Understanding Comics

McCloud begins by searching for a precise definition and settles on a broad idea of comics as images arranged in a deliberate order to tell a story or share information. Using this definition, he finds early examples in Egyptian paintings, medieval tapestries and ancient Mexican picture manuscripts. He then explores how cartoons work: by simplifying a face into a few lines, an artist allows readers to project themselves into a character, a process he calls amplification through simplification.

One of the book's most influential ideas concerns closure, the way readers' imaginations connect separate panels across the gutter into a continuous story. McCloud identifies different kinds of transitions between panels and compares how they are used in American, European and Japanese comics. Later chapters show how panels can represent time, how lines carry feeling, how words and pictures can share the work of storytelling, and how color affects mood. The book ends with reflections on art and creativity. Because it is drawn as a comic, the ideas are shown, not just described.

Clever, accessible and influential, a must for visual storytellers. About 224 pages in the William Morrow paperback.