Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form

Understanding Comics is a chronicle of the infinitely weird connection of words and pictures that is comics. It tells usabout the heart of the concept of moving your eyes across panels, looking at the pictures, reading the words, and perceiving them all as a unified, flowing entity. It told us how and why the concept of reading and creating comics works. Reinventing comics, on the other hand, focuses more on the public's attitude toward comics, the comic industry, and the varied possibilities of new ways of creating, distributing, marketing, purchasing, and reading comics. It contains many of Scott's theories as to how comics are and could be influenced by the internet and the new way of thinking it has brought us. These are two very different books with two very different subject matters. However, they link hand in hand to aid us in viewing the medium of comics as a whole. If you liked Understanding Comics, you may or may not like Reinventing Comics. If you liked Reinventing Comics, you may or may not like Understanding Comics. But if you want to view the authors opinions and ideas on everything and anything that did, does, and will apply to Comics, I advise you get them both.

Thankfully this book is neither a 'How-To' in digital comics, nor a book praising the wonders of clunky web comics (which I feared when I first heard about it), for Scott McCloud the future of comics is much more about diversity, and a more direct connection between the reader and the author.If you read "Understanding Comics" (if not, you should), you already experienced Scott McCloud's love of sequential art firsthand in his very accessible analysis of the form. Having acknowledged the incredible potential the medium has to offer, "Reinventing Comics" brings us to terms with why we're not quite there yet. This book is not so much about comics themselves, as about comic books today in America (brief mentions are made to European and Japanese comics, but mostly to make clear what the book is not talking about). McCloud uses his concept of the 'twelve revolutions' to visit the shaping moments of American comic book history, and the current state of the industry. The book abounds with examples of comics that push the medium farther, facing many of the challenges posed (like ethnical diversity, feminine presence, and diverse genres and subject matters), most of which will be familiar to readers of current alternative comic books (Maus, Ghost World, Bone, Love and Rockets, Joe Sacco's works, etc.) The exposition is very clear and enjoyable, even for non comic book readers, which might as well be touched by the passion for the medium shown in every page. A vision is shared by McCloud with the reader, through this book, for a future of exciting possibilities.The future, indeed, is the theme of the second part of the book, in which the eventual marriage of digital technology and comic books is discussed. A somewhat lengthy (for my taste, I admit) explanation of the internet and other current technologies is given, along with very conservative calculations of what the future might look like. McCloud's case is very solid, as he doesn't try to predict, but rather to open a window, for everyone to see some of the many possibilities available. A final analysis of the form is made, as questions are raised about what sequential art is when free from the "tyranny" of the page.

I bought this book with some hesitation after reading the reviews. I thoroughly enjoyed "Understanding Comics" but worried that "Reinventing Comics" would not live up to its potential. After reading it, I think that "Reinventing Comics" is just as profound of work as "Understanding Comics." The negative reviewers fail to see this book as another direction of study. It is not a sequel to "Understanding Comics." It is an excellent look at other aspects of the comics industry and communication media as a whole.

I've just picked up Reinventing Comics and am overwhelmed with the same feeling I had when I first saw Understanding Comics.I am in the business of trying to caste new visual (and full-sensorium) idioms for understanding abstract information in scientific disciplines. Scott's books are incredible sources for insight into the discipline of communicating with other than words. Scott's view of the worlds we create with our imaginations and the way we can send consistent, rich, clear signals using minimal tools (pen & ink?) is awesome. It will take years for the rest of us to catch up with Scott's work, but in the meantime I am sure I will read and reread his work as I once did my Marvel and DC comics.This time it is work!

In 1993, Scott McCloud published an unexpected blast of pure genius, _Understanding Comics_: a monograph on comic books in the form of a comic book. Now he has created a sequel. I was leery at first; I wasn't sure that there was much more to be said, and I feared that the freshness of the first volume would be lacking. The first half of _Reinventing Comics_ somewhat fulfilled my fears; chapters dealing with the artistic and business side of comics seemed like afterthoughts to the first book, and chapters on issues of diversity, while interesting enough, didn't really jump off the page at me.But the second half of the book, unexpectedly, brought back to me the excitement I felt in 1993. It covers new technology, especially the Internet: digital production, digital distribution, and the evolution of comics in the digital world. McCloud includes a brief history of computers, the internet, and computer graphics, and analyzes both the impact digitalization has had on comics, and the impact he expects it to have in the future. Always the optimist (see Zot!), McCloud is also terribly smart, and the future he envisions is exciting and provocative._Reinventing Comics_ is essential reading for anybody interested in comics, in the potentials of the Internet, in information theory, or simply in thinking.