Response to Eisner and McCloud

Both Eisner and McCloud obviously seem to have profound thoughts on how comics can affect the human mind and why they are so appealing. Before when I thought of comics, I thought of classics such as Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield and Peanuts and how silly everything looked. All of them have very stylized characters, a clear departure from reality, but as McCloud points out, “when you enter the world of the cartoon – you see yourself.”

I agree that we as humans are incredibly self-centered, as he said. Otherwise, how would we be able to interpret two dots and a straight line as a face? I thought that an interesting point that McCloud made was how by simplifying images, cartoons focus on specific details that you recognize to be part of yourself. Like he says, when I am talking to someone, I focus on them and I am not aware of what I look like though I know that I am also doing the same things – talking, smiling, laughing. When I see them, I see a clear face in very real detail. When I think of myself, I don't quite know what I see.

Also, Eisner points out how effectively comics can be used to convey a sense of time. When I’m reading comics, I feel that the separated panels do in fact, set the pace for the action happening within them. Personally, I struggle to read graphic novels because when I read novels, I visualize all the events. With graphic novels, I tend to dissect the images more for clues that would be revealed in words. Eisner makes an excellent point in quoting Tom Wolf when he states “reading […] can be thought of as a form of perceptual activity.” After all, in general, we as humans do try to read everything – words, pictures and even people.