It’s an unfortunate situation that there really isn’t a good “nuts and bolts” instructional textbook that covers in any wholistic way the art and craft of creating comics. There are two on the horizon, though, that seemed to show some potential—one is Making Comics by Scott McCloud, the other an instructional text by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. I really want one or both of these to be good, but in the case of this interview with McCloud about the book, I’m beginning to lean toward putting my money on the Madden & Abel book. I haven’t read the entire interview yet, but the repeated use of terms like “the camera” and “the shot” and other such film terminology sends up some serious red flags in my book. A discussion of comics framed in this sort of language really gives students the wrong idea about how to think about storytelling, panel-to-panel transitions, and panel compositions.
As an aside: Am I the only one who finds it really funny to observe how cartoonists draw themselves? While not as hilariously off-kilter as Craig Thompson’s “character” of himself, the more mature Scott McCloud seems to be diverging from his drawn “character” pretty radically these days, the new drawn whisps of gray hair notwithstanding.
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Interesting comment, Ben. As a matter of fact, I’ve criticized Understanding Comics in the past because it didn’t properly acknowledge the similarities between comics and film. I’m not sure how much his terminology has changed.
Why do you think it’s giving students the wrong idea? Isn’t the cinematic comparison just one of many ideas that will be useful to students in constructing their own approaches to understanding comics?