Attached Link: One of Scott McCloud's favorite comics!

Thanks to everybody for their comments. Carolly-- You give a fair representation of McCloud's stance in the early chapters of Understanding Comics, but either he's changed his mind or he didn't quite make himself clear. All I know is that he's an enthusiastic fan of Patrick Farley's work ( http://www.e-sheep.com/ ), including the Poser comic Delta Thrives ( http://www.e-sheep.com/delta/ ). In the first draft of my Invisible Art essay I included a critique of McCloud's iconic theory, but dropped it from the final essay. Here it is: 'The concept of invisible art is not to be confused with the theory of iconic images espoused by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics. McCloud asserts that cartoon images are more suitable for comic art because: 1) they resemble words, creating unified expression; 2) they are more universal, allowing for greater audience identification And 3) they are better at stimulating the imagination. But #1 assumes that the mind is incapable of processing disparate information, #2 assumes that specificity creates alienation (i.e., the more you know about someone, the less you like them), and #3 assumes that art exists within a closed system, so that everything the artist depicts subtracts from what the reader is permitted to imagine. None of these assumptions are likely to be true.'