Books by author: Scott McCloud

I'm not really a comics fan. I read X-Men and a few other comic book series back in the early 80s, and I've read Watchmen, Jimmy Corrigan, and one of the Sandman graphic novels, but none of them really blew me away. I appreciate the craft of the artwork and design, but haven't yet found any comics that grab my intellect like a good novel (I suspect I could get caught up in Sandman, but there's no way I'm spending hundreds of dollars to read the whole series).

With that as background, McCloud's book is a valiant attempt to teach an appreciation of the history and complexity of comics. He does not talk much about the surface craft, but instead concentrates on the underlying conceptual space that comics operate within. It's a very interesting treatment that applies not only to comics but also to every other artform. He does spend quite a bit of effort describing the aspects of comics that distinguish them from other art, and those sections are very well done. Understanding Comics is a worthwhile read, and I'm motivated to check out a few more examples of the artform (Spiegelman's Maus is high on my list, as is Eisner's Comics & Sequential Art).