Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
This comic was interesting because it described concepts that I'm familiar with, but went into detail as to how and why they are important to understanding comics. Concepts such as icons, simplification, and gutters are all things that are important to the art of graphic narrative, but I could never explain why, and Understanding Comics does just that.
Icons are important because they are used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. There are symbols that people naturally recognize as some "thing," and using said symbols in place of extremely descriptive drawing could get the same point across just as effectively, because the symbols are so "iconic" to people.
Every storyteller wants their readers to connect with what they're reading. Simplification, especially of characters, is used to help the reader relate to the characters in the story. The more detail something has, the more distinct and descriptive it is, making it difficult for a viewer to connect with something that's so established already. If a character has a simple design, it's easier for the reader so see him or herself in the shoes of the character.
In film, the passage of time is usually represented by a cross-fade or dissolve. In comics, time is represented by the gutters that divide the panels. When the panels are divided into separate sections, this indicates a pass of time. Everything that occurs in a single panel is a single event. I just find how time is portrayed in comics to be very interesting, especially since there's a concrete explanation for how it's executed as shown by Scott McCloud.
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