Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 1

The comic I chose is called "Slim" by Nicholas Gurewitch and is found on his website Perry Bible Fellowship. PBF is known for well drawn and often cynical comics which employ a variety of comic styles.

http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF157-Slim.jpg

I chose this specific comic because it is fairly straightforward: a witness has come forward so a skinny mobster eats a whole bunch of cheeseburgers so that he's fat when called into the line-up. Both the style and content of the comic is very similar to 1920's comics like "Dick Tracy."

Another reason I chose this comic is because the artist's knowledge of comics is so wide that he is successfully able to parody a wide number of comic styles. The detail, artistic style, medium, and subject matter of every single one his comics is different.

Like any great satirist the Gurewitch has a firm understanding of the rules of comics, which is what allows him to break them so easily. As such a lot of what Scott McCloud discusses in his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art can be applied to Perry Bible Fellowship.

In "Slim" the level of detail is somewhere between realistic and cartoony, or what McCloud calls "iconic." (46) There's enough detail that the images are able to clearly convey what the artist wanted them to: anyone who is even remotely familiar with the detective comics of the 1930s will recognize this as a pretty faithful parody. The level of complexity for that era of comics is quite recognizable as it show fairly realistic looking figures with relatively simple facial expressions. This means that most people realize these men are mobsters: the way they are drawn allows the author to rely on the images to convey that fact, instead of supplying more background detail.

Keeping with the theme of simplicity, the comic's use of time is also fairly straightforward. Even if the comic had no words whatsoever most people would be able to figure out what was going on. Given the similarity between the first two frames and their difference from the third it's clear that we have jumped in time: obviously, a character referred to as Slim, in his distinctive green suit with purple accents, is no longer slim in the third frame.

McCloud refers to this movement in time as a scene-to-scene transition. "Deductive reasoning is often required in reading comics such as in these scene-to-scene transitions, which trasnport us across significan t distances of time and space." (71)

Between the first two panels and the third panel we understand that action has taken place, time has passed, and the setting has changed--despite not actually having seen these changes ourselves. The level of deductive reasoning which McCloud refers to is definitely visible in this comic, though it's not too hard to pick up on.

Our knowledge of the health benefits of eating a box of cheeseburgers is necessary for us to connect the skinny character of Slim from the first two panels to the fat character wearing the same clothes we see in the Police line-up in the third panel. Even though we don't see the mobster gorge himself in order to disguise himself, we can draw the conclusion based on the visual cues we are given.

McCloud often uses the term "closure" to refer to our ability to connect the dots between different ideas. For example, in "Slim" closure is achieved relatively easily as we are able to connect the skinny mobster in the green suit in the first panel to the fat mobster in the green suit in the third panel. There's essentially no ambiguity whatsoever to this comic, so the audience is quickly able to find closure.

Picturing Texts on the Web

Very few websites are as engaging and well designed at that of the hilarious fake-newspaper The Onion. As with actual newspapers and magazines, The Onion's website combines the use of images and headlines to pull readers in. Because The Onion's content follows journalistic rules so well (in order to break them), it makes sense that their website would be designed in a way that parodies standard news websites (such as CNN.com), while highlighting its content in a way that draws readers.

Most of The Onion's jokes are made in the text, but the use of pictures makes it seem familiar to anyone who has picked up a newspaper in their life. For example, the first story at the top of the page today has the headline: "Area Man Saddened To Realize Short Jewish Women With An Interest In Theater His Type." The text is similar (in style only) to what one might expect to find in an actual newspaper. The accompanying picture works in a similar way by showing a picture of an average man and a picture of three women which fit the description of "short Jewish women." The picture adds realism to a silly story.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_man_saddened_to_realize_short

The website itself is extremely balanced, with an appropriate mix of text and pictures. The main website is split up into several sections containing headlines followed by small, thumbnail pictures. Also included are links to photo galleries and sections containing video.

While most of the pictures simply act as props for the jokes in the text, the website does include photo-shopped pictures which are pretty hilarious on their own. Without the pictures it would be incredibly difficult to read, even though anyone going to the website is expecting to digest large amounts of text. The pictures serve the purpose of engaging the readers visually in what would be an exclusively textual story. For example, in a story with the headline "Swaggering Down 87%" the accompanying picture shows a bunch of people walking around, heads down and arms hanging limply by their side. Though the emphasis is put on the headline, the picture really adds more to the story. This general principle exist through-out the website, with the pictures almost serving a role of necessity.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/swaggering_down_87

Only occasionally are the pictures made the feature in the form of weekly galleries of photo-shopped images that are hilarious on their own. One of my favorites features a giant girl playing with a Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld doll. The picture alone is quite funny, but the importance of description comes out after reading the caption: "Giant Girl Forces Playthings Cheney And Rumsfeld To Wed."

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/onion_news1382.jpg

The point the author is trying to make in "Picturing Texts" is very much supported by what appears on The Onion: pictures really do add a whole lot to a story. If all the pictures were removed from The Onion's website the content would be unaffected but the presentation would be very underwhelming.

Peer Review Recap #2

For the most part this peer review was a success. I liked how easy it was to give direct feedback by starting a thread. In all honesty I found the suggestions made in this way far more helpful than reading through my paper looking for scattered comments. However, I didn't like the way that anyone could edit my piece and not necessarily leave their name. Sometimes people made changes which weren't helpful or didn't make sense, and I couldn't tell who made which changes.

