| Interview mit Scott McCloud (OmU) |
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| Geschrieben von Björn und Daniel | ||||
| Sonntag, 27. Januar 2008 | ||||
Seite 2 von 2  Since Understanding Comics came out in 1993, Scott McCloud is probably comics' best-known and most influential theorist. That is, his work is not only theoretical but also absolutely practical. McCloud's major work, , is a comic itself: a comic explaining what comics are, how they developed and how they work. In the sequel, Reinventing Comics, which came out during the first internet hype, McCloud focused on the net as a new way for the medium. His very optimistic predictions provoked lots of criticism. His most recent work is Making Comics, in which McCloud, once again in the form of a comic, explains how to create comics. Carlsen, his German publisher, had invited Scott McCloud to the Frankfurt Book Fair last autumn, where he delivered a very well-received keynote speech. The next day, he met our editors Björn Wederhake and Daniel Wüllner for an interview.DW: Mr. McCloud, is this your first book-fair or comic-book-show in Germany or have you been to Germany on other occasions? SMcC: I have only been once, at Erlangen in ’94. This is my second trip to Germany and my first trip to the book-fair. DW: Compaired to American Conventions: Is it a little more crowded or is this the way you're used to do conventions? SMcC: The book-fair is about as crowded as the big convention in America; the San Diego Comics Convention , but it’s almost twice the size. Because I was told that we get 250.000 here at book-fair and San Diego is just 130.000-150.000, maybe. So it is definitely bigger, but more spread, wider focus, of course. BW: Did you have any chance to see anything of Frankfurt except for the fair area or is it the typical hotel, fair and back? SMcC: Well at least I see a little bit of the city, when we go out to eat. But no, I'm afraid I haven’t seen as much of Frankfurt as I'd like. DW: In the last two or even three decades you presented to us comic books, theoretical books, the new Making Comics, which is like a How-to-do-book, you were editor for the 24 Hour Comics, you had that tour through the 50 states. So what is your main profession? What would you call yourself? Are you an artist or a theoretician? 
SMcC:
That is a difficult question and I grapple with it frequently. When
somebody asks me what I do, how do I answer? What words do we put
down on the catalogue, or whatever? These days I say cartoonist and
author. That pretty much sums it up. I do a lot of public speaking,
but I am doing it as a cartoonist and an author. I would like to be a
little more cartoonist and a little less author for a little while. I
would like to create a graphic-novel next and I plan to spend the
next two or three years of my life doing that. I think it is time
after writing about how comics work to actually put those ideas into
practice and try to create a work of fiction.
BW: How is it for you as a reader of comics? Do you still read comics the same way as you did before or do you always have this critical eye and basically get lost in the structure unable to really focus on the narrative? SMcC: I can still enjoy comics as a reader, although I do notice more than I did before. Now I find myself looking at them with a specific eye, trying to find things I can use, ideas I can use in my own work. My biggest problem as a reader is that I don’t have enough time to do nearly as much reading as I'd like. I have a very, very, very long list of books I would like to read; comic books and also ordinary books, movies I would still like to see, things I would like to do, places I’d like to go. Comics takes a lot of time. Just creating a page of comics work is very time-consuming and difficult and so I finally have to work very long hours. So time is the one thing I am least able to afford. DW: With Understanding Comics, you are building up a theoretical work to some degree, which I think nearly every undergraduate or even the graduate students use for the study of comics as a basic work, if they are interested in it; but there are many other theoreticians who might criticize your work because at some degree it might be too general, it doesn’t go far enough. How do you cope with criticism and how do you work it out? 
