Comics & Sequential Art

As you can probably guess, there's much overlap in ideas between McCloud's books and Will Eisner's Comics & Sequential, but Eisner does offer some very new and interesting points about comics as an art form and elaborates furhter on some McCloud's points.

One of the most profound things about comics discussed by both authors is the fact that it's a medium that allows for a deep participation by the viewer. It requires the reader to fill in what isn't seen between/within panels, etc. etc. i.e. blood and gutter. Eisner talks about this as well, but one part in particular was really interesting to me and that had to due with character design within a limited frame. When we're given a closeup or limited view of a character, we have to make up a shape ourselves, and sometimes we get the artist's intention right such as a fat head having a fat body, but sometimes we don't and competely misintreprent it.

Eisner also has several chapters devoted to the layout and reading of a comics page, which McCloud has includes, but I think Eisner is perhaps more inventive in his panel layouts, at least for American standards. The typical method is left-->right up-->down but sometimes Eisner has the reader start at the bottom of the page go up and go back down to take it all in.

I had only read one Eisner story in my life, and that was his last comic ever for The Escapist comic for Dark Horse based on Michael Chabon's "Kaviler and Clay" book, but the The Burning of P.S. 13 was something really new for me. The word balloons, text, all had meaning and signifigance, which we had a hard time finding for the works we did last semester so that was refreshing. Also, the designs of the characters gave the reader an immediate sense of their personalities and what they're like i.e. the lawyer with the obaque classes, two hunched judges, and of course Hazel the Witch. I've never read one of Eisner's classic Spirit stories, but there are quite a few reprinted in Sequential art, so I don't know if they're all diverse in stories or out there like this, but it was an enjoyable read and interesting to compare and contrast with today's comics.