Understanding Comics introduces the basic idea of the comics. The author talks about vocabulary, grammar, and the switch between two panels. In the first four chapters, I found there are a lot of things that I have never cared about before. In Chapter two, the author discusses that different comics have their own styles, which is even related to the painting style in the whole country. In the past, I found that there are a lot of differences between American and Japanese comics. However, I just consider that the differences are just between the character. In Understanding Comics, the author thinks that the Japanese comics have the more detailed and complicated method to make it more realistic. In this chapter, what impressed me most is the big triangle about the characters. On pages 52 and 53, the author lists a big triangle of the different types of comics characters, which can help the readers have a better understanding of it.
In chapter 3, the author points out the there are six types of transitions between different panels in comics. According to McCloud’s theory, type 2 to 4—action-to-action transitions, subject-to-subject transitions, and scene-to-scene transitions—are most commonly used in the American comics, which can show the “continuous, connected world” because “type 2-4 have a monopoly on straightforward storytelling”. That is, the American comics prefer telling stories more straightforward and simple, and the panels are strongly connected in order to tell stories well. This is very important since it relates to the style of storytelling in our future project. However, I think the six transitions are just basic theories. When the cartoonists create a mature work, we cannot use one single type to define the transitions. Usually, they are mixed.
In chapter 2, the concept of time is also very interesting. In the past, when I read a comic, I seldom pay attention to the time in a panel. So the continuous time in a panel is very interesting.