Understanding Comics

I'm not going to lie, when I first started reading "Understanding Comics", I was a bit bored in the beginning, but as I read on, I got sucked into the literature and couldn't stop reading and before I knew it, it was over.  I even wrote down a few pages in the book where I learned something.

I think the biggest learning I took away from this book (even though it's a very simple concept for most people who read comics) was on page 66, "The Gutter". 

Although a simple concept, I didn't realize that the gutter played such a huge role in comic books and graphic novels.  Before reading that part in the book, I thought panels were just aligned in a order in which the artist intended the viewer to read the comic, I never took in account that spacing of the panels could showcase time between frames. 

The way he describes how the gutter works is actually very clever.  It's like showing a panel with a hand with a pencil in it above a blank page, and then showing the same hand, with the same pencil with artwork on the page in the next panel.  Your mind snaps to the idea that you KNOW that person drew something on the paper without actually showing panel to panel of the art being drawn.  It's amazing how our mind fills in that blank space of the gutter to connect two completely different panels. 

Also how the gutter space can be used to show amounts of time.  Such as, if two frames were close together, it can show a short period of time elapsing (ie. Showing someone opening a can of soda, then showing them drinking it;  You know it happens within seconds of each other).  Whereas if the panels are spread further apart, it shows a more lengthy amount of time (ie.  Showing the sun in the air in one panel and then showing the sun setting on the horizon in another; our minds know that it didn't just set within seconds, but took hours). 

He talks about the "experience" to connect the dots which makes a lot of sense.  If you've personally experience something (like opening a can of soda), your mind connects the dots and you know how long it'll take between actions.  In fantasy comics, it's a little less disconnected when it comes to experience, but because we know backstories of characters and origins, we can give a educated guess (ie.  The comic book hero Flash, most people know that he's incredible fast.  So if it shows him in one panel in New York, then shows him running, and the next panel he's in China, you know it happened within a matter of seconds because of his super power). 

This was the first time I've read "Understanding Comics", but there was so much I took away from it and I'll probably re-read it again soon.