McCloud

How can anyone not enjoy McCloud's reading; it's a comic!

I enjoy how McCloud seems to have emerged us in this vast history of images in such little space. I managed to read through this chapter in about 15 minutes, however there was so much information there to consume. He seems to brush up on several examples, and the images that go along with it make it easier to pick up on what he is saying. For instance, on page 147 when McCloud is speaking about the evolution of poetry he says "...poetry began turning away from the elusive, twice-abstracted language of old toward a more direct, even colloquial, style". Now, by just reading this sentence, I would need a dictionary to understand what McCloud is trying to say. However, the graphic novel offers examples through pictures - demonstrating by suggesting a poem from 1819 that reads such as: "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness...", compared to a poem written in 1890 that says: Facing west, from California's shores,/Inquiring, tireless, seeking/ what is yet unfound...". It is safe to say that McCloud's use of text is working with the image in order to convey the general meaning to the reader.

One part of the chapter that was interesting to me was McCloud's ideas of "New Media". I remember interviewing Dr. Springsteen last semester for another class project, and she brought up the question of exactly what is New Media. How can we hire professors to teach New Media if we can't define it? McCloud expressed that New Media essentially "begins its life by imitating its predecessors". He offers the example that many early movies could be compared to filmed stage plays, because stage plays were the most similar medium to the invention of moving film. Over time of working with this medium, it will evolve.

This makes me think of the advancement of film. Here is an example of one of the first moving films from the Lumiere brothers, Arrival of a Train. When the movie first premiered, it had been said that audience members were terrified that the train was going to hit them, since they had never seen anything like a moving picture before. The movie also uses music instead of dialogue. Soon thereafter, silent movies were created, and after that, "talkies" were being created with audible dialogues. This evolution carries the trend of what McCloud speaks of in chapter 6.