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.
To begin with, I really do like the idea of reading a comic about comics. I think it's a great idea and it's very well executed. As I was reading the first two chapters, I was surprised at how many examples there were of art in recent (and ancient, in some cases) history that are variations of "sequential visual art" and thus the foundations of modern comics. I'd never even thought about it before and it was hard to believe how many different kinds there were. I also love all the discussion about how our human brains automatically interpret certain images in a specific way, how we see others constantly but we identify ourselves when we look at cartoons, and how inanimate objects automatically becomes extensions of our bodies. The pyramid of styles was very interesting too as a way to conceptualize and almost graph or "place" a specific art style in comics. In Comic Book Nation , I enjoyed reading about the evolution of early comics from "funnies...
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