This is something I have been thinking about for a while now, and I hope I can try to articulate it as best I can.

When I was much younger, I used to read comic books all the time, but as I got older I moved away from them. More recently, I have returned to them -- specifically in terms of graphic novels. And sometimes I think that the way I read comics -- read, perceive, or conceptualize, maybe reading comprehension has changed, and that there are things I'm missing.

So what I am trying to do, at times is figure out how I read comics these days, and if there is really a shift from how I used to read them. I think that if I were forced to describe this, I would say that I was more visual-oriented. I used like to draw a lot, and script came after. Now I am more a writer, and I read the narrative before I look at an image.

Maybe I am afraid of missing something in the pictures. It is a subject that can have spatial-vision dimensions, or go branch into a topic of how one perceives and/or absorbs Art in itself. Or not? *shrugs*

So, how do you read comics? Do you even think about how, or is that even important? Or when you come right down to it, do you read the text first and look at the pictures last?

wow!

I don't know.

I'll think about it next time i read one.

I think i get an overall view of the page, then read the words, then glance deeper (can you glance deeper) at the picture.

Oh, I think you can glance deep into a picture, especially with some of the artwork out there too. And the overall view of the page does provide a greater skeletal framework.

The problem I find is that I can't always look at it in a linear manner. I mean, I know you don't always have to do that but that is how I am used to reading books and prose. Well, to be honest I sometimes do ... skip ahead a bit too, but I just find it interesting that my natural instinct is sometimes to look at comics in a very non-linear (non-sequential) way. You know, going ahead, and then looking back at what happened and vice-versa.

I guess on a greater scale, it is similar to the fact that I need to read the first Books of Magic after reading Bindings first by accident (though as I already said, it was not intentional and in this case it would one entire chain of panels in a self-contained environment to read which I "should" have read before the next related chain). So "Prequel" reading, lol

People read things differently. I find that very fascinating. And in this case read and view things differenly.

I think I look at the picture first, then read the text, and then look at the picture again.

I enjoy reading graphic novels more than individual comics, probably because you can get through entire stories that way, and there's NO ADS.

I love a comic that has a balance between pacing, action, and text. Like in Civil War #7 was totally unbalanced: fightfightfightsolidpagesofexpositiontheend

I -really- disliked the Earth X series for being so text heavy. If I want to read a book, I'll buy a book.

It depends on what I'm reading. With Calvin and Hobbes, I used to read those and just laugh at the antics and the irony of it. But now that I'm a little more aware of the references in the comic strips, I look for those analogies as well and still look at the irony. I also think about what the strip would be like if there was only text or only pictures...I like to see how the two are interdependent. With graphic novels, I used to just read through them and enjoy the story. Sometimes I would find little details in the images that would be interesting. I don't really read comics that much anymore or graphic novels. I did, however, reread the FLCL series and noticed a lot of the devices Ueda used to move the story along and how he arranged the panels and pages.

I'm a little scared to go back to reading comics since I've been taking classes that teach you how to draw them and thus how to dissect them. I'm scared of picking up a comic, reading it, and then analysing it so much I won't really enjoy the story.

Funny, I was just talking to a friend online about this with regard to manga.

With regular ol' books, with something that I haven't read before, I tend to read and then immediately re-read. This is because I race through so fast the first time - who lives? who dies? - that I need a re-read to get the finer points.

With comics (including manga), I tend to do a third reading as well, and I think it's because that's when I really appreciate the text and pictures together.

- Cho

After reading McCloud's "Understanding Comics," I don't think I changed the way I read, I just had a greater understanding of why I did what I did and was more conscious of it.

I'm as interested in the layout of panels and the juxtaposition of images on the first read-through as I am the art or the words. The exception is a comic where the words are definitely going to be important, like the last issue of a limited series or something. In that case, it's structure and words together, then a second readthrough to look at the art.

Honestly, my favourite bit of the art is the background, whether it's the back-up heroes fighting the back-up villains or just scenery.

I have a copy of Mr. Zot's landmark work around here...somewhere...Understanding Comics is a must-read.

I'm not into gimmicky things like crazy fonts in word balloons, like


"I can't believe I'm getting beat up by the !"

Although deciphering all the crazy little details Alan Moore gets his artists to draw in comic panels is an exception. After he left his stint on Swamp Thing, other writer/artists teams tried to copy his style and it didn't really work.

quote:

Originally posted by Mythos:
The problem I find is that I can't always look at it in a linear manner. I mean, I know you don't always have to do that but that is how I am used to reading books and prose.

i think it's worth noting that we don't actually read books that way, for the most part, either.

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:

quote:

Originally posted by Mythos:
The problem I find is that I can't always look at it in a linear manner. I mean, I know you don't always have to do that but that is how I am used to reading books and prose.

i think it's worth noting that we don't actually read books that way, for the most part, either.

You know, I was thinking the same thing at the time I wrote this post. But I guess that is more a subject of reading comprehension in general. It is really fascinating though.

nope, not of reading comprehension.

we don't read linearly. we tend to let our eyes dot over the line and paragrpah rather a lot.
we see unity in paragraphs, and sentences and phrases.

I usually look at that two together, then re-read later to pick up background details in the picutures, etc. But this is influenced by who is working on a comic. For example, I looked at the pictures first in the Wake because they are so beautiful. And I was aware at the time that I was reading that I was n't reading in my usuual way.
Also, I'm a colour orientated person, so I tend to pay less attention to pictures in black and white,, unless they are in a very strong, simple style (Marjane Satrapi, for instance.

Dweller in Darkness,

I completely agree. I always liked comics, but McCloud helped me understand why. I read comics slightly differently now with the awareness I got from Understanding Comics, and it's a good sort of differently. I think the text and graphics can't be divided without some violence being done to either (unless it's a rather poor comic).

Cheers,

Bai

I picked up the first volume of Ryoichi Ikegami's Spider-man manga the other day. I cannot read Japanese, but all the same, it is an odd, surreal, and surprisingly poiniant expirience. It has caused me to think a great deal about where the "balance" indeed does lie in comics. I have no idea what they are saying, but the images are powerful enough that they don't have to say anything.