SMcC: Well, you know, I was looking forward to a debate when I first created Understanding Comics and the debate was a little bit slow in coming at first. People mostly padded me on the back for a couple of years, but then after what we call a honeymoon, “out came the knives...” (laughter) For the last ten years or so, I think we've had a good healthy debate going. It comes from many directions: There are those who don’t feel that any sort of theoretical work is necessary or by explaining comics you can kill it. I don’t agree with them, but I understand the sentiment. Then from the other end there are those who feel that it was to generalist and it was more naïve than it needed to be. I was not approaching the subject with ten-thousand pages of poststructuralist theory under my belt, and therefore I couldn’t really be trusted to talk about anything that touched on semiotics. I understand that too and I think it's frustrating for those who study that material at great length to see somebody who doesn’t have any of that foundation behind them. On the other hand, we have writers like Thierry Groensteen who can approach comics from that angle and I would like to think that their work and mine can coexist peacefully (laughter) and that whatever observation I brought to the form as a practitioner, as a cartoonist, can be of use as part of the picture that one creates in one’s mind. Any cartoonist beginning to make comics should look to many different voices and many different ideas. I think some have been dissatisfied with Understanding Comics in the way that it fails to be a comprehensive explanation of all things comics but I think any book will disappoint them in that respect. There are no comprehensive explanations. No single human being should be trusted to give you all the answers on any subject. I have given the answers as I see them and others have joined the thread and given other viewpoints on comics, and that’s very helpful. BW: What about discussing it not from a university-point-of-view, but for example with other comics creators. Do you have brainstormings or things like that? Because we talked to Jeff Smith last year and he told us that you sometimes go out, drink something and talk comics. So do you have like a circle? Did you have a chance to talk to Will Eisner about what you were doing? 
SMcC:
I always talked with Will every time we had a chance to get together
and Will was very supportive, not just of me but of all young
cartoonists. He was interested in our thoughts on the medium and his view on comics was very flexible and was always changing and
adapting. He had a veracious appetite for ideas and I have tried very
much to live in that model. He was a role model for me.
Jeff is right. Jeff and I joke off. The argument we had in years ago, probably in 1996 at three in the morning in the hotel bar in San Francisco, where I was suddenly all on fire with ideas for the internet and just going on and on and on. I was an absolute madman. He was trying to drag me down to earth. It is my nature to want to take on everyone, colleagues, friends, family, random people on the street. I will talk about comics with anyone who will listen, because I think the subject is endlessly fascinating. DW: So talking to other comics creators seems to be a big influence for you. You mentioned Thierry Groensteen earlier. Did you read his System of Comics? Did you take a peek at his work? I think there is a new English edition out now. SMcC: Yes, I could only read it in English, unfortunately. I's a bit dense, so I'm going to have to reread it. I have soldiered my way through it to some degree and I think it's going to take a while to settle in. It could be that there 's not a great deal of overlap in our thinking. Not because the two viewpoints are necessarily opposed to one another but simply because we are looking in entirely different aspects of the medium in many respects. Other than that I can't really say. But I am glad it's there, I am glad it exists. DW: Are you in contact with academic personnel like him? SMcC: I met Thierry years ago briefly, when I was in Europe. I think it was in Kopenhagen. But don't quote me on that! That may not be exactly right, but I do believe I was introduced to him at one point years ago. Otherwise I have no direct, continual discussions with him. There are others who have written about comics, I had occasional discussions with. But you know the fact is, as soon as I finished Understanding Comics, in late 1993, and about the time the ink was dry I was obsessed with computers. So I just lurched on to an entirely different obsession and that took me ten years of my life and so I didn't really revisit a lot of the ideas in Understanding Comics with as much energy and diligence as other people did (laughter). DW: Let's talk about your new book Making Comics. It seems to me a little bit dogmatic, because it is a how-to-do-book. You said in your keynote at the fair that everybody has a right to choose his creative style and do whatever he wants, but then this book is completely filled with "buts". SMcC: ... there are a lot of buts (laughter). 
DW:
To me, sometimes it felt like: "There are no rules, and here
they are." How do you perceive it? Do you still think you give
your readers a general overview or that maybe you are forcing them
into one direction?
