Is it overrated?
>>154652121Understanding comics came out way back in 1993. There were a lot of changes to comics since then. I'd rather just read comics than read about understanding comics. My local library has copies of Understanding Comics and Making Comic.
>>154652121No not at all, only a retard like this guy>>154652150 would think otherwise.
>>154652121No
>>154652121No, and all of the three books (Understanding, Reinventing, Making) still hold up well
>>154652121No. Most of it is valid. I’d say his map of artstyles is a bit nonsensical but other than that there’s a lot of good stuff in there.
>a tutorial book how to read funnypagesdude, its not that deep, lmao
>>154652121It's fine and still holds up. Perfectly solid foundational material for anyone who wants to study comics more deeply.>>154652724It's funny how Reinventing was shat on initially but time has only proven it to be prescient.
The psychological aspects are quite interesting
>>154652121>overNo. Anything guiding people to comprehend even the most basic principle of what makes comics a good blend of visual and writing craft can't be overrated given how many people fail at it.
>>154652121Can you really be overrated if you are the only person doing what you are doing? I know there are books about comics written in prose, which are fine, but this one, as far as I know, is the only one that tried to address comics as a comic.
>>154652121I would be more inclined to accept Scott McCloud as an authority on comics if he actually had any substantial work in the field under his belt. Isn't the only thing he ever did of note an obscure graphic novel that came out years after this?
>>154653729I wouldn’t call him an authority at all. I think Understanding is so catch-all that it’s hard to argue again though
>>154653729He made Zot! prior to Understanding Comics and it won numerous awards if you're concerned about official recognition.
>>154653729I'm wary about this sort of thinking because if you've lived any sufficient amount of time you'll realize the best in a field aren't necessarily the best at explaining their vision or the craft, and the best teachers aren't necessarily the best in the craft.Video essays became very dilute as they became a fad, but there were some that did an impressive job of elucidating the value of a work better than interviews and director's commentaries managed.
>>154652121Overrated in the sense people think they don't need to learn more about comics or try different approaches, yes.Overrated in the sense that is a bad book or the information is no good, no.
>>154652121I remember the Penny Arcade guys made fun of him for some reason once. Out of curiosity, anybody know what this is referencing? The news post is gone, but the comic says it was posted on June 22, 2001 if that helps
>>154653729Zot! Is a pretty decent cape comic with occasional moments of brilliance.
>>154655255Man, it's been centuries since i last read Penny ARcade, but boy, were those fucks angry back then, because of ad revenue drying up due to the dotcom bubble bursting. Scott McCloud pissed them right off by his making a comic about his pirating music and wanting a micro transactions system to support artists, because he thought people would pay 50¢ a month if allowed to. McCloud knows that people are greedy, but would still like supporting their favorite creators, hence wanting micro transactional systems.Penny Arcade don't think people are altruistic, so they made that comic. They also didn't know that micro transactions were already a thing by that point, since there were various music sites (before itunes store) selling mp3s for 25¢I'm still mad how Penny Arcade turned into shills the instant they started getting invited to video game developers/studios and getting official shit from publishers.
>>154653729Zot! ruled and he did quite a few, also solid, Superman books.
>>154655856The best part is that it wasn't even altruism, its just that most people are to lazy to seek out pirated sources if the easy route is prohibitively expensive.
>>154655952*if the easy route isn't prohibitively expensive.
>>154655856The really funny angle is what massive pussies the PA guys turned into.
>>154655983they're just whores.The bald one talked about how he had to calm down pig nose because they got offended by his comic, and since that would affect their income, they'd self censor themselves over time.So they had no problem being edgy and being mean to people, but they had to play nice over time, especially because they become better known and were figureheads for all the shit they created later, like PAX. >>154655952I'm sure it's a mixture of both. Personally, i'll donate or buy something big every so often, but most of the time i'll take free because regular payments are ass. Needing to keep track of subscriptions is lame.
>>154655255>>154655856Found the post through the wayback machine. I want to be more forgiving since this was 25 years ago and perhaps the Penny Arcade guys had a lot of growing up to do but man reading this now just feels miserable. It reads like the sort of bad faith take down essay you'd expect from a nerdy teenage edgelord who thinks he's Light Yagami.
