SEQUENTIAL ART HOW TO
From there, he discusses how to convey emotional, physical, and narrative information to the reader by examining the complexities of drawing facial expressions, bodily posture and gestures, and other attributes of body language. As McCloud explains it, these fundamental sets of choices create the building blocks for constructing compelling narratives with which audiences will readily identify. He begins by specifying the rhetorical fundamentals of the craft, or what he refers to as the "five choices": moment, frame, image, word, and flow. In his recognizable comic-book-styled format (mostly black and white, cartoonish, with bold line work), McCloud proceeds to explain to the reader the vast array of technical, artistic, and rhetorical tools available to authors and artists. This attention to the craft (from the storyboarding stage to the design of characters, to the development of settings, and down to inking and coloring) elevates this book above a whole slew of related how-to books clogging the racks at your local comics store, which focus primarily on refining illustration techniques and developing styles. In other words, the book delves into long-standing rhetorical issues such as ascertaining audience expectations and generic conventions, defining an explicit purpose for one’s text, and developing an appropriate tone or affect for delivery.
More than simply delineating these options, however (and the reason that I refer to the book as a rhetoric of comics), he also articulates why someone might likely make certain choices over others to enhance dramatic effect, promote ambiguity, or develop identification with characters. McCloud's overriding purpose is to present the reader with a range of possible choices for the various elements of comics writing, such as panel placement, lettering styles, what action to capture, and which words to use.
Making Comics offers readers a rather thorough overview of the entire universe of comics illustration, examining not only comic books and the graphic novel, but also manga, daily comic strips, and single-panel cartoons. In 2006, McCloud returns to form with Making Comics, a work that offers readers and practitioners of comics alike a rhetorical handbook for an art form that is finally getting the kind of serious academic attention that it deserves.
SEQUENTIAL ART PROFESSIONAL
McCloud called for a radical restructuring of the form of comics as well as the industry’s professional demographics (critic Gary Goth even penned a dismantling of the book entitled "McCloud's Cuckoo-Land"). In 2000, McCloud released Reinventing Comics, a follow-up work that upset many of his former fans because of its provocative, manifesto-like argument. In 1993, McCloud gave us the theoretically insightful (and whimsically illustrated) Understanding Comics, which received almost unanimous praise and gave academics an analytical footing from which to study comics and the graphic novel. Making Comics is the third book by comics artist McCloud and arguably his most practice-oriented one. We can read McCloud’s text as a rhetoric of comics in that it not only offers readers practical and theoretical advice for producing aesthetically effective and engaging comics of their own, it also demonstrates its own argument in a sophisticated yet visually appealing manner. It is within this context that we can read Scott McCloud’s book Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels. For the most part, such efforts tend to focus more on the analysis and critique of preexisting visual texts and less on how students themselves might produce such texts. Books in this vein expand our critical perspective of what counts as a worthwhile cultural artifact, moving beyond the confines of high art and into the sometimes maligned world of advertisements, graffiti, and even (perish the thought) comics. Review of Scott McCloud, Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels (Harper Paperbacks, 2006)īen McCorkle, Ohio State University at MarionĬompositionists have long held an interest in visual culture, as textbooks such as Seeing & Writing, Convergences, and Rhetorical Visions demonstrate, not to mention recent scholarly books such as Carolyn Handa’s Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World or Kristie Fleckenstein’s Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action in the Composition Classroom.
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