SMcC: I think I'm consistent in this book with the idea that there is no right way to make comics. You can stand at that crossroads and you can choose to go in any direction at all. With this medium you can choose any style, you can choose any kind of story, you can choose any approach you like. But the moment you set a goal, or as soon as you point into the horizon and say “I'm going there”, that's when some pals will achieve their goal and some won't. And that's when we can start talking about potential obstacles and whatnot. That’s what I am trying to do. I think overall any how-to-book by its nature -- if it's not dogmatic to a degree, it is not a how-to-book. So I can't deny that there is some of that there. I think on the grand scale of how-to-books it's probably on the less dogmatic end of the scale, because I do give so many different choices. Really, I would like people to understand what choices they have, and what territories they can go to and some of the wisdom that has been accumulated over the years by others who have been to those same places. And perhaps some ideas about places that very few people have been to.  DW: At the
end of Making Comics you also put in three essays on Understanding Genre, Understanding Manga, and Understanding Comics Culture. In your keyote speech, which was really like a
huge flash of images – it was really disturbing to a degree –
you presented these essays to us. It is interesting to find those
things in a how-to-book. In the book, you suddenly change from how-to
advices to a nearly free verse essay. Why did you put these in the
book?
SMcC: There are two reasons. One is the simple fact that the ideas that have accumulated in my head in the last several years (really since Understanding Comics, because this book deals with ideas that are related to that territory rather than the second book), those ideas weren’t all directly related to simply picking up a pen and drawing. So either I could leave them out entirely or I could find a way to work them in. On the other hand, I don't think they are entirely unrelated to the process of making comics. When we are talking about genre, I think most people begin more or less enthralled to a genre. Almost everyone who begins making comics probably already unconsciously is inside of the genre and doesn't even see it for what it is. So it's important to have a sense of where you are standing when you begin your journey. Manga is especially important because this is probably the genre, that collection of styles, which is most compelling to a lot of younger artists. So I was especially interested in addressing that and seeing if I could get beyond the surface details that I think most people are inclined to imitate.  The other essay, the one about comics
culture, is actually an idea I have had in my head for many years and
did not publish because I felt it was potentially toxic to begin to
separate comics culture into these different tribes. I think I found
ways to present them in a more constructive way, but it's a
double-edged sword. If people think what I'm saying is that all
artist could be put in one of the four categories, it is a bad thing
(laughter). I don't think we should think of artists that way.
There are as many types of artists as there are artists, but I do
think there are these campfires that artists gather around.
Often when we are trying to understand the answer to the broader questions of our chosen art, I think we tend to settle on one or two very simple answers. They may not be right for us in the long run but we should understand that for every big question in comics there are usually several answers. That depends on who you ask, and it's good to have that broad sense of landscape. So they are not without a practical application. I think all three of those essays at least have some practical dimension to them, but on the other hand they are also there simply because I was thinking about them. I had to put them somewhere. So there they are. BW: You mentioned “tribes”. What do you feel about the comics scene right now? Do you feel it is evolving more? I mean you are talking about traditional genre boundaries becoming less and less distinct. Do you feel that comics culture is growing into a great thing without boundaries or do you feel people are more like: “We are superheroes, we are manga, we are indie,” in order to separate yourself from everything else. What is your feeling; where is this going right now? 
SMcC:
I think some boundaries are falling, some are growing. The boundary
between the web and print, I think has been blurring lately. When I
began making webcomics, there was this very strong sense of
separation. People choosing one or the other did so in this feeling
that they never would cross over necessarily. I don't think that's
true anymore. I see a lot of young artist feel very comfortable in
the web and very comfortable in print. They pass between them
seamlessly.
The line between manga and traditional western styles is beginning to blur. I think people like Brian Lee O'Malley, who does the comic Scott Pilgrim, is doing something that is neither manga nor North American comics; it is something new. And I think we are going to see more things like that. That is true also for the Flight anthology. But there will always be walls. Walls will always spring up; sometimes when we at least expect them. That’s inevitable. But… and here's where I'm trying to not to forget your question... What exactly was the question? (laughter) BW: Do you feel that those walls are growing stronger or it is becoming more of a heterogeneous amorphous mass where everything is everything? SMcC: Both! I do not feel a marginalization of comics as a whole. I think that there is a tendency always for these things to come in waves and when one wall is crumbling another is rising. That seems to be a constant in the culture. DW: Let me come back to Making Comics. You just finished the book tour in America, the Fifty State Tour. You took your whole family on the trip. How can one imagine that? Your whole family crammed into a SUV or a small van? 
SMcC: Yeah.
