Newspaper Comics

This week, I had a chance to read "The Complete Peanuts" and got a glimpse into the early days of comics and how they appealed to their audience. While Peanuts began as whimsical short stories for various age groups, it slowly evolved to include more adult themes while still retaining its humorous take on life.
I also read some of “Flash Gordon”, which appeals to a much different audience, using fantastic and greater than life heroes to entertain its audience. It also shows the beginnings of comic books as a medium of entertainment, aside from the newspapers.

Both these stories seek to entertain similar audiences, yet take drastically different approaches in terms of themes, styles, and medium. I thought this was a very good example of how wide an audience comics sought to reach.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

While understanding comics might seem like a rudimentary skill for most, Scott McCloud provides a somewhat in-depth look at the world of comics and why things are what they are. In Understanding Comics, McCloud demonstrates the reasons for the particular "style" of comics, although this has obviously been shown to vary by author/artist, but the underlying truth is what it represents to the reader. A more detailed and even semi-realistic face might seem too distant from the reader, and will most likely distract from the message, but too simplified of a face might just be disregarded as a cartoon. Comics attempt to find this perfect balance between the two, in order to focus on the intended purpose. This approach into understanding the style in which comics are drawn is extremely entertaining and engaging for any audience, as McCloud uses the very things he is attempting to explain, to illustrate his book.

McCloud also focuses on the relationship between the images and the written word. While more words are usually needed to form a picture in the reader’s mind about the character, pictures alone cannot convey certain messages, excluding wordless comics. This provides great insight into how words and images are both “degraded”, for lack of a better word, in order to meet in the middle and create a masterpiece using both. McCloud illustrates in an interesting way, showing the transition from the “masterpiece” realistic drawing of a face by the artist, towards the “masterpiece” Shakespearean words by the writer. Both have to be degraded in order to meet in the middle, and convey their intended message.

McCloud’s approach is overall illuminating, vastly entertaining, and unique. I very much enjoyed his method of helping audiences understand comics.