COMICS JOURNAL (Essay): Learning Outcome
Invisible Art is Everywhere
After reading the Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, in addition to art skills, I started to apply his theories and ideas of invisible art not only on comic books but also other areas such as newspaper, someone’s speech, paintings, films, social-cultural issues, and even self-development.
Apply McCloud’s theories for my self-development and self-evaluation is particularly important. For example, in Chapter 1, McCloud says, “If people failed to understand comics, it was because they defined what comics could be too narrowly”. This message keeps appearing in my mind. I will definitely use it all the time to remind myself that I should not judge someone based only on my first impression or others’ words because I experienced it many times and understood how worse it is being misunderstood or underestimated. For example, my sister and me studied at the same schools and she is more outstanding, more beautiful, and more popular than me. My parents, teachers, and classmates always compared me with my sister and point out my shortcomings. Even when I did something outstanding, I did not receive the same compliments and recognition as my sister because people around me already established a superficial definition about me and believed that my success may be luck or accident. Therefore, McCloud’s message made me realized that the reason that I was narrowly defined is only because they do not understand me. It reminds me to avoid applying this mistake on my friends and family, be a fair person, and learn to appreciate others.
In chapter 2, McCloud explains why the more cartoony the images, the more popular the cartoon because we can see ourselves in this empty shell instead of seeing the face of another. He says, “an empty shell that we inhabit which enables us to travel in another realm”, and “We don't just observe the cartoon, we become it”. This is because “when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another”, but “when you enter the world of the cartoon, you see yourself”. This idea is applicable on many areas including team building, and social-cultural issues. For instance, when a project is successful, all of the team members are deserved recognition for their hard work. However, if only a team member such as the team leader received all compliments and good words, it may be unfair to other teammates or creating bad feelings among the team. This is also true when we want to get more support from the public on social-cultural issues. Being specific is good but it is only the start because when we extended the issue to make it relate to many people, the support will be much greater. McCloud says, “the more cartoony a face is, … the more people it could be said to describe”. On the issues of global climate change, the organization will not narrowly see it a problem affecting the Poles’ ice melting speed, but warning the world’s population that everyone was affected. This is similar to the idea that the more general the things is, more people could relate themselves to the specific issue. As a result, people will pay more attention and support on it.
In addition to understanding before defining something narrowly and trying to be less specific so that everyone could see them instead of something specific as mentioned above, McCloud said that audience’s participation is also important in chapter 3. For example, even if the issues are related to the audience, if they do not participate, it is meaningless. In comics, artists use gutters to separate the sequential images and required audience to “observe the parts but perceive the whole” such as fill in the blanks. This game is called “closure”. People always interpret the missing parts in our daily lives through automatic assumption based on their experience and knowledge. This is similar to the major premise that exists in our mind unconsciously. For instance, we will give the elderly a helping hand when we saw them crossing a busy road. We take this action because we "believe" that it is a correct behavior. The unconscious assumptions and concept always help us to make judgment. However, the assumptions that based only on visual analysis can be wrong sometimes. In comics, the gutters and white space between panels encourage readers to commit the "closure" unconsciously in order to connect the panels as a whole and make sense of the story. After reading this chapter, I found I made closure many times a day but sometimes this closure should be avoided because we cannot take everything for granted. So, this chapter means a lot for me.
McCloud mentioned comics especially those with realistic background but cartoony image helped readers mask themselves as a character and “safely enter the sensually stimulating world” on page 43 in Understanding Comics. This idea was found in all comics. For example, in Maus, Art Spiegelman masked his race, the Jewish people, as mice during Holocaust period. This technique tells the readers about their fear towards the Nazi soldiers who were represented by cats. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel used the Daedalus-Icarus father-child relationship to represent her relationship and comments about her father. She does not appreciate the suicide of his father who unwisely flew too close to the sun but at the end of the book with her father waiting in the water to catch her tells readers that she has forgiven him and missed him. The mask tool can help us explain complicated context in a playful and understanding way without making it explicitly. This tool is very useful for me when I need to create some concepts for my arts. I can use mask to imply something so that I do not need to tell it explicitly. I will definitely apply it on my artwork.
The other thing in the Understanding Comics that inspired me a lot is “we all live in a state of profound isolation”. Every individual is unique. We can only assume others will think or behave in a certain way based on our experience, knowledge, and inferences. In order to communicate with each other, we must use media such as sound, words, pictures, and body language to deliver our message to others. To ensure audience get the message the artist expressed in his or her artwork accurately, the comic artist must anticipate the audience's ability to understand each panel and the ability to fill the missing parts (closure) between panels to make sense of the sequential art and story. We make anticipation of others’ response everyday such as a smile may mean happy or just a routine response without any meaning but we may choose to believe that it means happy. On the other hand, we used to believe that others will understand us but it is always not the case. To makes our invisible mind visible to the audience. We should put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to think objectively, break through the obstacle of "understanding" and evoke respondent’s involvement and interaction. This is another important idea I took away from Understanding Comics.
Other comic books such as Watchmen, Maus, and Fun Home, are all interesting and inspiring. I have written many of my thoughts in the journals. I only concentrated on the Understanding Comics in the self-reflective letter because it is the most influencing one for me. Thank you very much for selecting this book and other comic books for us. I learned many skills such as viewing things in literary theories. Moreover, before taking this class, I always thought that creating comics is hard and not willing to spend time on it. However, the graphic memoirs such as Maus inspired me that writing is not the only version to express, record, and share our stories and narratives. Graphic novels seem to be more playful and dynamic in storytelling. I will definitely try it.
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