We were in a van for an entire year... and hotels, obviously. We
drove everywhere except for Hawaii and England and Spain. We did
everything by car, even Alaska. It was astounding. It was an amazing
year. We saw a baby buffalo! We were going up to British Columbia in
Canada on our way to Alaska, when we saw a baby buffalo. It was the
coolest thing. And baby deer. We probably saw eight rainbows before
we went on. Just so many things! It was an amazing year.
We actually wanted to know more about the "Winterviews" , the podcast where your little girls interviewed comic creators... SMcC: In fact, we have two left, which for technical reasons haven’t gone online yet. One of them is with Neil Gaiman and the other is a little surprise. We are trying to find the actual tape for this other one. So there are two more of them that will actually go up. DW: Did your daughters grow up being used to have comic creators around the house? Was it easy for them to talk to people like Neil Gaiman at the age of, uhm, 11 and 6? SMcC: They are 12 and 14. DW: Oh, sorry. SMcC: Never mind. Our twelve-year-old looks like she is seven. So I understand why you mixed it up. It is very easy for them to talk to people like that. They got to know people like Will Wright who created The Sims. Neil is actually their “fairy godfather”, as we call him. Neil was there at Winter's birth. The only time my wife and I ever missed San Diego [Comic-Convention] since we starting going was in 1995, because she was pregnant and expecting our second child, Winter. Although Winter was not born on that weekend, Neil Gaiman and our friend Kurt Busiek came to visit us the next day, Monday. That night my wife went into labor. At a birthing center at 1:30 in the morning our daughter was born while Neil and our friend Crystal were entertaining our two-year-old Sky by tossing her up and down and singing her the opening number from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd! DW: Could you sing that? Is it a famous television tune? SMcC: It's a Broadway play. You'll be seeing it soon in an adaptation with Johnny Depp. It’s the new Tim Burton movie! BW: Something came to my mind and I want to pop that in right now, before we go to the entire web comics thing. When you said that Understanding Comics was released in 1993, I mean I knew that, but I completely forgot how long ago that was. It is nearly 15 years and the market has changed radically, you had the Image revolution, you had the Manga revolution. Do you ever consider to say, “well I would like to go back and do a revised edition” or to change some things that are not topical any more? SMcC: Well, actually there were few things in Understanding Comics that were very much of their day. Most of the book really doesn't talk much about specific items of the day. In fact, in many ways the book is geared explicitly towards putting aside everything that was happening at that time. I actually asked my readers: Forget about every company, forget about every character, forget about every format, and forget about paper and ink! This was six months before Mosaic, the first graphical web-browser came out and I didn't mention computers once in the entire book. But it didn't matter because by forgetting about everything but this idea of putting one picture after another, when the web came along comics was ready. At least the sort of comics I was talking about were very accommodating to the idea of the web because I hadn't tied them to technological circumstances, to cultural circumstances, to any company, any character or any creator. So in many ways it's not really a book from 1993 at all. It's just a book from my fevered imagination. And the only place where you really could tell when it was written is when I have to choose examples. I chose examples of comics from the past but also from comics that were current at the time. So there you’ll see Jim Woodring's Frank and you'll see Cerebus or Bone. But other than that it's not really of its time, particularly. Reinventing is, the second book is very much of its time.  BW: That’s
where we want to got to now. Because one thing you did was “Chapter
5 ½” (of Making Comics), which wasn’t in the
book, but is on your website, where everybody can view it.
I have to say, I was a bit disappointed, perhaps because I thought it
would be something different. Because in the book you say: ‘Since
it’s about the web, I better do it on the web.’ And I
still remembered your ideas from Reinventing Comics, like:
Play with the format, go like a staircase or have a cube that you can
move. And I thought: ‘I’m really interested in what he
does.’ But when I looked at it, as far as I was concerned,
those were pages that could have been in the book, except for the
fact that they were colored.