Of the feedback I received, most were minor changes and criticism. Only one person really ripped my essay apart and I found this to be the most helpful. Merely suggesting organizational/grammatical changes is helpful, but the suggestions I received via threaded comments really helped me to understand how I could make my paper better.

I liked some parts of WetPaint better than Google Docs, and vice versa. As mentioned, I really liked the threaded comments. This helped me understand who was saying what and eliminated the general anonymity of the system. This was what I liked most about GoogleDocs: that only three people who were given permission could read/edit my paper.

What are others saying?

Because I tend to be a defender of Williams, I looked for a blog that disagreed with him. I found Allison’s blog very interesting because she prefers Strunk & White and gives good reason for why she dislikes Williams.

“I know, its true, 'write clearly' is not a clear rule. Williams, on the other hand, has an entire chapter devoted to how one can achieve clarity in writing. This is, clearly, more clear. But personally, Williams was just too prescriptive. He's overwhelming. There are too many too specific rules that in the end make me grind my teeth, tap my foot and grow a headache.”

I do agree that Williams is overwhelming, but I personally think it’s an entirely different book from Strunk & White. It’s meant to be more in depth and prescriptive because it’s essentially a direct guide to writing, a textbook that’s meant to be referred to when you are sitting down and writing.

Strunk & White on the other hand seemed far more introductory, and doesn’t seem so much as something you’d keep nearby when writing an essay. Everything that they discuss I essentially already knew—had I been given this earlier on in my writing career I think it would have been a lot more helpful.

I saw Susan’s blog and was surprised because I thought most people agreed that Williams was more interesting and more useful than Strunk & White. Her opinion that she felt she could use Strunk and White while writing was the opposite of how I felt. I thought that as a guidebook for writing Strunk and White really couldn’t help me as much as Williams could.

“The books are helpful in their own ways, where I will keep my Strunk and White book, and probably use it to help me write papers when I am unclear as to where to use a comma, or a semi-colon or something, I can go look it up, but Williams is more like, I read it, but I will not be able to go back and look up specific rules, it is meant to help your writing overall to make it better. Strunk and White is all about rules and that is not what Williams is exactly about at all.”

I figured most people would agree with me on Williams because his book is structured a lot more like a text book. Though I agree that Williams is a lot more longwinded and harder to read, I think that is par the course for textbooks.

Ashley agrees with me in terms of how useful S&W are compared with Williams. She goes a bit further and offers the following as an example of how Williams can help writers. “A spell checker will often pick up on simple grammatical errors or when you use the wrong punctuation. The Williams book allows you to be able to scan your work of writing and understand what needs improvement or rewording.”

I like that she mentions the use of spell check because I think it’s something a lot of people these days might take for granted and might not necessarily know the reason for many of William’s rules. I’ll admit, that’s how I am. Williams didn’t help me so much as give me an idea of the reasons behind what I already do.

Compraring Strunk and White with Williams

One of the elements of Strunk and White’s book “The Elements of Style” that I considered to be critical to writing was regarding the use of clear, uncomplicated language. Joseph Williams discusses this in his book “Style – Towards Clarity and Grace,” as well—but does so in a much more in-depth manner.
Both books use examples of how writers can make their writing clearer and stronger, but Williams tends to be far more specific and helpful than Strunk and White. The suggestions and examples they provide are helpful, but tend to be general guidelines instead of specific rules.
What they might address in a few pages, Williams devotes a whole chapter to. The key difference is that Williams’ advice is more critical and helpful, and far more specific. While Strunk and White might make a claim such as “Omit needless words,” they really don’t explain why this should be done. They might provide a few examples to illustrate their point, but never really explain the reasoning behind their ideas.
When discussing the use of specific and concrete language they provide the following example:

A period of unfavorable weather set in.
It rained every day for a week. (21)

This certainly illustrates the point they are trying to make, but go no further in explaining why this rule is important or how we should go about doing it.
Williams, on the other hand, is very specific. Instead of saying, “Omit needless words” and providing an example of a complicated sentence and one that is uncomplicated—he provides a few principles, a number of examples and a lot of additional ideas that add to his principles.
At the beginning of chapter seven he addresses his two principles in a clear and easy-to-find manner:
1. Usually, compress what you mean into the fewest words.
2. Don’t state what your reader can easily infer. (115)

He then backs these up with additional ideas and examples. The combination is far more successful in getting the same basic idea across to the reader than Strunk and White’s approach. He goes into a lot more detail, explaining related ideas such as eliminating redundancy, pompous diction and meaningless modifiers. (118)
This specificity does far more in helping a writer accomplish the goal of making their writing more concise than simply telling them to omit meaningless words.
Not only are his ideas more specific, but the layout of his book in general is more helpful. Strunk and White’s chapter on the principles of composition involves many ideas which Williams expands into specific chapters, where he addresses specific problems that come up.
In general, Williams seems to provide a handbook to improve your writing while Strunk and White offer a guide to understanding what you are doing wrong. By reading “The Elements of Style” you are likely to figure out what is wrong with your writing, but not how you can improve that—reading “Style” will help you address both.