Ranked #2 in Illustration, Ranked #4 in Pattern — see more rankings.
"You must read this book." — Neil Gaiman
Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood... more
Reviews and Recommendations
We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Understanding Comics from the world's leading experts.
Ev Williams Co-Founder/Twitter, CEO/MediumRecommends this book
Austin Kleon Unsolicited, but here’s my advice for visual thinkers (and others) who want to be better writers: [...] Cartoonists, because their work demands work from two disciplines (writing/art, poetry/design, words/pictures), are highly instructive when it comes to visual people learning to write, writers learning to make art, etc. (Check out Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for more.) (Source)
Bret Victor Recommends this book
Will Brooker Understanding Comics is a book about how comics work, told in comic form. It’s very accessible, it’s for the general reader and is about comics in general, not just superhero comics. It explores areas like pacing and editing – how motion can be created through static panels on a page, and how arranging those panels in different ways, or drawing in different styles, or combining text and image, has different effects. It’s almost like a book on film study which explores the role of sound, lighting or editing. Scott McCloud is an artist himself, and he draws pastiches to show how different... (Source)
Rankings by Category
Understanding Comics is ranked in the following categories:
- #17 in Aesthetics
- #23 in Analysis
- #24 in Animation
- #9 in Art
- #10 in Cartoons
- #33 in Creative
- #43 in Creativity
- #21 in Design
- #18 in Drawing
- #12 in Game Design
- #71 in Graduate School
- #46 in Graphic Design
- #11 in Hobbies
- #93 in How To
- #16 in Media
- #58 in Reference
- #54 in Research
- #11 in Storytelling