Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud explores the idea of comics as a unique medium: one that is not necessarily a combination of pictures and words.
This reading ties into last week’s reading, where we explored the idea of media as something not immediate but mediated through a medium. While this does sound redundant and obvious, it is crucial to understand how the medium itself in order to understand how it shapes the way we view the content of any project.
Scott analyses the many facets of “juxtaposed sequential visual art in a deliberate sequence” that compose a comic (9). For example, one particular facet he brings a strong emphasis to is the idea of closure. Known more formally as the Law of Closure when talking about Gestalt psychology, it is the idea that we are able to perceive whole even if we do not see the whole: fragments that make up a bigger picture. Our perception of reality that results from closure, Scott McCloud notes, is “an act of faith” (62). Many people haven’t been to Madagascar, but assuming it exists relies upon faith of others. We know it exists within our perception of the world, but in doing so we are unconsciously using belief. Indeed, our very perception of reality, and comics, is built upon fragmented sequences that are enclosed through belief or faith. You believe both what are you shown and what you aren’t shown.
Comic book illustrators use this belief to make the reader assume things that aren’t there that they truly are there, even if they don’t actually exist on the page itself. Their use of the medium changes how we perceive the content or what is lacking from the content.