Comics as an old media in history

Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, defines the term comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, and intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic” (McCloud 9). By this term, comics can extend back to the stone ages when cavemen used to draw pictures on rocks in order to explain something. Their basic concept is one of using individual frames and images that display a meaning of something.

Comics are not thought to typically be a standard media form, rather short, funny stories with no meaning. The questions arise where comics came from and are they an actual new media source? As already stated, the term comics is defined loosely to date back to when people first used any sort of image to display a meaning. From there, words and other pictures were added for more clarification and meaning. Comics have only recently been dissected and commercialized for viewing pleasure.

If it the case that comics date back to written communication, what makes them different from paintings or the written word? The answer is in how comics require their users to be interactive with them. In order for comics to convey a message, much interpretation is left to the reader, meaning a meaning is established from the reader. How things are defined and where stories are taken is a direct response to how the reader of a comic interprets what is displayed. McCloud talks about the world as a conceptual world and how people and their identities are merely ideas (McCloud 40). In this case, people are the direct result of how things are defined in a story and the story is told by their imaginations and guided by the comics. Meaning is established differently for every individual and it is on how they perceive the world around them. This goes hand in hand with Marshall McLuhans’ theory of media forms being extensions of our body by the stories being an extension of imaginations.

The debate still arises between McLuhan and Williams whether these new media forms are extensions of old media and whether it is the user that defines the media and not the media that affect the user. In the case of comics, it is both. Comics are an extension of older media forms. They also require readers for interpretation, therefore, their meaning and message is left to the reader. But how are comics considered a new for of media if they just encompass other communication forms?

Comics have created their own language that is an extension of other forms. Pictures now can be definitions rather than images. A simple smiley face represents a person or a face. Lines jutting out of a person’s back could mean a person is in motion. Just by the image alone, there is a sense of being and meaning established. Much of the interpretation is left to the reader, but these forms have become common knowledge and understood to most people. It is through the general understanding that a new media form and language has been created.

When dealing with comics as a whole, one must ask what type of language and media is being used in comics? There is verbal, nonverbal, pictoral and other forms of language all happening at the same time. Also, images and words are media forms that are being used. But the question still arises if comics can be considered part of media history?

Both Williams and McLuhan still become topics of debate when dealing with any form of communication. In the case of comics, readers affect the comic just as much as they affect the reader. In order to understand a comic, one must be familiar with old media forms (i.e. the written word and pictures, ect.) and what meanings they already have in order to create new meanings for the new media type. Either way, comics require a certain amount of imagination and understanding to convey a message. If it were not for a readers’ previous understanding of what words, pictures and other communication forms mean, would a comic even be a new form?

links:
http://www.dccomics.com/new_to_comics/
http://amazingmontage.tripod.com/mccloud.html