Scott McCloud is an artist I already greatly respect, having read not only Understanding Comics before the semester, but also Reinventing Comics, Making Comics, and his graphic novel Zot! in my own free time.
Understanding Comics and its sequels are certainly his best known work, and for good reason. McCloud shows off his intense knowledge and passion for the comic industry through a series of books that intend to teach much like any school text, but are presented as delightfully self-aware, full-fledged comics in their own rights. Each chapter covers a different aspect of comic presentation and integrates the concept into its own presentation to provide examples, using an approach that can be best described as "show AND tell." McCloud doesn't simply tell us that a more cartoony representation of a character is more approachable toward audiences, he literally draws a photo-realistic image of himself and asks us "if we would even be listening to him if he looked like this."
McCloud also cites a wide variety of different comics from around the world in his examples, from Disney to Tezuka to Herge, and he showed that he was already considering the future potential and possibilities of comics on the web. back during a time when the internet had yet to get the ball rolling, a prediction that would later turn out to be very true.
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