Customer Reviews

The Aesthetics of Comics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

So I picked up this book thinking it would be a dry, hoity-toity stamp of approval by an academic on the art form of comics. I was pleasantly surprised to find this an interesting, readable, and plausible series of arguments well on the side of comics, but by no means condescending. Carrier's writing becomes a little too meanderingly philosophical at time, but only for a sentence or two, which does not affect the overall tone or message of the text. Mainly, Carrier deftly navigates through fundamental issues surrounding the troublesome subject of comics, namely, things like narrative, speech balloons, and the whole comics as art debate. I found this book a tremendous, influential resource for my own work about comics history, as well as an interesting read in itself. P.S. - I don't know what that guy who wrote the review before me was smoking, but this book is less about technique than it is about real philosophical issues that affect comics' art-historical reception, etc., etc. Ta.

As an artist trying to maintain my versitility, I found this book to be extremely helpful! The author points out many of the often overlooked aspects of comic aestetics that prove to be very valid and useful. If you are looking to improve your artistic skill, buy this book!

this is a really great book, that I am totally unqualified to review (I would have love to have left the rating blank) --- who ARE all those guys he refers to? --- but it was really interesting as an alternate view of comics that (finally!) seems to escape the eisner/mccloud cliche`s... one thing that i kind of disagree maybe a little with is when he defines comics pretty narrowly and then says there hasn't been any innovation since THE YELLOW KID... well DUH there hasn't been any change in something defined so narrowly! when it changes, it (according to him) becomes something else, i.e. NOT comics, i.e. therefore comics haven't advanced, the artist has just moved on to a different form.

and he talks about the thought bubble like it's freakin' amazing but he never talks about the other ways comics can show thoughts, just words in a thought bubble is what he talks about. sheez what about fantasy sequences (i.e. calvin and hobbes), or two-tone icons (chris ware), etc. anyway that's one of my worthless ideas.

this book is really cool, you should read it. good rainy day fun.