Maus & Understanding Comics

So far in my reading of Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, I have come across a few concepts that are presented in the first few chapters of our other reading, Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud. What McCloud has done is create an entertaining way of not only teaching his readers about what comics really are, but he does it in a clever way which makes it all the more enlightening. 

By producing just what he's talking about you get a feel for his sense of humor as well as his expertise on comics and communication in somewhat unconventional forms. I first started off reading Understanding of Comics: The Invisible Art, in order to give myself a bit of background and to have in mind a few concepts to look for when I began reading Maus. One of the more apparent concepts I found was in chapter two The Vocabulary of Comics where McCloud discusses how text is a type of icon that we recognize, and it can be used to enhance the meaning of a comic. In Maus, the story is told mostly through the dialogue and conversations between characters with added narration which helps the reader to get a sense of context within each scene. 

Take the scene from page 12 of Maus, the son is trying to convince his father to tell him more about his life and experiences during the war in order to write a book and tell his father's story. The use of narrative in square text boxes versus the conversation in speech bubbles is a contrast that I found helped guide me through story. In my mind I unconsciously read the narration in a different way, as though it had it's own voice (like in a movie). The text throughout the comic also stands to tell us more about the story. The font alone conveys hand-writing, as though the son is writing the entire story down frame by frame of his father's memory. The close up shot framing the son between the father's arms while bringing attention to the numbers on his arm from the war also serve as a type of icon and give meaning without any words. Also, the round frame moves us into the father's memory as he's recalling events from years ago with text in square boxes to narrate this transition. 

After only reading the first few chapters of both of these works, I can already start to get a sense for how complex comics really are and I have a new found appreciation to what goes into these works of art. It's much more than just drawings and speech bubbles, the concepts these writers and artists seek to create in order for us to have an entertaining experience is amazing.