Comic talk

I love comics. I’ve collected them for the longest time and continue to collect them. Recently I’ve gone to a presentation by Scott McCloud, one of the leading speakers and writers on comics, where they’ve been, going, and are. A lot of what he talked about was how comics had evolved over time. Originally they were pictures on walls in ancient cultures such as in Egypt and Mexico. They then evolved when they were put into print, taking on different meaning as it changed form. A lot of this was interesting to me considering I wrote a paper based on this idea. Similar to what I wrote about in my paper, McCloud talked about how comics are changing to adapt to the new media, specifically the internet and computers. He spoke of viewing comics on the computer not as slides like you do with printed comics but as a window. In this way, there were could be no breaks and the comic would become more interactive by allowing the user to choose where to go. So instead of simply moving in a set direction such as left to right and up to down, you could instead go all over, going every which way that you want, even in a three dimensional sense. While similar to the subject of my paper I went a different route, focusing more on the history of comics rather then its form. Still, his talk was well received with a number of people there. I even saw the owner of a local comic book shop, Paradox Comics, there to listen. That in itself was a surprise to me at first but not really after a moment. It is comforting to see so many people interested in comics not just as good reading material, but as something to be taken seriously just as people do with classical works of literature such as Frankenstein or Moby Dick. Who knows, one day in the future maybe people will look at comics like Spider-Man and Batman as classic works. Some may scoff at this idea but I ask, why not? In any case, we’ll all see what the future holds for comics.