Really enjoying these! I’d love if you covered your journey of how you became a reader to how you ended up working in comics. You have a unique journey and I’d love to hear about it! Keep up the good work!
While I agree that the strengths of both film and comics are distinct, I'm not sure I agree with that writer's take that comics are "hard" and film is "easy". Both require the consumer to develop a new fluency they didn't have before - film no more give the viewer "everything they need" than comics do. Film is rarely done in a single real time take, the chosen editing is very similar in how panels or juxtaposed images in comics are selected - the viewer/reader in both mediums must fill in the gaps to understand the passage of time, actions, etc. And while film does play out in a "sequential" way in a sense, frame by frame, so do comics, due to the page turn and/or the necessary scroll or unfolding, etc. There's *less" pure sequential quality to comics thanks to page layout, but film then comes with the added complexity of speed: you have to take in the information and decipher it without stopping or going back (for the most part) film doesn't wait for you. Pros and cons to both, but neither is "easy", neither spoon feeds its audience by nature of its medium.
I think you'd dig the McLuhan that I reference, as he blows out the hot/cold distinction much more thoroughly than I do in my paraphrased shorthand. It's not so much an easy/hard distinction (and I regret making this seem like my taking shots at film) but a question of effort and engagement.
Even as a question of effort and egangement, those are largely optional elements - you can read any comic with precious little, and get much less out of it, and same for film. I get the author's suggestion that, much like any reader's brain supposedly has to visulaize everything via prose (and that also is largely optional given than many people can't actually do this), the comics medium begs more from the reader to fully grasp all its elements. McLuhan thought comics "...provide very little data about any particular moment in time, or aspect in space, of an object. The viewer, or reader, is compelled to participate in completing and interpreting the few hints provided by the bounding lines."
And *maybe*, sometimes, but not often, most often comics are very clear on all of those things as much as films is, and film is as abstract on these things as often as comics are.
Film is still a 2D image, often manupulated to create a hyperreality or stylized reality vs. verisimilitue. We're interpreting the image. You don't *have* to engage or give greater effort to any of the above, though they are all vastly more rewarding when you do. Any moment within a film is just a single image, we're anticipating what it means and what comes next, combining images of realism with those of symbolism and determining how they go together and why. Comic image don't require us to imagine movement, or placement, just understand the connection between one image to the next, as we might understand one sentence to the next in a book, or once scene to the next in a film.
It's great that people have done the work to break down what comics do and are capable of, but it's silly to create some heirarchy of mediums based on what we say they do or don't ask of us, especially when those arguments don't really stand up.
Awesome work, Aubrey. Really digging these posts. I got into a discussion with another parent last week about the merits of comics and whether or not they "count" as reading, citing some of the same points you mentioned. These elements are part of why they definitely count and shouldn't be seen as a "lesser" medium. There are kids that only read comics and that's ok. There are also studies showing that comics tend to use a larger vocabulary than traditional novels so it's helping in a few different ways.
Thank you, James! Though you’ve brought up one of my big bugaboos: I don’t think there’s a one-to-one relationship between reading a comic and reading a prose book. I don’t even think there’s a one-to-one relationship between a novel and a book of nonfiction!
I find comics to be the greatest medium in existence but, when it comes to communicating complex, dense information explicitly, prose wins the day. In other words: Comics can be part of a balanced reading diet, but prose is an essential component.
This is especially true for writers. A topic for a future newsletter!
Very valid points. A balanced reading diet is preferred. I'm speaking more from the mindset of a rattled parent of a 9 year old who adamantly refuses to read anything that's not a comic. It's a good starting point and he's getting exposure to prose in school. We have to find the books he's comfortable with to get into as we go along.
Really enjoying these! I’d love if you covered your journey of how you became a reader to how you ended up working in comics. You have a unique journey and I’d love to hear about it! Keep up the good work!
While I agree that the strengths of both film and comics are distinct, I'm not sure I agree with that writer's take that comics are "hard" and film is "easy". Both require the consumer to develop a new fluency they didn't have before - film no more give the viewer "everything they need" than comics do. Film is rarely done in a single real time take, the chosen editing is very similar in how panels or juxtaposed images in comics are selected - the viewer/reader in both mediums must fill in the gaps to understand the passage of time, actions, etc. And while film does play out in a "sequential" way in a sense, frame by frame, so do comics, due to the page turn and/or the necessary scroll or unfolding, etc. There's *less" pure sequential quality to comics thanks to page layout, but film then comes with the added complexity of speed: you have to take in the information and decipher it without stopping or going back (for the most part) film doesn't wait for you. Pros and cons to both, but neither is "easy", neither spoon feeds its audience by nature of its medium.
I think you'd dig the McLuhan that I reference, as he blows out the hot/cold distinction much more thoroughly than I do in my paraphrased shorthand. It's not so much an easy/hard distinction (and I regret making this seem like my taking shots at film) but a question of effort and engagement.
Even as a question of effort and egangement, those are largely optional elements - you can read any comic with precious little, and get much less out of it, and same for film. I get the author's suggestion that, much like any reader's brain supposedly has to visulaize everything via prose (and that also is largely optional given than many people can't actually do this), the comics medium begs more from the reader to fully grasp all its elements. McLuhan thought comics "...provide very little data about any particular moment in time, or aspect in space, of an object. The viewer, or reader, is compelled to participate in completing and interpreting the few hints provided by the bounding lines."
And *maybe*, sometimes, but not often, most often comics are very clear on all of those things as much as films is, and film is as abstract on these things as often as comics are.
Film is still a 2D image, often manupulated to create a hyperreality or stylized reality vs. verisimilitue. We're interpreting the image. You don't *have* to engage or give greater effort to any of the above, though they are all vastly more rewarding when you do. Any moment within a film is just a single image, we're anticipating what it means and what comes next, combining images of realism with those of symbolism and determining how they go together and why. Comic image don't require us to imagine movement, or placement, just understand the connection between one image to the next, as we might understand one sentence to the next in a book, or once scene to the next in a film.
It's great that people have done the work to break down what comics do and are capable of, but it's silly to create some heirarchy of mediums based on what we say they do or don't ask of us, especially when those arguments don't really stand up.
Awesome work, Aubrey. Really digging these posts. I got into a discussion with another parent last week about the merits of comics and whether or not they "count" as reading, citing some of the same points you mentioned. These elements are part of why they definitely count and shouldn't be seen as a "lesser" medium. There are kids that only read comics and that's ok. There are also studies showing that comics tend to use a larger vocabulary than traditional novels so it's helping in a few different ways.
Thank you, James! Though you’ve brought up one of my big bugaboos: I don’t think there’s a one-to-one relationship between reading a comic and reading a prose book. I don’t even think there’s a one-to-one relationship between a novel and a book of nonfiction!
I find comics to be the greatest medium in existence but, when it comes to communicating complex, dense information explicitly, prose wins the day. In other words: Comics can be part of a balanced reading diet, but prose is an essential component.
This is especially true for writers. A topic for a future newsletter!
Very valid points. A balanced reading diet is preferred. I'm speaking more from the mindset of a rattled parent of a 9 year old who adamantly refuses to read anything that's not a comic. It's a good starting point and he's getting exposure to prose in school. We have to find the books he's comfortable with to get into as we go along.