Scott McCloud on Understanding comics

When I read the “understanding Comic” by Scott McCloud and his Ted talk, there is one topic that really pique my interest, which is how we often fill the gap in each sequence of the comic in our mind, and how the in between panel within the comic represent time. It didn’t really occur to me at first because I guess I automatically doing it my head and now it become more apparent and I can see how many artist really utilize it to shorten their sequence or even prolonged it.

The genre that really makes full use of this idea is usually action or sports comic. Normally, the artist uses a pretty much even pacing in their comics especially in the dialogue heavy section. However, I realize that in action or sports manga, they really make a full use of the sequence. Some parts really slow and the next, it become faster.one of the example of the faster sequence is in this comic, ace of the Diamond, a baseball comic that is released in 2006

These 8 pages depicted on what happen during the last 2 innings. Though 2 innings seems like a lot of time has passed, the artist drew just the key moments in each panel which makes the timeline becomes really short. In this case, the artist only drew the sequence where the pitcher threw a strike pitches or a very effective pitches and the batter who unable to respond to the ball or fail to give a good hit. He did it with both teams which show how these 2 innings has been an intense innings where the pitchers are very aggressive that made both teams unable to score in baseball match.

However, there is also some artist who tries to play around with the idea of timing and pacing. In the Ted talks, Scott McCloud mentioned that there are several artists who tries to invent a way to read the comics, which is really interesting because they provide a new way to enjoys comics.  However, I believe there are a lot of varieties that the artist can invent to give a new sensation of reading comics. In this example that I have taken from a comic called, One-punch man, the artist experimented on the timing of each panel.

 

In this example above, the artist decided to use experiment on making a sequential drawing each page, which is unheard of in the comic history in my opinion.i guess, it is pretty similar with one of the example that Scott McCloud showed, the Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo, but this artist, Murata Yusuke, make it even more prominent. In a way, the artist tries to reimagine this sequence as if the chapter itself will be published into a cartoon. That is shown in this gif that is taken from forum that got really interested with the artist work. Here you can see that the gif itself moved like it is an animated