Show And Tell Visual Analysis

Visually Verbal

Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes – sound familiar? The names of these comics alone are enough to pedal people’s bicycles down memory lane. But while these comics are throwbacks to the dog days of everyone’s youth, they don’t exist in the daily lives of adults save for the occasional artist. Some artists, like Scott McCloud, see them as a legitimate medium rather than disposable stepping stones, using comics themselves to highlight the importance and effectiveness of combining words and images in communication. In “Show and Tell,” McCloud shares a vignette and spells out comic book jargon, lending himself to vivid descriptions and detailed explanations. And although it reads like any other comic, McCloud’s “Show and Tell”

Music, acting, and painting may stimulate different senses and be used as entertainment, but they are also used to spread thoughts and messages. Among the more indirect of these arts is dancing, which in itself includes everything from solo tap dancing to partnered tango. McCloud uses the second type to show how the combinations of words and images are what create the most effective method of communication. Introducing the scene with a couple dancing at a festival, McCloud then shows the reader little nuances of their dancing, like one partner accidentally stepping on the other’s foot, stating that comics are partners in a dance that work best in harmony and stumble when both try to be the star. His next frame then depicts two children playing around which transforms into a grown up couple in a dance competition leading up to their signature move and executing it to perfection. The climax of their effort is met with congratulations while McCloud narrates that only when each of the partners built on one another’s strengths could they have matched any of their rivals (McCloud 156). Throughout the extended metaphor, both the dancers are representative of the two integral parts of any comic – text and pictures. The use of the dancers’ routine is highly effective as the situational cues in the frames – things like the speed lines, emphasis lines, and

Throughout his comic, McCloud makes references to the school of thought that comics are just as viable a medium as news or novels. McCloud states that although “words and pictures in combination many not be [his] definition of comics,” that definition is what is commonly accepted in today’s society (McCloud 152). His statement has a compounded impact on the rest of his thesis: it not only provides insight into McCloud’s background, but also hints at the way comics have been influenced in society. By saying that “the combination has had tremendous influence on [comics’] growth,” McCloud implies that comics have generally been defined and their uses constrained by said definition (McCloud 152). However, he also implies that that definition of just words and pictures hasn’t prevented comics from growing significantly in society. McCloud makes this conclusion clearer by stressing that the definition wasn’t his in the first place, giving way to the idea that McCloud is a progressive writer that doesn’t want comics to be confined but instead adopted even more widely. Described as the “premier comics theorist,” McCloud’s stance can be attributed to the larger idea that comics have always been a tried-and-true form of communication and have to be viewed that way (Gustines 2015). McCloud’s application