Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form - Softcover

McCloud, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060953500 ISBN 13: 9780060953508

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

In 1993, Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture with the acclaimed international hit Understanding Comics, a massive comic book that explored the inner workings of the worlds most misunderstood art form. Now, McCloud takes comics to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are created, read, and perceived today, and how they're poised to conquer the new millennium.

Part One of this fascinating and in-depth book includes:

• The life of comics as an art form and as literature
• The battle for creators' rights
• Reinventing the business of comics
• The volatile and shifting public perceptions of comics
• Sexual and ethnic representation on comics

Then in Part Two, McCloud paints a breathtaking picture of comics' digital revolutions, including:

• The intricacies of digital production
• The exploding world of online delivery
• The ultimate challenges of the infinite digital canvas

About this title

Review

Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, the sequel to his groundbreaking work Understanding Comics, is a study of two revolutions: a failed one and a potential one. His 1993 book was not only a chronicle of the potential breakthrough of comics (which he redefined as "sequential art") into a legitimate art form but a sterling example itself of the medium's astonishing untapped potential. Now, seven years later, he chronicles the failure of the comic book industry to fulfill that promise, but also explores how the movement can be restarted, particularly by utilizing the resources of another spectacularly successful revolution, the Internet. In the first half of Reinventing Comics, an elegantly clean example of comic art in McCloud's trademark bold black-and-white style, the author outlines how hype, speculation, and artistic burnout led to the genre's decline. He then lays out 12 paths toward a new revolution of comics, including creators' rights, industry innovation, public perception, gender balance, and diversity of genre, which are then explored with such innovative intelligence that, as with his earlier work, the conclusions he comes to are fascinating for both artists and nonartists alike.

Three of his paths, however, are of particular interest to anyone who wants to know how the Internet will affect both our lives and the livelihoods of future artists. Understanding Comics, with its brilliant how-to guide on marrying image and language, has become an indispensable reference for many Web designers. Now McCloud returns the favor by focusing on how the digital revolution will influence production, delivery, and the art form of comics itself. Informative without being pedantic, controversial without being argumentative, and always entertaining, this is both a worthy sequel to the author's brilliant original and a work that opens up the potential for an entirely different direction for sequential art in the realm of cyberspace. --John Longenbaugh

About the Author

Scott McCloud has been writing, drawing, and examining comics since 1984. Winner of the Eisner and Harvey awards, his works have been translated into more than sixteen languages. Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) called him "just about the smartest guy in comics." He lives with his family in southern California. His online comics and inventions can be found at scottmccloud.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0060953500
• ISBN 13: 9780060953508
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256