Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 1

The comic I chose for this post is on entitled 'Over the Hedge' by: Michael Fry and T. Lewis. The strip is concerned with the changing of the seasons, particularly with the falling of leaves. The comic personifies the last leaf on a tree by giving it artful dialogue - some even in French.

http://www.comics.com/comics/hedge/archive/hedge-20081027.html

While reading this comic, I found a couple connections between our reading of Scott Mclouds 'Understanding Comics' and the strip. First, the transitions between panels are Aspect-to-Aspect. For instance, first panel depicts two characters standing under a tree - with a speech bubble sticking out of the upper right. The second panel shows only a leaf, high up in the tree. This is a completely different scene, but the panels aer related through its context. Readers have no trouble percieving the scene displayed in the first two panels. The gutter allows the mind to fill in the gap that the point of view moves from the ground to up in the tree. As Mcloud puts it, "Comics asks the mind to work as a sort of an in-betweener -- filling in the gaps between panels as an animator might..." (Mcloud 88)

Second... the second panel has no border. The first and last use the classic rectangle border. "... Panels come in many shapes and sizes, though the classic rectangle is used most often.... Most of us are so used to the standard rectangular format that a "borderless" panel such as this can take on a timeless quality." (102). I feel the creators of this comic were going for the timeless feel since the second panel has some very 'artsy' overtones and dialogue.