I personally am a huge fan of comics, and have been reading them for a while now. The ideas that Scott McLoud writes about in his article I find intriguing and very much on point for the importance of comics. Often many people, like McLoud says, write comics off as a child’s entertainment and that there is little to no merit given to them. What so many people forget is that there are actual professionals who not only take pride in what they are doing, but also put great thought into what they are writing or drawing. Obviously they are written for entertainment purposes, but so are any classic paintings or pieces of fiction, and cartoons can have as strong a message as either.
I think in today’s world so many people look down on comics as either a book full of superheroes, or the child’s section of the newspaper between the news and the crossword. Most people don’t take a moment to look at what goes into creating a comic and resign them to the stereotype. As McLoud writes, a face alone can be made of just two dots and a line but the artist chooses how to represent the faces as icons for the majority of people. An artist decides how to make the character visually pleasing or displeasing depending on how they want the viewer to see them, and what techniques are best to do so. Comic artists must also be writer’s themselves, for while they rely on writers for dialogue, the artist is the actual narrator.
The artist depicts the story, they illustrate the scene, the characters, and it is on their shoulders that the action must occur and flow. In any normal story, the writer tells the reader what happens, but not so in a comic the artist must show this. That isn’t to say the writer has it any easier, and their role in comics is easy. So often there can be hundreds of characters in a comic at once, and it is to the writer to capture each individual voice. Likewise, there are times when the writer must explain through speech the action the artist illustrates, having characters say what they’re doing. Most often, having a character say they are walking across the street for a specific reason would seem redundant but it can’t seem to be to the reader.
So much goes into the development and creation of a comic, and a large amount of time can be used up on one panel alone. As McLoud says, “comic artists have a universe of icons to choose from” and the selection alone takes time and attention for what is just the right icon (McLoud 58). I have always loved reading comics, and have used them for inspiration on my own pieces of fiction. I read them for their entertainment because there are times you want to fly off with a superhero and save crime or laugh at an extra large cat. But every comic has some sort of following and many are as timeless as Shakespeare’s plays and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
