words | R E V I E W

Reinventing Comics

by Scott McCloud
Harper Perennial 
256 pp. $22.95

by Jeff Sypeck

Scott McCloud is an optimist. In Zot!, his delightful comic-book series of the 1980s and early 1990s, a teenage superhero from a utopia of sci-fi cliches taught a young girl to find joy in her own commonplace world. In The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, McCloud pitted the historical president against his own cliched caricature, drawing poignant conclusions about the value of knowledge over ignorance. And in his acclaimed 1993 masterwork Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud examined the process of reading comics — using the very format of a comic book to make his case for the limitless potential of the medium. "All that’s needed," he wrote with characteristic enthusiasm, "is the desire to be heard, the will to learn, and the ability to see."

Where Understanding Comics was a investigation of how we read comics, its sequel, Reinventing Comics, focuses instead on why we read — or, to put it more accurately, don’t read — comics in our society. In this new book, McCloud is blunt about his concerns: With a dwindling North American readership of fewer than 500,000 and competition from film, television, and video games, the comics industry needs to look beyond tired superhero cliches and the marketing of gimmicky collectibles if it wishes to remain fresh in a media-saturated age.

With a sincerity complemented by an uncompromising love for his work, McCloud argues that comics have great potential, taking readers on a tour of the industry through a discussion of economies of scale, a brief history of the Internet and the potential for "digital delivery" of online comics. At times a bit cumbersome in its scrutiny of a small industry few of us ever think about, Reinventing Comics is unlikely to appeal to general readers the way its prequel did. Nonetheless, those who are lucky enough to stumble across this ambitious book will enjoy a romp through the mind of one of the most interesting graphic artists working today — and may even come to share some of McCloud’s indefatigable optimism for an unjustly marginalized art form.

In Understanding Comics, the medium and the message were one. A cartoon representation of Scott McCloud wandered across the page, explaining the visual vocabulary of comics and separating form from content with far-ranging historical examples, among them the Bayeux Tapestry, painted Mayan picture-manuscripts, and Hogarth prints. The result was a definition of comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence," backed up by a lucid and convincing argument for abandoning the misconception that comics are a recent and inherently childish invention.

In Reinventing Comics, McCloud is less concerned with the theoretical, focusing instead on the squandered potential of comics and suggesting ways that creators can explore the vast possibilities of the medium. Once again, his cartoon alter ego literally walks us through the work, this time beginning with the history of the modern comic book: from 1940, when comics legend Will Eisner (who coined the term "graphic novel") earned scorn from fellow cartoonists by suggesting that what they did was an art, to the 1980s and 1990s, when the rise of independent publishing seemed to be taking the field in new directions — even as larger publishers’ greedy obsession with marketing "collectibles" almost destroyed it for good.

Mourning the industry’s emphasis on superheroes and male power fantasies, McCloud suggests a series of revolutions, from creators’ rights to recognizing comics as a form of art and literature. "The limits were rarely in comics itself," McCloud acknowledges, "but in the imaginations of those who’ve worked within it; leaving an art form at century’s end that’s failed to demonstrate more than one tenth of one percent of its potential."

In fact, that admission exemplifies McCloud’s major triumph in Reinventing Comics: his willingness to take his own industry to task for its shortcomings at nearly ever level, from unimaginative publishers and writers to socially maimed store clerks. "Positive media coverage can create new would-be readers," he writes, "but one bad retail experience can stop them dead in their tracks. And unfortunately, the stereotype of the dimly-lit, cultish, ‘no-gurlz-allowed’ breed of comics store is not without its real-life precedents."

Anyone’s who’s been in a comics shop knows that most of them are still plagued by a dreadful porn shop pall perpetuated by illustrations of large-breasted, spandex-clad superwomen straight from the power fantasies of young (and often, sadly, not-so-young) comic readers. "I don’t think there’s anything intrinsic to comics that restricts it to such power fantasies," McCloud suggests. His brief but intriguing history of women’s comics cements his case, and his call for "diversity of genre" may be one of the most refreshingly candid statements from a comics creator in years.

The greatest delight for a reader of a Scott McCloud book is, of course, the art. Since exchanging the vivid superhero world of Zot! for a more understated black-and-white technique in 1987, McCloud has experimented with increasingly simpler styles, only sometimes returning to color comics. Thoughtfully designed and boldly drawn in black-and-white, Reinventing Comics is a pleasant surprise for anyone who expects that a "comic book" must consist of hackneyed posturing and garish graphics. Influenced by Japanese comics artists like Osama Tezuka but decidedly American in execution, McCloud’s artwork has matured into effortless and graceful simplicity; few other comics artists could make dry material like the business side of the publishing industry seem interesting and relevant.

Conveying complex information with extremely basic images, McCloud once again demonstrates his mastery of modern iconography. Throughout Reinventing Comics, two juxtaposed images representing an opening eye serve as a recurring icon for the medium of comics and their potential, while concepts such as digital production and digital delivery appear as a hand holding a cartoon lightning bolt or a winged foot. McCloud’s iconography can be humorous and self-deprecating, such as when he draws himself as a loaf of bread in a discussion of the commodification of art, or when he depicts the comics industry as an Ouroboros dollar-sign devouring its own tail. But often, the tone is serious and startlingly effective: One lonely black oval on a field of white ovals illustrates the lack of racial diversity in the comic book industry with damning starkness.

Unfortunately, Reinventing Comics suffers from a wordiness unnecessary in such an intensely visual publication, especially in its footnotes. "Musicians, writers, filmmakers — all have their horror stories," writes McCloud in his chapter on the inequities of the comics industry. "Screwing the ‘talent’ is practically an American tradition!" A double-asterisked footnote adds an unnecessarily qualifier: "Though, to be fair, I’m sure it’s practiced elsewhere quite often." 

When McCloud discusses his interview with Ray Suarez on National Public Radio and the embarrassing comic book stereotypes perpetuated by a dramatic reading of Frank Miller’s Sin City, he feels compelled to add in a footnote: "In fact, I’ve remained a loyal listener to the show for years. In late ‘99, Ray left for a spot on P.B.S.’s the News Hour [sic]." And why was McCloud in Washington in the first place? "I needed photo reference for a graphic novel that partially took place in D.C.," he informs us in yet another footnote. These irrelevant asides may work in McCloud’s live lectures, but on the page, they’re leaden word balloons weighing down an otherwise lofty and ambitious book.

But if Reinventing Comics isn’t as tightly paced or as brilliantly focused as its prequel, the book’s visual vocabulary is still a pleasure to navigate, and the enthusiasm of its creator is highly infectious. For decades, comics creators have cried out for recognition of their work as art, but rarely has this plea come from anyone as thoughtful or as talented as Scott McCloud. Similarly, few have been as bravely vocal in acknowledging that the sweeping public perception of comics as childish, while not wholly deserved, is indeed based on sad reality: a market in which talented and innovative creators drown under waves of derivative trash.

Combining a mature sense of design with missionary zeal, McCloud has crafted a disarmingly genial manifesto for reforming his own immature industry, one that’s sure to generate both praise and scorn from his colleagues for years to come. In the end, however, the strongest argument in Reinventing Comics may be the one Scott McCloud is too modest to make: that when he publishes his next comics, there may just be more people out there willing to take a look.

Jeff Sypeck is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who teaches literature at the University of Maryland University College.