of the discussion. He really demolishes any doubt about their legitimacy, and in the process created quite a comic himself. Understanding Comics is one phenomenal piece of analysis and it's far more than just a treatise on one medium. His meditations on comi...more
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Read in January, 2006
I have used this with my English 4 classes and will be using it next year with my Intro to the Graphic Novel course. This is a wonderful study in how the comic form of writing works. I think the graphic novel is going to become a more and more important form of literature. Just look at the movie scene lately and check out how many derived from graphic novels, and that is not just the superhero movies from Marvel and DC Comics.
McCloud deeply and thoughtfully explores how sequential...more
McCloud deeply and thoughtfully explores how sequential...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
graphic novel fans
Even if you're not interested in comics and graphic novels, McCloud's book might get you interested. Rather brilliantly, McCloud uses the medium of comics itself for a philosophical meditation on the nature and possibilities of comics. He does reflect a little bit on the prehistoric and pre-modern origins of comics, but this is not a history lesson. Rather, he explores the specific nature of comics as sequential art and the potential of the form to explore new modes of expression. It's reall...more
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Read in June, 2006
recommends it for:
comic book beginners - know what you are getting into and how friggin cool it is!
A really good anatomy book for a medium that is (arguably) young, but has roots in so many other forms of art and literature. It's kind of a talking-head book, discussing an almost philosophical definition of comics (sequential art and writing), what that Means, and why COMIC BOOKS ARE A VALID FORM OF LITERATURE. Due to the pictures and basic explanations with a lot of examples, the talking-head's argument is not just easy to follow, it's even fun - it feels like an engaging PBS document...more
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Read in February, 2009
recommended to Jil by:
Momo, Gregory Mossrecommends it for: people interested in visual storytelling
I never had any intention of taking the graphic-novel class here at Brown, but I had every intention of taking my roommate's textbooks for class and reading them on my own time. I hadn't gotten around to it yet when my playwriting professor assigned a big, photocopied chunk of this to us for reading - "Though it's about comics," he said, "there's a lot to be learned here for playwrights, too."
I decided just to read the whole book, since my friend Momo had also rea...more
I decided just to read the whole book, since my friend Momo had also rea...more
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Read in February, 2009
What a fantastic introduction to the art of comics. Scott McCloud's work sets a new benchmark in comic art appreciation. The highly esteemed reputation this book enjoys is richly deserved. The tools he describes like the art pyramid and panel-to-panel types are a great place to start for comics critique and analysis. His explanation of the "invisible art" between panels, what he calls closure, is the clearest I've seen. I'd like to have seen more about how closure is different from say...more
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Read in January, 2002
recommended to Morgan by:
Ron Regé, Jr.recommends it for: everyone
As an artform, comics are not as invisible as they had been when McCloud's book first saw publication. The last decade has seen the legitimization of "the graphic novel" as credible literature in the American mainstream, something that Europeans and Japanese readers have known for far longer. Stateside, comics have long borne the stigma of the dross superhero-in-tights fare that kept the art in a literary Dark Age for half of the 20th century. The renaissance that began in the undergro...more
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09/11/07
Jarrodtrainque
added it
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 potential of comics is limitless and exciting!" writes McCloud. This should be required reading for every school teacher. Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman says, "The most intelligent comics I've seen in a lon...more
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Read in January, 2006
I haven't felt this guilty from reading a book in a while. it visually explains comics' magic use of time between frames and their wide-ranging storytelling capacity (as seen lately in the graphic novels used to show Mexicans how to safely cross their northern border, to the 9/11 report issued by the U.S. government). that info was great and well-presented. but the comics-will-save-the-world feeling i got from the book weirded me out, like this was written for an in-crowd and i'm not in it.
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Read in December, 2008
This book is amazing. I never thought i would like comics, but this book truly turned me on to the art-form. i have always read comics as one would read a normal storyline, as i would read a novel. THe psychology of the art form, the way that we process the pictures in the frame and how we move between the frames, the omitted space, this all works into our processing of the story line. McCloud details the history of comics as an art, its juxtaposition of pictures with words in order to give ...more
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Read in January, 2006
This could actually be titled Redeeming Comics, or perhaps Proving The Intellectual Validity of Comics. It is the definitive critical analysis of the comic form, or at least the only of which many people are aware. (Certainly I don't know any others.) It's not hip, because it was written before comics became hip, and doesn't strive to be. Rather, it is well thought out and loving, which is better.
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It's more than comics; it's the universe. McCloud explains things like radical subjectivity (What's the term for the philosophy I'm trying to think of here? More than skepticism, even. Pyrrhonism, Mr. Google tells me, as explained by Montaigne) clearly and simply. In fact, he explains pretty much everything clearly and simply, an impressive achievement no matter what you're trying to explain.
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Read in June, 2007
People talked about this book constantly when I was in school for Art-- I never got around to reading it until now, and it's clear what I was missing. In his descriptive and erudite passages on the inner workings of comics, McCloud somehow illuminates the purposes, processes and tools available to anyone working in any creative media. Plus, it's a damn comic. Awesome.
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