SMcC: I think you have a right to be disappointed there, because I could have done something much more dramatic with Chapter 5 ½. Life got in the way and I didn’t actually have quite as much time as I had hoped to work on it. That was number one. It was actually late coming out, too. I wanted to make sure that it didn’t take any longer. That was part of it. The tour was beginning to gear up and all. It came at a peculiar time, where every single time I launched into some of these more radical ideas, I was just getting my head cut off. And I was getting embroiled in all sorts of crazy internet debates with people who seemed to be very upset that I was somehow criticizing them for doing their three-panel-gag-strips about UNIX jokes or whatever. And I think I was actually a little tired. 
You know, it
was just right at the tail end. And the thing that was upsetting me
the most about most web comics – the ones that were trying to
do lengthy stories – was actually just the simple fact that
they didn’t fit on the damn screen! And I thought: ‘Well,
let’s at least talk about that. Let’s point to comics
like Nowhere Girl that are well designed for the screen. You know, obviously I’m
not going to convince anybody to create some 90 foot long
staircase-shaped scrolling monstrosity. But at least I can point out
that the screen is a different shape from their pages. And that we
shouldn’t have to scroll to get the last goddamn inch.
In many ways, that was very much of its time. That was done at a very specific time in my career, and my relationship with the web and the web community, where I think I was laying low to some extent. I was tired. And still I’m a little tired of it all because I just ran into so many walls with it. And in the end I wasn’t able to accomplish a lot of what I hoped to. 
That
doesn’t mean that I don’t have a lot of faith in the web
to adapt and to change and to grow. And I think it will. I still
love a lot of the people that work in that community. And I think at
this point I’m rather at peace with it all. But I know the web
comics community is capable of something much more spectacular than
what we have. And I guess I’m just gonna be on the sidelines
for a few years, to see if anyone figures it out, because I’ve
got a graphic novel to do.
BW: But do you still think that the form things – like the cube, which was one of my favourite examples – are going to come with new technology? Because right now, the most popular strips on the internet are still the classical, three-panel newspaper strips, like Penny Arcade, which grow into something like a success story, then become regular books. Do you still think that this will change or do you think that we are too accustomed to it to say: ‘Hey, this is new, this is exciting.’ 
SMcC:
I don’t think that these short form comics are going anywhere,
they’re always going to be here. But I do think that the
environment for the long form and experimental format comics is
probably going to come. And it’s probably going to come at the
hardware level. Pointing and clicking and scrolling has never been a
particularly good way to get around. If you’re going to treat
the screen as a window, then the current environment is kind of a
crappy place to do it.
I thought that as a proof of concept it was enough to show people these long, extended canvas things and that they would understand that just because right now scrolling is this uncomfortable, clumsy technique, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a solid design model for the future. I think, most people looked at it and said: ‘Well, I don’t like it now, so I’m just gonna go elsewhere.’ Which, in a lot of ways, is a pretty reasonable reaction. It would be unreasonable of me to expect people to continue to read something that wasn’t pleasurable, because it might be a viable design model in five years. That’s not a good enough reason to read anything. But, with the advent of things like touch screens... if you look at the iPhone and imagine something like that as a laptop, where scrolling is simply a matter of reaching your hand down and just moving it to the left. In all likelyhood, that’s the sort of an interface that we are going to have. And when you have these same, extended canvas models in that environment and when you have the sort of multi-level depth navigation that you also see at things like the iPhone and other multi touch displays, now you can begin to see an environment where these sorts of things might actually be considerably easier to navigate through. And then I still believe that there’s this new shape of comics, that could be a very pleasurable reading experience. And also unleash a lot of comics' pent-up spatial possibilities, for practical storytelling applications. BW: This is always the thing with new technology, it surprises you. All of a sudden you say: ‘Yeah, I didn’t think that would happen.’ But how do you think these new technologies you’re talking about will change the market? Because right now there’s the big debate going on about the online piracy of comic books. For me – and I’ve downloaded some of the sixties comics things that you don’t get anywhere else anymore – and for me it’s a drag to read them on the screen. But then again, when technology will become better, people will have no qualms like that. If you’ve got this new technology, do you think that will really hurt the market?  SMcC: It will
change the market. But what we’re really talking about is the
other side of the coin. I had an idea and I simply failed to
implement it. And that was the idea of charging very small amounts of
money for comics. You know, five or ten cents, twenty cents,
whatever. I was not able to bring that about, but I think the whole
question of what sort of market we’re going to have is waiting
on the biggest question of all: Which is whether intellectual
property is going to cease to exist. Let’s answer that one
first and then we can get on to the others. Then we can get on to
price setting and distribution models and whether or not people are
going to make a living from the work directly, or from subscriptions
or endorsements, merchandise, that sort of thing. But first we have
the one big question. And it is an open question: Is
intellectual property dead?
