Interesting.... I completely agree with you, for entirely different reasons.
McCloud is fascinating, but I think in the end that comics inspire humans because for one reason he just lightly touches on. We are genetically programed to respond to pictures. The old adage that one picture is worth 1000 words is true in as much as we all process images faster and probably to a more ancient part of our brain than words will ever reach. Couple that with a modern western person being bombarded by images (tv, movies, ads), we are now not only physiologically predisposed to respond to images, but now also socialized to expect and respond to them. This twin reinforcement gives all image based information transfer incredibly power.
Without a doubt this means that comics have immense power to give us access to archetypes and other myths to help create basis of our society. Every society has had some form of that, and somewhere between comics and movies and television lies our main forms of mythos transfer. But it's the visualness of it that gives all these all their power, and comics alone have the balance that allows for the most original thought (because the cost of production and the limited number of people that need to be involved from creation) consequently the mythos.
In the end though, I have to admit you can't rule books out yet. Harry Potter is the perfect example that books still have power, no matter how much they lack pictures. If there's a more pervesive mythos in our modern times, I don't know what it is.
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Date: 2007-08-01 10:51 pm (UTC)McCloud is fascinating, but I think in the end that comics inspire humans because for one reason he just lightly touches on. We are genetically programed to respond to pictures. The old adage that one picture is worth 1000 words is true in as much as we all process images faster and probably to a more ancient part of our brain than words will ever reach. Couple that with a modern western person being bombarded by images (tv, movies, ads), we are now not only physiologically predisposed to respond to images, but now also socialized to expect and respond to them. This twin reinforcement gives all image based information transfer incredibly power.
Without a doubt this means that comics have immense power to give us access to archetypes and other myths to help create basis of our society. Every society has had some form of that, and somewhere between comics and movies and television lies our main forms of mythos transfer. But it's the visualness of it that gives all these all their power, and comics alone have the balance that allows for the most original thought (because the cost of production and the limited number of people that need to be involved from creation) consequently the mythos.
In the end though, I have to admit you can't rule books out yet. Harry Potter is the perfect example that books still have power, no matter how much they lack pictures. If there's a more pervesive mythos in our modern times, I don't know what it is.