Ready to fight: Understanding and Making Comics

As many know, I'm rather slow to anger most of the time. It takes a lot to piss me off: weeks of annoyances or intentional obtuseness when I'm supernaturally tired or sick. Unless someone happens to pick just the wrong subject to argue with me. I've nearly come to blows with my uncle over the role of the United Nations. Now I've found another subject that will rile me.

I'm a introverted, technically oriented male. That's a polite way of saying dork. As such, I find myself at home in a comic book store. I've spent years in comic stores, on both side of the counter. I've got thousands of comics stuffed in boxes. I am a fan. Thus, I very rarely encounter the arrogantly superior staff members that many people, particularly female people, report seeing when entering a comic book store. I like to think I know my stuff.

Yesterday I went down to our local comic shop. Scott McCloud recently released a second sequel to Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, called Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. Understanding Comics is one of those books I keep buying. I can't help but lend it to people and I know that I shouldn't expect to get it returned. It's a book about visual language and how the mind processes words and pictures when they're placed together. It describes how sequential art is a unique medium for storytelling; how what happens in between the panels is as important as what happens within them. It's a work that rewires the way the reader thinks, in the way all true education does.

To quote Dr. Lawrance M. Bernabo:

"Understanding Comics" works for both those who are reading pretty much every comic book done by anyone on the face of the planet and those who have never heard of Wil Eisner and Art Spigelman, let alone recognize their artwork. Which ever end of the spectrum you gravitate towards McCloud incorporates brief examples of some of the artwork of the greatest comic book artists, such as Kirby, Herge, Schultz, etc., as well as work by more conventional artists, including Rembrandt, Hokusai, and Van Gogh. "Understanding Comics" is a superb look at the form and functions of the most underexplored art form in popular culture.

The second book in what is now a trilogy, Reinventing Comics, was a highly speculative work. It dealt with sequential art in non-static media such as the internet. It also spoke to the commerce side of the comic world that Understanding Comics ignored. There remains a lot of good ideas in the second book, but it's very disappointing after the majesty of the first.

Making Comics, on the other hand, has been getting rave reviews. A counterpart to the analysis of Understanding, Making Comics deals with the nuts and bolts of comic creation, writing with pictures and visual storytelling. I've been dying to read it.

I went into the comic shop expecting either an enthusiastic discussion on how good the book is or else that all the copies were sold out. I asked the clerk:

"Have you got in Making Comics? It's the third book in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics series?'

"Never heard of it. We don't stock stuff like that."

"You've never heard of Understanding Comics? It's like the bible of our artform!"

"No, that'd be the Overstreet Price Guide. As you can see I have a whole shelf of Overstreets on that wall."

"I realize the Overstreet is important for understanding the value of comics, but McCloud's work deals with the artform itself."

"If you want a book on how to draw comics, Stan Lee did a series in the 70's. There's no one that knows more about making comics than Stan Lee."

"I know Stan Lee has created a vast body of work. Understanding Comics talks about what makes comics special. How the juxtaposition of words and images can tell a story in a way no movie or book can."

"Listen, we don't carry stuff like that."

By this time, other staff members were coming up to us, as voices were starting to raise. I broke off the argument by having the clerk follow me down a tangent of how trade paperbacks are superior to loose comics. By the time I left the store with a handful of underwear pervert stories the staff was friendly with me again, offering to add me to their subscription program. They didn't offer to order Making Comics for me, so I guess I'll just get my copy on Amazon. Maybe I'll get another copy of Understanding and bring it in for them to read.