I began reading Understanding comics not knowing what to expect, but as I got into it I found what McCloud had to say to be very amusing. I especially liked the part where he talked about faces, how a drawing of a face depending on its detail can represent a few, thousands, millions or nearly all people. I found it interesting when he discussed how we cannot avoid seeing two dots and a line as a face. I did the activity of having a friend draw squiggles with eyes. We both saw faces. I was once told that there is one part of our brains that is devoted to face recognition and this exercise demonstrated our ability to recognize faces immediately. McCloud goes on to talking about how our face is a mask and how we move the mask without being able to see what it is doing unless we are looking in a mirror. We perceive ourselves differently than others perceive us. Yes, of course I knew this but being able to look at his drawings while being told this made for an unusual and exciting learning process. Being able to learn through pictures is a fun experience, one that makes learning fun again like it used to be back in the day. So far I am a big fan of Understanding comics.
Ohhh my goodness... When I decided on trying to analyze the mythological origins and references in superhero comics, I had no idea the can of worms I was opening up... On the one hand, it was awesome to see just how many connections there were between superheroes and psychology/mythology/philosophy, but all the information also made it terribly difficult to distinguish what I should be using and how to tie it all together. When I was talking to one of my sorority sisters about it she said, "Oh yeah, well, research essays are kind of like putting together puzzles..." and I think that really sums up what writing this paper was like for me. Fortunately, I was really interested throughout the whole process and I very much enjoyed writing the paper. Being a psychology major, I was especially interested in reading about the Jungian archetypes that had a lot of parallels with major modern comic books superheroes. I was also able to incorporate Joseph Campbell's "hero cycle...
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