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A review by jayshay
Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form by Scott McCloud
3.0
Karl Marx was a great describer of capitalism, but turned out to be pretty terrible at forecasting its fall. It is a lot harder to predict or influence the future direction of something than it is to describe it. McCloud gives it a good college try, though from 2011 Reinventing Comics has aged a lot more than Understanding Comics.
I am impressed that McCloud for the most part doesn't fall on his face, though as I read it I was constantly wondering how he is reacting to the state of comics NOW - which is the pitfall of a book that is positioned on the tip of the quick moving digital revolution. I'm sure there are parts of this book that were out of date by the time it took for the book to be published - hell, even as McCloud was inking this sucker you wonder how much he had to tear up and re-write. Like with Understanding Comics McCloud tries not to get too bogged down in the minutia, he focuses on the conceptual heart of comics - "sequential art". Most of the subject of this book is McCloud's hopes for his favourite art media - comics - it's filled with his bias for a wider field for comics to play. You can feel his frustration that the majority of the comic business has stuck to superheroes. I wish there was a wider field myself, and I can see McCloud's points that comics have so much potential.
Yet McCloud finishes his book in rather airy, some-what hysterical rhetorical flourish. It is such a symbolic flourish I wonder if it is a way to paper over the fact that he has many wishes and hopes for the future, but is actually pessimistic that the same forces that have kept comics restricted to the men-in-tights genre are going to continue to predominate in Western comic culture.
There have been hey-days in the past for independent/indie comics; it isn't out of the question that something may emerge in the future. The potential is there. But I don't think McCloud has the answer in his book.
I am impressed that McCloud for the most part doesn't fall on his face, though as I read it I was constantly wondering how he is reacting to the state of comics NOW - which is the pitfall of a book that is positioned on the tip of the quick moving digital revolution. I'm sure there are parts of this book that were out of date by the time it took for the book to be published - hell, even as McCloud was inking this sucker you wonder how much he had to tear up and re-write. Like with Understanding Comics McCloud tries not to get too bogged down in the minutia, he focuses on the conceptual heart of comics - "sequential art". Most of the subject of this book is McCloud's hopes for his favourite art media - comics - it's filled with his bias for a wider field for comics to play. You can feel his frustration that the majority of the comic business has stuck to superheroes. I wish there was a wider field myself, and I can see McCloud's points that comics have so much potential.
Yet McCloud finishes his book in rather airy, some-what hysterical rhetorical flourish. It is such a symbolic flourish I wonder if it is a way to paper over the fact that he has many wishes and hopes for the future, but is actually pessimistic that the same forces that have kept comics restricted to the men-in-tights genre are going to continue to predominate in Western comic culture.
There have been hey-days in the past for independent/indie comics; it isn't out of the question that something may emerge in the future. The potential is there. But I don't think McCloud has the answer in his book.