I’ve never really been one to appreciate comics, but I still enjoyed learning from McCloud about its rich history. I found it interesting how he was able to relate to the reader by opening up the use of comics to a broader scale. He writes that when observing the definition of comics as a sequential art, we can then see anything from diagrams to photo booth pictures as branches of comics (McCloud 20). He also goes into detail differentiating the distinctive comic style of art from the actual comic strip. Whereas one “is an approach to picture making,” the latter “employs that approach” (21). His desire to meticulously go into details in defining what a comic is forced me to question his rationality for doing so. I came to the conclusion that his unique way of defining the medium serves to introduce the content of the following chapters, as his definition of comics is simply one of many.
I also found his comments on the simplicity of comics in chapter 2 to be particularly interesting. Without thinking, our minds link certain images to greater concepts, that we label as ‘icons.’ The more familiar the image is, the more likely we are able to recognize the simplified version of the image. While, as McCloud depicts, levels of simplicity can vary, we are often times able to define images based on little content. This, in essence, is what comics seek to achieve: the way to convey information in a simplified form.