Talk:Scott McCloud

I think Scott Mccloud's wikipedia entry deserves a lot more attention. -Sam

Have you noticed that "Making Comics" directs to here? Perhaps not a problem, but if not, we should remove the link to "Making Comics." It's silly to have a page link to itself.

Scott McCloud and Kurt Busiek

There's no mention of the fact that Scott McCloud (still can't get used to that spelling) was a childhood friend of Kurt Busiek and that they created near-professional quality comic books together in high school. I'd add it, except for the fact I can't cite supporting materials. I went to high school with them, so I have direct knowledge of this. Scott & Kurt were obviously both prodigies and I think that's relevant, but I don't want to violate the wikipedia policies on citing sources.

Ct4ul4u (talk) 00:39, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you can find this in lots of places. Scott's afterword to Marvels mentions it, to my recollection. I think Scott may even talk about it in one of his ~ Comics books. Probably something in the collection of Zot!, too, although I have none of these books with me at the moment (moved to a new city, didn't take much with me). Just check these books if you have em, I'm absolutely certain you'll find something in one of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.146.36 (talk) 03:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Scott McCloud and Penny-arcade

Something should be in here about Scott McCloud's fight with PA or at least some criticisms of his work.
69.106.203.87

I have to agree with this. After all, it wasn't simply a "vanity fight" over most page hits or the highest popularity, but it was based on differing outlooks with regards to the medium and future of webcomics (inspite of the petty insults). And a few other prominent webcomic creators, such as Kurtz got involved in it, too, which made the webisode (ha! geddit?) all the more notable. 85.72.166.21 18:37, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Family and last name

Should we mention that he is married and has a family, and that his last name was Anglicized to the current one, though it is pronounced the same way (the current article is modestly misleading on this point)? -- Gwern (contribs) 21:34, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I always wondered if his name had anything to do with Fox. :P Shay Guy 00:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I asked him about that, and alas, it does not. :( --Gwern (contribs) 01:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:POV, "Scholar", uncited statements.

• I removed several comments that represented a point of view of the editor ("popular", "most ambitious", "widely considered", etc...).
• From the information in this article, Mr. McCloud would not qualify as a "scholar". His writings represent a personal point of view, rather than an amalgamation of information based on a founded basis of non-partisan research. I found the qualifier "theorist" used elsewhere on this page to be much more aplicable and have edited the statements refering to Mr. mcCloud as a scholar to match.
• I am tagging this page as containing uncited statements, please see inline citations I added.

LeilaniLad (talk) 14:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Removing "citations missing" tag

I've removed the "citations missing" tag since there are seven citations in the article already. If there are specific parts of the article that need citations, please tag those specific parts or draw attention you concerns here on the talk page. --Dragonfiend (talk) 21:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Making Comics redirect

Does anyone else realize that Making Comics redirects here? That probably should not be like that.--Mynameisnotpj (talk) 02:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

• Until someone writes a Making Comics article, the redirect makes sense. --Dragonfiend (talk) 05:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Awful Paragraph about McCloud's theories

I haven't read Understanding Comics in years, but I'm still virtually certain that the below is a mistake:

"For example, he addresses how time in a comic frame is supposed to be seen as multiple variations of time where several things are happening at different moments in the same space. However, readers go through comics and don't realize that more than one moment in time has been occurring; this frustration is shared by McCloud and many other artists."

This is absurd, from what I know of McCloud. He would never limit what could happen in a single frame. Certainly, he points out that a single frame can contain more than one moment, but he doesn't say this of every panel. There are frames where only one moment is occurring, and readers are thus right to think that only one moment is occurring. This silly interpretation of McCloud is not cited so there's no way to check that McCloud never said this. But nevertheless I am confident it is mistaken. Furthermore, if what I say here is right, then McCloud feels no frustration about the phenomenon, as it is a non-existent phenomenon. And just who are these 'other artists' who agree with this fictional McCloud?

"He also emphasizes how readers are so used to reading in a left-to-right or up-to-down direction that they start to feel as if comics are a linear medium, when in reality, readers have the option of changing the direction of what they are reading. In this day and age, people are conditioned to read in a left to right, concrete fashion. Throwing them outside of this programmed path confuses people. They are not used to the fact that, as a reader, they have choices in which direction they would like their comic story experience to go."

