Making Comics

At first upon glancing at the Making Comics book by Scott McCloud, I felt completely overwhelmed. There were pictures everywhere, and I did not know where to start. When I grab a text based book to read, I like to overview the chapter titles and skim through the similar looking pages. In this book, everything seemed crazy because no pages looked the same. It made me feel as though I have Attention Deficit Disorder and cannot concentrate on one particular item. Finally getting over my overwhelming feeling, I glanced at the first chapter "Writing with Pictures" and found it to be extremely interesting how the text stories we read come to life through pictures. On page 16, it explains, "The cartoonist only picks one moment per action, so each panel helps further the plot and keep the pace brisk." The written words in books become pictures in comics in order to advance the plot. Another aspect of this book I enjoyed was the creation of emotions. Seeing the author's emotional faces on page 96 was quite humorous. It is interesting how comics convey such complex ideals as emotions through their pictured characters. A line that also proved to be powerful was, "Symbolic expressions are closer to the written word in the sense that their meaning is fixed regardless of how they're rendered.--Just as a word means the same thing regardless of handwriting or font choice" (McCloud 96). So, whether the comic character is drawn expertly and with a frightened face, or drawn quite simple and with a frightened face, it means the same thing. That fact intrigued me as did most of the book. Too bad I cannnot draw or else I'd consider creating my own comic!

Using the Making Comics book in my student teaching classroom would actually be quite effective because I had a student create a heroic journey movie presentation through the use of comics. Many of the students in my class found this student's unique idea to be interesting, so I will definitely show her this book while student teaching next semester. I am also thinking about creating a final assessment that gives the students the option of creating their own graphic novel story. There are many talented and bright students in my Honors English 12 class, and I think that many of them would respond positively to this sort of assignment. Now, I can't wait to implement it!