So after our discussion on Thursday, I went home and watched the TedTalk that McCloud had done that Dr. C. had mentioned briefly. Unfortunately, about 5 minutes into the 17 minute long video, it stopped working. However, the first 5 minutes gave me some excellent insight into McCloud. He began by talking about his father, who was blind, but managed to be a very successful inventor and engineer. As the talk progressed, he began to talk about other people who had overcome obstacles in order to create something great. The first people he mentioned were Bush, Licklider and other creative thinkers whose ideas all focused on one thing: computers. It seemed interesting to me that a comic book writer would be interested in computers, of all things. After all, it seems that something drawn by hand would be the opposite of what computers would be used for. Once it is computer-drawn, it loses the charm and imperfections of the hand drawing. However, McCloud is not focusing on hands versus the mouse, he’s focused on the way computers have brought comic books into the future. I didn’t think about this on Tuesday, but looking back, I suppose I should have wondered why we were reading about comic books in a computer class anyway. However, after watching McCloud’s talk, (at least part of it) and looking at some of his webcomics, I understand, at least in part, how the computer can be used to reinvent something like comics, which to the average person, seems un-reinventable (sorry, not a real word, but you know what I mean). One would think that the comic strip can’t really be improved upon, but McCloud proposes hyperlinks, 3D imaging, and other ways to break comics out of their original rectangular shape.
