Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993)

Still a great resource for people who want to think critically about the forms of comics. ( )

Feel like this could have been condensed quite a bit. Had to read it, wouldn't recommend it.

Anyone who thinks comics isn't real reading and anyone who wants to better understand comics will be fully schooled by this eye-opening work. McCloud demonstrates that visual literacy, art appreciation, and the unique ways readers interact with comics make this art form so much more than its critics maintain. He breaks down comics' form and techniques so we appreciate how much comics have to offer. He also looks at the history of pictorial representation, from cave drawings to early comics, and the Japanese influence. At times, the content gets too deep for me to process but suffice to say, I have even more appreciation for all that goes into the creation of graphic novels and comics! ( )

I didn't grow up reading comics. I've recently started reading more, but I'm still figuring out what I enjoy (Y the Last Man, Walking Dead, Saga, and Attack on Titan so far).

This book is completely different. It's not about how to read comics, but about how to write comics. While I have no intention of writing comics, it's an insightful overview of how to create a story using a combination of images and words – something I want to get better at.

What impresses me most about this book is that it felt like a conversation between me and the author. The entire comic is written in a format where the author, the main character of the comic, is introducing you to various comic concepts and exploring why they work (or don't). Although I don't plan to create comics, I came out of this with a bunch of ideas that I want to try on mediums I work in. ( )

This is a great book that honestly changed how I felt about comics completely. I had never really been exposed to comics outside of the weekly newspaper. Of course I knew the titles that were out there, and I did more than my fair share of watching cartoons and movies based on comic characters, but I didn't "get it." The medium was not mine. McCloud's book gave me the tools I needed to really understand the art of comics. How comics use the blending of art and written word to really present ideas in a unique way that no other art form can really do.
Reading this book opened my mind to a broad range of stories that I never would have read or even known about, some of which are among my most cherished books now. ( )