Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

What struck me most about the book Understanding Comics is the space between comic strip pictures. We were talking about the same type of concept in the class the other day, metonyms. These little spaces of time are where it is up to the reader to interpret what is happening in the story. They are usually obvious things like an image of an axe, and an image of someone struggling on a tree stump. We put two and two together, and that person is assumed dead.
McCloud goes on to explain the differences in Western and Japanese comics. When going into metonym’s he sees that there is a big difference between the way Western’s perceive and interpret over the way Japanese do. “Traditional Western art and literature don’t wander much. On the whole, we’re a pretty goal-oriented culture. But in the East, there’s a rich tradition of cyclical and labyrinthine works of art” (McCloud, 81). Here we have to look at the cultural and mental differences between these two sets of people. In the East people are much more focused on aspects and learning about an environment. In the West we are all in a rush. We need to get places as fast as possible, that’s why we don’t care much about how we are getting places, but what happens when we get there.
Understanding Comics definitely shows how much comics represent a culture. He breaks down time periods, types of comics, different publishing locations, which all help show that comics hold a fundamental understanding of our culture. Although comics have been denounced as a form of entertainment for kids, McCloud shows us that there is more behind a comic than you would think.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. 2. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.