This is Not a Blog Post

After reading "Understanding Comics", I started thinking about how people communicate. I find it astonishing that something imagined by a pile of gelatinous bio-matter in your skull can be transferred to another through symbols written on paper. Its also fascinating how we are not limited to one type of medium, but are constantly creating new ways of expressing ourselves. McCloud gives us a view into comics as its own distinct and effective medium of communication. Comics allow ideas to be expressed in ways literature or pictures alone cannot. They provide a dynamic form storytelling that is engaging for the reader. Would the story of the X-Men been equally as influential if it was written in a 800 page novel or would have Batman been as iconic if his debut was on Broadway?

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I believe some ideas are better expressed in specific mediums. In order to get your meaning across, you need the audience to focus on certain key features. For example, visual media focuses on your sense of sight while music on your sense of hearing and, as a result, produces a different experience when consumed. The old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" highlights this idea, though I think the opposite can also be said. Let's experience this first hand by seeing how the medium affects your experience. The following are two different mediums expressing surrealism (Why surrealism? Ceci n'est pas une pipe):

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

By: Salvador Dali

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Mobius Strip
By: Robert Desnos

Translated by: Amy Levin

The track I'm running on
Won't be the same when I turn back
It's useless to follow it straight
I'll return to another place
I circle around but the sky changes
Yesterday I was a child
I'm a man now
The world's a strange thing
And the rose among the roses
Doesn't resemble another rose.

 

Both works are trying to communicate their authors ideas of surrealism, each achieving this by taking advantage of their specific medium. Dali captivates his audience through visual juxtaposition giving the audience a sense of wonder in the dream-like world he created. A similar sense of wonder is felt when reading Desnos' poem producing a very similar dream-like feel, but with the ideas being completely expressed in words. Dali used the visual medium, which focuses on visual stimulation, to explicitly create a dream scene for the audience to experience. Desnos on the other hand uses the abstract nature of writing to allow the reader's mind to wander and create the dream scene in their own imagination. Picking the medium of communication is as important as the message being communicated.

I think one of the reasons comics succeed as a medium is due to their ease of consumption. One comic can contain an entire story, be read in about the same time as a short story, and be fully understood on the first reading. Not only that, comics have almost-limitless potential as they have all the benefits of both pictures and writing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence"(McCloud 20) worth? Many stories would benefit by being told through comic, but do they lose something when being converted from their source medium? 

Sources:

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.18. Print.