And I don’t know the answer. But I think probably within ten years we will all know, one way or another. Whether music and prose and comics and movies and television are about to step past the threshold they can never come back from. If that’s true, it’s not necessarily bad. But it’s an entirely different world, an entirely different market. And like everyone else I’m simply going to see what’s my place in it once the dust settles. BW: Right now do you think that big companies are missing on the boat? That they should do something like zTunes, having comics available on their websites for download? For example things that don’t sell very well in print, but which might sell well enough on the web to pay the artist and the writer? Do you think that this is a business model that would have a sort of future? SMcC: I’d have to refer you to my previous answer. (laughs) We have to wait for the big question to be answered. All the little questions will come in line right afterwards. But right now we just need to know. It’s like questions whether you should parcel out farmland evenly to the farmers, or whether the state should take control of the farmland, or whether there should be an auction for the farmland. And meanwhile there’s a tsunami on the horizon that's about to wash away your entire nation. It’s just like: ‘Let’s look to the ocean first and then we can work out who gets the farmland. If there is any.’ BW: And what’s your stance on it as an artist? Because it’s like: When it’s spread, people read it. But on the other hand, you don’t get royalties from it. So where are you sitting on the fence in this debate? SMcC: I would like artists to be compensated. But if that’s not our fate, then that’s not our fate. And you know, it may be out of our hands. The way that the weather is out of our hands. For now, anyway. I know that there’s a very strong moral dimension to questions of file sharing. I understand those who feel that it’s theft. I understand those who feel that their livelihood is threatened by an immoral behaviour on peoples’ parts. I don’t care, though, for myself. I don’t care whether it’s right or wrong. If it is, then I want to figure out how we can all make it work for all of us. I’m not expressing this very well, but I just... (sighs)... if widespread universal filesharing is an inevitable consequence of human nature and technology then questions of whether it was right or wrong are irrelevant in the final analysis. We have a lot of thinking to do about what we’re going to do when the dust settles and that’s where we should be concentrating our attention. You know, it’s... ah, I don’t know. It’s like in America. You know, if somebody owns a house in Michigan, they should every once in a while take note of the fact that that land was taken from Native Americans. And that was immoral. But there isn’t much practical use to constantly revisiting the issue. Except perhaps to contribute to Native American advocacy groups or whatever. I mean, there’s not much that you can do. The genie can not be put back in the bottle. I guess that’s what I’m saying. I’m sorry I’m not very eloquent on this one. BW: No, that’s fine. I mean, that’s a complicated debate. It’s multi-faceted, so it’s nice to hear your point of view on it.  DW: Just one
last question regarding the digital medium. You said that for
Understanding Comics and the two following books you wanted to
make it as easy and as basic as possible. And by doing this you put
out all the history, all what has been happening in comics in the
last hundred years. What do you think about terms like ‘nostalgia’ and ‘going back’. Because you can explain a term like ‘graphic novel’ only if you look into the past and how America published comics and how they got to be. This might even be a point to the digital comics, to archives. You see people running around here on the fair with their collector’s editions of a 1960 comic book and things like that. So, how important is nostalgia for you personally? SMcC: I may be the least nostalgic comics artist who ever lived. (laughs) I seem to be completely immune to nostalgia. We recently announced that we were collecting a comic series of mine called Zot! from 1987 to 1991 or so. It’s the first comic series I ever did. We finally got around to collecting it and a critic noted that this was the first instance he could ever remember of me looking backwards. I think maybe I associate nostalgia with some of comics' less ambitious sides. When people associate comics with their childhood then they sometimes bury comics along with their childhood. They see it as something that belongs back in those days and they don’t see its future. Enough people seem to look to comics' past that I feel that’s being tended for. And I think it’s a much smaller group that’s looking to comics’ future. So, I’ve thrown in my lot with them. And until I see some balance I think I’m using my time