Week 2: Understanding Comics

While many diverse and fascinating topics were brought up in McCloud’s  Understanding Comics, I found that one of my favorites involved the cartoon. I’ve always assumed a cartoon was just an animation with catchy visuals and stylized, and usually simplified, designs for their characters, etc. The concept of a cartoon is more so used as a term meaning to simplify something so it’s easier to understand and push the story to an idea to the broader audience in a way that doesn’t lose their attention. This is something that’s carried over to comics pretty heavily, and it’s why cartoons have such a high appeal.

McCloud discusses how we are attracted to cartoons because of their simplicity and how their visuals allow us to see ourselves. I thought this was cool to read because it brings up a lot of interesting ideas about identity and visual awareness that is connected to these “cartoons” that we watch or read. The cartoon, as McCloud said, is a vacuum in which the viewer’s identity and awareness is pulled into it. Whether identifying with a character, object, etc. we the audience put ourselves into what we’re taking in.

           

As discussed before McCloud brought up how people see themselves and concepts within cartoons/comics. We put relatable images and experiences into our work after all so it’s not far-fetched to think that so many cartoons and comics are easy for the general audience to throw themselves into to understand what they’re reading better.

The visual style of the cartoon is also incredibly popular in comics due to it’s simplicity compared to realism, ability to create many visuals which are easy to read, a multitude of different styles you can draw out, etc. The cartoon also get’s ideas across really quick. Take for example the usual comics in the Sunday paper. The comic panels are simple and easy to read and whether or not they contain the scenes or ideas presented are easy to understand thanks to well chosen images and a simplified style.