McCloud 1-4

Who knew comics were an art? Not this girl. As 'graphic novel virgin', the first time I'd ever read anything besides the Sunday Funnies was in Amy Thomas' class, Literature Unbound, where we critically looked at The Walking Dead- in both it's television and (original) graphic novel forms. Talk about inter-texuality... For her class, we also read from McCloud to help us gain a general sense of, really, what's behind the art of comics and graphic novels.

One of McCloud's biggest points of focus lies in the differences between Eastern and Western comic design and the shifts in the artistry and design, and how that changes the way the reader perceives the finished work. He makes a point that Japanese comics are heir to a tradition where "they emphasize being there over getting there"(McCloud 81). I try to translate this into my work as a creative-minded writer, and think about ways in which I may tend to focus on the 'getting there' of a story, over, perhaps, the element of 'being there'. Something that comes to mind (since we always go back to what we know) is Virginia Woolf and her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. As many of you are familiar with her work, I'll skip the summary (you can find it here if you find yourself ignorant), but the book tells a story that takes place in a single day- a very narrow time frame (much like we see in Joyce's work, and other stream of consciousness-esk writers). Within this tiny time frame, I imagine that Woolf was forced quite often to ask herself this same question of where her text takes the reader- and in this instance, I see a crossing over of both the East and the Western ways of thinking (or so they call Modernism). 

Going back to Porter's essay where he mentioned that "writing is non-linear", I think comics really lend us a sense of that. Not a 'classical' form of literature, where we may read left to right and focus on only the prose on the page, comics ask more of us as an audience as well as a writer. Just look at their versatility! From graphic novels to political statements, humorous or tragic, they build relationships in very tangible ways, making the reader, arguable more loyal, to the source. Just think about Garfield, Charlie Brown, or X-men... comics are able to fill a gap that prose alone cannot. 

 They are a great medium through which we can further our understanding of 'texts' outside of the traditional sense. I'm not sure before my experience with McCloud, and his expression of the craft that goes into this form of literature, I would have been tempted to pick up a graphic novel. Knowing what I know now, about the level of interaction between author and audience, and the inevitable vulnerability of a comic writer, I am much more interested in the genre as a whole. I think it is incredibly important, now more than ever, to keep looking across genres and asking ourselves (especially as writers) 'what can this do for my work?' How can lessons in comics translate into lessons in literature? And in what ways can I pull on the things McCloud is saying, like the blood in the gutters (or the formatting, ie. breaks in between chapters, paragraphs) to further my view of writing as a whole?