World Famous Comics: Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form
Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form
By: Scott Mccloud Publisher: Harper Paperbacks Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Harper Paperbacks Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 256 Publication Date: August 01, 2000 Release Date: July 25, 2000
Amazon.com: Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, the sequel to his groundbreaking work Understanding Comics, is a study of two revolutions: a failed one and a potential one. His 1993 book was not only a chronicle of the potential breakthrough of comics (which he redefined as "sequential art") into a legitimate art form but a sterling example itself of the medium's astonishing untapped potential. Now, seven years later, he chronicles the failure of the comic book industry to fulfill that promise, but also explores how the movement can be restarted, particularly by utilizing the resources of another spectacularly successful revolution, the Internet. In the first half of Reinventing Comics, an elegantly clean example of comic art in McCloud's trademark bold black-and-white style, the author outlines how hype, speculation, and artistic burnout led to the genre's decline. He then lays out 12 paths toward a new revolution of comics, including creators' rights, industry innovation, public perception, gender balance, and diversity of genre, which are then explored with such innovative intelligence that, as with his earlier work, the conclusions he comes to are fascinating for both artists and nonartists alike.
Three of his paths, however, are of particular interest to anyone who wants to know how the Internet will affect both our lives and the livelihoods of future artists. Understanding Comics, with its brilliant how-to guide on marrying image and language, has become an indispensable reference for many Web designers. Now McCloud returns the favor by focusing on how the digital revolution will influence production, delivery, and the art form of comics itself. Informative without being pedantic, controversial without being argumentative, and always entertaining, this is both a worthy sequel to the author's brilliant original and a work that opens up the potential for an entirely different direction for sequential art in the realm of cyberspace. --John Longenbaugh
Product Description:
In 1993, Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture with the acclaimed international hit Understanding Comics, a massive comic book that explored the inner workings of the worlds most misunderstood art form. Now, McCloud takes comics to te next leavle, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are created, read, and preceived today, and how they're poised to conquer the new millennium.
Part One of this fascinating and in-depth book includes:
The life of comics as an art form and as literture
The battle for creators' rights
Reinventing the business of comics
The volatile and shifting public percptions of comics
Sexual and ethnic representation on comics
Then in Part Two, McCloud paints a brethtaling picture of comics' digital revolutions, including:
The intricacies of digital production
The exploding world of online delivery
The ultimate challenges of the infinite digital canvas
Very informative, horizons-expanding book. Most of the books of Scott McCloud have been "eye-openers" to me, as they illustrate aspects of the comic storytelling that went unnoticed and that really server to improve my craft. This reinventing comics, with his fresh approach to using modern technologies applied to comic book creation is also very illustrative and gives the basis to try new visual experiences - based on current technology. Totally recommended book!
The Great McCloud Comics Trilogy- 3 of the Best-Ever Want 3 of the best-ever books on the general topic of comics? Here they are! (each generally sold separately)
1.*Understanding Comics- A *landmark* & bestselling examination of the medium. A comicbook on comics! While I try not to use the "genius" label *too* liberally, with Understanding Comics it really seems to fit(!). 5 Stars!
2.*Reinventing Comics- Maybe his best *looking* book (in my opinion), it's basically split into 2 sections: The 12 Revolutions in comics; and then basic Internet/Computer/Web Comics. The 12 Revolutions is a look at 12 aspects of the comicbook industry; areas that need continual development & improvement. I found this book fascinating, but it's certainly not for everyone. These areas include: comics as literature; comics as art; creator's rights; industry innovation; public perception; institutional scrutiny; gender balance; minority representation; diversity of genre; digital production; digital delivery; and digital comics. It's these last three that make up the second part of the book. Some people seem annoyed with McCloud's seemingly rapid success as a spokesperson for the industry, but I'm not. After writing Understanding Comics, I think he's earned at *least* a seat at the table of high profile industry personalities. I guess the criticism is that his actual comicbook work lacks bestseller status. But if his comicbooks *on* comics are bestsellers, his contributions seem valid enough to me. Reinventing Comics is the least popular & practical in the Trilogy, yet I still really like it! 4-1/2 Stars.
3.*Making Comics- It's like Understanding Comics refined, as well as a "hands-on" introduction to the medium. It competes with that 1st title for most popular in the Trilogy, and it's highly recommended to anyone who wants to make comics! I like it! 5 Stars.
In conclusion: His 1st & 3rd books being the most popular, Reinventing Comics is *great* for the digitally minded(!).
