Comic book artist Scott McCloud speaks on visual communication

Scott McCloud is used to putting things in boxes. An acclaimed comic book writer and theorist, McCloud works within a medium that tends to frame seperate images within a page, one after another, to convey narrative. But what happens when we breach this box, or abandon it entirely?

McCloud brought his humor and charisma to a packed Gamble auditorium on Sept. 26, presenting a lecture called “Comics, Innovation, and Visual Communication,” as the The Louise R. Weiser Lecture in Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership through Art.

Despite basing his lecture heavily in the vocabulary and references of comics, McCloud’s dynamic presentation made it engaging even for those who can’t tell Superman from Batman. He drew out the connections between comics and other forms of visual communication, including Powerpoint presentations. With a rapid-fire yet visually engaging delivery of image and explanation, his presentation functioned as a kind of comic. He addressed both the changing landscape of comics with new technology and what other forms of communication can learn from the vocabulary of comics.

McCloud first made his mark as a comics theorist with Understanding Comics, a book published two decades ago. Written as a comic book, McCloud attempted to define comics and argue for its validity as an art form. The book was successful for using the very medium that it was examining. His definition of comics as essentially “sequential art” was disarmingly wide—thus allowing him to make the connection with comic books to things like a pre-Columbian picture manuscript and the Bayeux Tapestry.

His capacity for broad connection-making was on display throughout his presentation. McCloud referenced the  Kuleshov Effect, a film editing effect in which one picture of a man’s face was juxtaposed with three different images. With each combination, the viewer attributed a different emotion to the man.

Juxtaposition has incredible suggestive power, and it is one of comics’ strengths as a medium. Some comics artists juxtapose similar images from one frame to the next, while others use more loosely associated frames for a more poetic effect. Today some comics artists altogether abandon narrative and simply let the readers’ imaginations freely associate images.

Another strength of comics as a medium is, in McCloud’s words, “amplification through simplification.” We will recognize even the most simplified face as a face, and as emoticons have proven, we will grasp human emotion through a few drawn lines. Simple visuals can often be more powerful, and visually supplementing spoken presentations can make the material vastly more engaging and comprehensible.

“We are in the marsupial phase of technology,” said McCloud, referring to the way in which new technology is still in the pouch of the older forms. The computer screen experience can’t replicate the printed page, as much as it may try—but the screen offers the potential of infinite new ways of presenting material. This applies to comics, with its unique sequential style, but also to many other mediums. Visual communication can be transformed with the tools that we have, but the creative solutions won’t be found within the old box.