Comic Theory

Not a lot of people put too much thought into the process of how comics develop or what even makes up a comic. During the development stage the artist or creator of a comic put a lot key things into thought. Like in Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics, Scott goes into what a comic really is and how it uses certain vocabulary, icons, colors, its "moment to moment", time sequence using frames, and basically other key ideas that wrap up the whole story. The most important point I feel that Scott McCloud makes about what makes a comic is the "moment to moment" or "aspect to aspect" sequence. Some comics are wordless so the panel to panel aspect is almost the comics grammar. To make a comic work, the panel-to-panel of both ideas flowing makes the story understandable to the reader, and can properly be read. I feel the time sequence plays in the same idea of this, since how many panels are repeated of something or how small or big one is also helps the reader understand how to read the comic and get what the artist is trying to do. Though McCloud likes to keep those main ideas away from each other by separating them in different chapters.

Another artist that helps explain the comic theory is Roger Sabin in his book Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels. The book talks about the development of comics from the 19th century to today's graphic novels. Sabin talks in great detail about each era take on the comic. He also supports his work with including detailed images of the comics during that time period. I think a great point that Sabin makes in his book is that the generations of comics have changed a lot over years and how now we have manga and anime more in comics then not even being a thing in the 19th century. Though, comic artists still use old tricks in new works, so the old saying "don't fix it if it's not broken." Is a great representation of old comic book tricks that still work. Like for example to use color to convey certain emotion in a panel. An oldie, but still a good goodie.