UNDERSTANDING COMICS CHAPTER 3

It's in our blood as a human race to feel that we get closure when it comes to everything. Fighting, relationships, a story. Why wouldn't a comic be any different? McCloud shows us that we can receive closure as the "phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole." Everything needs to have a beginning, middle, and end. We receive these three distinct points by using our five senses to percieve the world around us. He also brings up the point about "gutters" which are the spaces between the pannels. We use our senses and our perception of what we know that is the world around us to fill in the blanks from pannel to pannel. That brings him to the point of the six different transitions between pannels and how specific and detailed each one is: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and the non-sequitur. This alows room for the reader to become more involved by having to fill in the blanks and realize what really just happened between that transition of pannels.