Fascinating No other word for it. Mcloud strikes again with another amazing insite to comics, specifically to comics' future. The ideas presented in this book are feasible and inspiring for comic artists and readers. The possibilities are endless and Mcloud gives a good fertile starting ground.
Randcek In the 1950s, television filled the void left by the Senate inquiries and the imposition of the comics code. A new resurgence in the 60s, comic books were exciting again, carrying into the 70s spurred by superhero AND horror/mystery comics. Bottoming out again in the eighties, this time the culprit- video games. Today the enemies, television and gaming, are still with us vieing for our time. Comics are not truly accessable to the buying public. They've become the property of an exclusive club that seems to revel mostly in some artist's wet dreams. How nice to know they can excercise his or her artistic rights and freedom. But no one is buying it! It's dead for all intents and purposes. Comic shops have to fill their shelves with collectible toys to make it. The comics I buy are at liest more than 30 years old. The new ones just are not interesting and even with all of this self-examination and navel probing, the quality just isn't there. It's my opinion that it doesn't have to read like Shakespear and look like Rembrant to be a good comic. But it must entertain. The effort has been underway for years to leave the lowly comic book in the dust, replaced by the Graphic Novel. All in the name of impoving (the perception anyway) of the comic book market! Even HBOs Tales From the Crypt" opening credits state 'Adapted from the comic MAGAZINE...' The internet will not save comic books. It isn't a 'book' in the first place. Illegal downloading will kill it. Scanning comic books is already a problem. The salvation of the medium is in the hands of something that is not real? If you cannot hold it and carress it in your hands like a lover then it will not satisfy (oops, better watch my own dreaming!). I do have a love affair with comic books. The only salvation I believe are two things: 1) Comic books must be put back into the public eye through stores or what have you. Recruitment to comic books through casual 'walk by' customers who are not necessarily seeking out comics, they just happen upon them out in public stores. Yes, the great unwashed and 'unenlightend' masses parting with their three bucks is the only thing that will help save the comicbooks! 2) The superhero must die! And artists and writers must excercise self control or face the imposition of a new comics code!
Playing the Marvel Game "Understanding Comics" was a great thesis with a profound delivery back in 1993, and earned McCloud his current cult status amoung comic readers and creators.
"Reinventing Comics" explores the new medium as a viable source for all of us peasant small press creators who are shunned by the gatekeepers in the hegemonious field of comics.
On the internet, however, McCloud is either revered or despised. I have nothing against him personally, but I do have issues with the impractical idealism present in Reinventing Comics.
Since the publication of THIS book, we've experienced the Dot.com bust and are now on the verge of FCC style control of the internet as a whole.
Like the creators of "Penny Arcade" commented on their blog in 2005, "the 'infinite canvas' is a new way for artists to be poor".
There have been, at best, a dozen webcomic creators (out of more than 20,000 who are current and still going) have actually made enough revenue to be substantial, and only three that I know of who make a living exclusively from webcomics.
McCloud's book also helped end net neutrality for webcomics, because since its publication, there have been several clusters of webcomic "review, submit, tow the party line, give up your intellectual property" sites that have sprung up to crystalize something that was once public access, and could carry its own weight without some self-appointed net-elitist steering the audience to or away.
My second gripe with the book -
McCloud strongly feels that the next generation will be bigger and better inventors in the mostly unexplored territory of webcomics. I cross-plug my own webcomic on MySpace, where kids the age of Scott's currently mingle. As far as I can tell, this next generation is even less creative than the former, still stuck in the 2D art form, and they don't even bother to learn anything outside of basic coding in order to enhance their sites in the way McCloud suggests they will. Why should they? this isn't 1995, and the younger are a little to nativized to internet culture to learn its mechanics. It's my generation that plowed the fields and charted the territory of the internet, and the younger are only enjoying the spoils.
Webcomics will be around as long as the internet remains public, but they didn't exist just because someone from the establishment wrote a book about them. Experimental and interactive comics were around before the internet, on that thing we once called the CD-Rom, and before that, the rudimentary pixilated floppy-disc action adventure games with comic elements. This isn't anything NEW, it's just the graphic technology has caught up with the aesthetic.
The book gets two stars because he did put effort into its delivery, just like Understanding Comics, but I can't say that it was informative, enlightening, or anything but fluff and repetition from Understanding Comics.
Anything Goes Trivia
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