vocabulary of comics

Albert Rayle
Ms. Hara
English reading response

I have come to the conclusion that Scott McCloud can make any topic somewhat interesting with his unique way of explaining it. This last comic that I read was about icons and how they are used in our society and in comics. He explained how we can visualize just about anything just by looking at it on a sheet of paper. McCloud also stated that it is not a cow on the paper, but a picture of a cow and that makes us visualize the cow.
It is those weird analogies that make McCloud such an interesting author/ artist to me. He takes an ordinary idea and will bend it into a unique way that I have never thought about. I never took the time of day to actually stop and think about how I am not looking at a cow but a drawing of one. I mean who honestly thinks about that. He took the time out of his day to sit day and think about all of the icons out in the world and he was able to put them into three categories. They are symbols, pictures, and the last is language, science, and communication. Then he went even further and showed us two different symbols that meant the same thing. He drew a face on the page and wrote the word “eye” in place of the right eye. This was a form of the icon of language.
Come to think of it Mr. McCloud thinks of a lot of weird things. One really weird thing that he brought up was the idea that cartoons are poorly drawn so we could imagine ourselves as the cartoon characters. I don’t really agree with this statement to much because I think that people want to be a hero because the hero is always right and always does the right thing in the end, not because the face is bland and kids can easily imagine themselves in place of the cartoon. Another thing that I didn’t completely agree with was when he said “but if who I am matters less, maybe what I say matters more.” I felt like this statement not true because not many people pay attention to people that the do not know or respect. People, in general, only listen to people they respect and therefore matter to them.
I feel like I sat here bashing McCloud the whole time but I just felt like there were a couple of little things that I didn’t agree with and these little points are just sticking me like the thorns on a rose. I felt like it was an interesting story overall and I hope I get to read more from Mr. McCloud in the future.