Understanding Comics

In Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud he wants to explain how involved and intelligent comics have become.

First, the way Scott tells us the story is presented in comic form. I think this is super intelligent because what better way to inform people on comics then with a comic format. So out of everything he presented the most interesting topic for me was the thought of time and space involved with comics. Our mind will actually piece together every frame and even if there are two different narratives going on. The best example he had was around the idea of how the comic is presented, where a monitor is the base of viewing the comic. My favorite presentation is the one where there are two different comic strips running parallel to each other which the stories are being told in different areas, but exist in the same universe and time. That opens a whole new world of story telling, there’s a really good example of this in modern television. The hit show Breaking Bad has a spin off show called Better Call Saul, which is presented to us as a prequel to Breaking Bad. Our brain tells us that even though this story Breaking Bad hasn’t happened yet we still believe it as the same universe.  Therefore, Scott wants us to understand the possibilities of story telling and the thought of being able to understand a dual story that exist at the same time. Something that is really interesting about this idea is the possibility of the two stories meeting up at some point and having the story be resolved or even furthered with the past knowledge the story teller gives us. Another TV show that pushes the idea of different dimensions and several stories that are being told at the same time and how some stories affect other is Rick and Morty. There is a episode that has several dimensions that have different time lines where are different because the character has a different personality.

To wrap up my ideas, I think that the idea of several stories being told at the same time is something that comics and story telling can really benefit from. It makes our brains really work to understand the significance of each time lineage of each different story.