Um, again, what? I don't think McCloud says that you can read a story right-to-left if it has been written left-to-right. I mean of course you can, but I don't think McCloud advocates this. On the contrary, in Making Comics McCloud talks about a good comic story being a clear one -- reading panels in the 'wrong' (or 'unintended') order would certainly be a barrier to acheiving this goal. Now he might be a bit more flexible with writers -- he may inform them that they can write right-to-left if they wish (and certainly, in regards Manga writers, he definitely endorsed this), and he may have even told writers that they can experiement with the expected flow of a comic (e.g., left-to-right' in an American comic), but even so I'm sure he would have said it with a note of caution. He'd probably admit that Alan Moore's Promethea #33 shows that comics with an unusual flow can work, and I know his webcomics play with flow, but in both cases the authors have been very careful that the readers don't read anything in 'the wrong order' (Moore did this by making every which way the 'right way,' and I think McCloud does it by arrows). Nowhere does McCloud say that you can just pop out a copy of, say, Amazing Spiderman and just have the whole thing run from bottom to top or something like that. Actually, that might be kind of cool, but again you'd probably have to put a whole heap of thought into how that was going to work for readers, because McCloud is quite big on clarity.

I think you're misreading the paragraph. It's pretty straightforward: because past Western artists have stuck to very simple layouts, people and future artists are blinded to the other 2D paths/layouts. McCloud definitely does have a section where he discusses how there are many many possible layouts, gives a few examples (like the multiple-outcome one about ice cream & videos), and IIRC also mentions how Japanese manga tend to use a different layout than left-right or up-down. I read UC a few days ago, and that section, at least, is poorly written but I wouldn't say incorrect. --Gwern (contribs) 14:30 4 January 2010 (GMT)

Hi Gwern: Certainly McCloud would agree that there are many possible layouts to a comic, but there’s a difference between layout and flow. A six-panel grid and a nine-panel grid are different layouts, but both can have the same ‘flow’ (left-to-right and down the page). Perhaps ‘flow’ is a term he introduces in Making Comics, but I hope this is informative as an introductory remark.

Now I’ve also no doubt that McCloud says that comics can have unusual flows. I don’t know if your ice-cream example is an example of differing flows or differing layouts, but certainly he says that Manga has a different flow than Western comics. But in this case that’s only because Japanese writing has a different flow than Western writing – that difference has merely been tranlated to Manga. So Manga isn’t an example of unusual flow either. But as I say above, McCloud’s own webcomics (and, on the more extreme end, Moore’s Promethea #33) are examples of unusual flow. With these things clear (a necessary move, I think, as you and I have different McCloud diatribes fresh in our heads), I will move onto the substantive point of your comment.

I think you’re arguing that McCloud’s endorsement (?) of the above type of comics justifies the wiki-writer’s contributions. But as I say in my earlier post, there is surely a difference between a writer intending that some comic be read up the page and a reader getting to choose whether they read up the page. As far as I am aware, McCloud has never endorsed the latter, and if he did I have no idea where he did so (as the wiki-writer gives no reference). And it is certainly the latter that the wiki-writer attributes to McCloud:

“as a reader, they have choices in which direction they would like their comic story experience to go” and “readers have the option of changing the direction of what they are reading.”

This is incorrect: only in some cases (perhaps Promethea #33 is the best example) can the reader choose (in any significant sense) which way they want to read the comic. And in this case it is only because the writer has allowed them to. I think that even in McCloud’s own experiments with flow, the reader doesn’t get to ‘choose’ which way they want to read the story: they’ve got to read certain panels after other panels, even though the flow is unusual. The writer basically gets to decide which way one reads a comic, whether that is up the page, down the page, or all around. In fact, after reading Making Comics, I think McCloud would be aghast at the suggestion that the reader (in the general case) gets to choose which way he/she reads the comic. He talks about being careful how you write your comic, so that the reader knows which panel to read next. Left-to-right and down the page (unless you’re doing something experimental) in a Western comic is the way to go!

I think that the wiki-writer has certainly misread or misrepresented UC (and almost contradicted MC), but I’m not sure whether you have done so as well or if you have just liberally interpreted the wiki-writer’s comments. In any case, I’m fairly certain that McCloud does not say you can pick up any old comic and read the panels in any order, and this is specifically what the wiki-writer attributes to McCloud.

But anyway, now that it’s all been removed, the whole article reads a lot nicer, and I think on this you agree, so at the moment it’s probably best to just leave it, I think.--203.45.146.36 (talk) 02:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

So, in short, an awful, awful, awful paragraph -- and the fact that the above has been included but interesting facts like the reception of 'Making Comics' are nowhere to be found is very perplexing. I'd delete the whole paragraph, if not for the fact that I'm always reluctant to just delete something without putting something else back in its place. But I'm not sure what to put here -- to what are the authors referring? There's no indication. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.146.36 (talk) 03:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC) --203.45.146.36 (talk) 03:55, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The edit where the material was introduced was [1] by Nptl.12 (talk · contribs) [2] by Rz1115 (talk · contribs). They both seem like unsources POV to me. Further they do seem to miss-represent "Understanding Comics" imposing a particular interpretation. For now I'm remove it. (There is a feeling that section this may actually refer to "Reinventing Comics" rather than UC). --Salix (talk): 15:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)