>>154652121its not overrated. its just very highly rated.
>>154657585As someone who was in college way back then, so it wasn't colored by an undeveloped mind, it always felt miserable.I always thought bald was pretty smart, but this take made him sound incredibly ignorant and bitter. His take on McCloud just made it sound like he just skimmed through his comics or like he read someone else's take that also skimmed through what McCloud said.Like i said, i understand his bitterness and downturned expectations, because a lot of the internet had crumbled apart, but Baldy and Pig tried to make McCloud sound like some random guy who had no idea what he was talking about, when everything McCloud was talking about was pretty grounded, with some realistic goals that were currently in use back then. A lot of McCloud was talking about was used for bullshit video game stuff years later, because no one wanted to invest into the comic people.
>>154658845Sorry for veering off topic but since you were around back then you mentioned the internet crumbling and was wondering if you go more into that.Like I knew the com bubble popped and that fucked up business's online presence, but I now realize I never wondered what that was like for adults engaging with the internet culturally at the time and how it affected web spaces proper.
>>154653729Zot has a cool looking bad guy.
>>154659527The internet was a lot smaller back then, so i knew quite a few "famous" and behind the scene people through various chat rooms i used to go to. i was actually offered shares/ownership in a couple of sites back then. Like for literally a couple thousand dollars to keep their sites up, i could have become rich because some of those sites were later sold off for millions.People were fucking desperate because everyone was losing money and the internet was fucking doomed when the dotcom bubble burst. Looking back, it was only a relatively short time where people thought everyone who had a site was going to become a millionaire or at least well off.So what began as just nerds in the 90s making fansites about their fandom, turned into serious business in the late 90s/early 00s, because they started to make a couple thousand bucks or at least heard someone else making a profit. They started to invest in better servers, paid their writers/artists, etc, because the internet now seemed profitable. So money (or promise of it) turned a couple of people into corporate whores/suck ups, so quite a few people/sites started to become full on shills.Places like ANTagonist Network were always in it for the money, but they really started to push the shilling and dumb lies.Anyway, a lot of the old fansites and comic people i used to follow disappeared back then, because servers/hosting costs increased and they ran out of money. You see a lot of sites today turning to pay to read/subsciprtion, but back they were doing that shit back then too. Ads became much more painful, worse than any 150px squares you see today, because pop ups were malicious. Casinos weren't a thing back then, but porn started appearing in normie places, because it was the only thing that kept making money.The internet changed a lot due to the dotcom bubble bursting and i don't think it ever really recovered. The survivors whored out to survive and then got eaten up by the greediest.
>>154656606The thing is when they were edgy, being edgy was sort of the expected behavior. PAX probably neutered them a lot what with needing to play nice but they were never really breaking ground.
>>154657585Bald's (or Pig like's I can never tell which is which) writing really was never as good as he wanted it to be. All his blog write ups read like they're off the cuff tirades. There's no real flow to any of his ideas and he jumps from subject to subject abruptly.
>>154653729He drew for the Omaha the Cat damcer medical fund issue.
>>154659902does it matter if they were breaking ground or not?They were basically the most popular comic out there for gaming shit and were basically seen as the biggest voice for gamers back then.There were othern edgy comics back then, but how many of them were actually good? Very few and almost none of them are remembered to this day.>>154659920i actually liked how ranty and off the cuff he was. Very personable, whereas most articles and blogs back then were too professional or too casual, if not light and not worth ever reading.How captured they were when marketers and businesses started to engage with them and them pretending to still be just fans with conviction, made them seem not too bright. The McCloud comic was when i first started noticing how ignorant they really were.
>>154657585>>154657585Wait so I'm not sure I'm following. McCloud says he would LIKE to pay for stuff even if he pirates but it's kind of a pain in the ass without a proper platform for that and this makes them mad because he wanted to...
>>154658845I'll at least give them credit for removing the news post even if they left the comic up. Looks like all their news posts from 1998 to end of 2002 are gone from their site. It wouldn't surprise me if they deleted them because they were embarrassed by their ramblings from over 20 years ago.
>>154660314I'd argue that's more condemning.
>>154659729Man that sounds intense, thanks for typing that out.