well by concentrating on that. But as always, I’m not the only voice out there. I know that others will tend to comics' past. So, I’m not worried that by neglecting it, it will somehow be neglected by the community. The community is doing just fine at double bagging and storing away in a cool, dry place all our childhood memories. DW: So, what about the more friendly future we can talk about? Do you have any secret hidden treasures for us? A trend? What kind of comics are you reading right now? And what would you like to comment on for the German market? What are we going to expect from America? SMcC: Well, I think both America and Germany – and Europe as a whole – can expect one very interesting trend. Which is the metabolization of manga. Right now we have the sense that manga is in some sense at odds with traditional mainstream comics, with independent comics, with the graphic novel movement. We see it as this alien thing. But the fact is that those young manga fans, and there are many of them - many, many, many young people reading comics – a certain proportion of them is going to want to make comics as they get older. And manga fans are not only going to want to reproduce the surface qualities of mangas as they get older and their reading tastes broaden. They’re going to incorporate that sensibility into a broader artistic sensibility and they’re going to seek other artists, they’re going to seek other types of comics. They’re going to seek a broader input of art in general and narrative in general. And I believe that the generation of young artists that will be entering the field in the next few years will be bigger and smarter and far more broadly educated than anyone suspects. Because we’ve seen it in America. We’re beginning to see it. And the manga kids who have grown up already are extraordinarily talented. And their numbers will explode in a few years. Because these are the kids who were reading manga in the 90s, and there are many more of them now. The most important thing about them too is that they will not be writing stories, for the most part, about Japanese school girls and big robots and ninjas. They’re going to write stories about people and places that they know. And their stories will be anchored in their own lives. And those are the series that will catch the eye of readers in Germany, in America, in the rest of Europe. It will be the artists who are talking to them about their lives. They will succeed. That’s one of the reasons why I like Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Because that’s a good harbinger of things to come, in that he tells a story that connects in a very profound and immediate way with his readers. And it’s not a story that takes place in Japan. BW: I think we’re gonna close this with one more question. Which is two-part, actually: Was there any comic series, or graphic novel you read in the recent past where you have said: ‘Well this is so great, this should be read by anybody?’ And, as somebody who did Making Comics, who is on the theoretical part, do you have any rather recent book – not the classics, but a recent book – where you say: ‘This is a great theoretical book, if you’re interested in the subject matter, get it!’ SMcC: I often recommend the work of Edward Tufte, who writes about visualizing design. I think his work is of great importance to anyone who works in the visual arts. In fact, I recommend his book in the back of Making Comics. I think Tufte’s work is amazing.  As far as
comics are concerned, I really enjoyed Fun Home by Alison
Bechtel. I mentioned Scott Pilgrim. That’s, I think, the
most fun I have been reading right now. I still am very interested in
the generation that is represented by the Flight anthology.
Online, I’m very fond of the Perry Bible Fellowship. Which, by the
way, was ranking very high on amazon.com even before it was printed.
So it’s a hit. It’s an actual hit.
There’s no particular manga I’m following right now. I think in many ways I’m still delving into that scene. I was much more fiercely loyal to manga in the early ‘80s, when nobody else was looking at it. That’s when I was spending the most time at it. I love the Tezuka reprints. It’s wonderful to see things like Buddha and Phoenix finally translated. I’m very fond of Tezuka. But those are just a few names. But... I don’t know. I’ve so many too read. So much. It’s frustrating. My ‘to be read’ stack could reach to the moon. I just don’t get enough time! I wish I was a faster artist. Because then I would have more time to read. RELATED LINKS: scottmccloud.com : Scott McCloud's official Website
Making Comics at Harper Collins, including many preview pages Scott McCloud at Wikipedia Image sources: scottmccloud.com, carlsencomics.de, barnesandnoble.com, nowheregirl.com, onipress.com. Pictures: copyright of Thomas Kögel and Marc-Oliver Frisch Kommentare (0)
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