Understanding Comics

Really brilliant. Meta in the true sense of the word, this is a comic book about comic books. I thought it would be a bit more craft-focused (i.e. how do you do the paneling, the color, what are the big trends). Instead, it's a philosophical and critical analysis of “COMICS”. What do we mean by COMICS? To paraphrase The Mighty Boosh, comics is a thing... comics is a state of mind. And my mind was properly blown.

I also found the final chapter(s) strangely evocative: when McCloud was blazing through the genii of each step of artistic creation (Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, etc.), I almost wanted to cry. Why!? Who knows. And when he wraps everything up, highlighting different parts of the book. Well, gosh. It felt like the end of The Usual Suspects, when they zoom in on the coffee mug, the mug shot, Kevin Spacey's legs, Chazz Palmintieri's horrified eyebrows, the fax. And you're like, O... M... G!!!!

Same type of ending, same feeling of amazement and awe and grandeur. I'm sure I'll be coming back to this, again and again, to plumb its depths.