McCloud and Berger Discussion Questions

McCloud:

1. How effectively do you think McCloud crafts the comic-instruction in such a way that he -- pardon the pun -- illustrates the very points that he discusses, thus meta-commenting and reinforcing the lessons his character states? What particular lessons and images work well together? Which illustrations stuck out in your mind as aptly capturing a point? Why do did image, text, lesson work so well together in these particular examples? How, ultimately, does he reconcile LANGUAGE (of comics) and SOPHISTICATION?

2. You are designing your own comic. Where on the picture plane do you think your style would end up? What corner (beauty in nature, art or ideas) do you feel most drawn to, and how would your comic reflect that value?

Berger:

3. Berger argues that "Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before" (16). He then argues that "the camera -- and more particularly the movie camera -- demonstrated that there was no centre" (18). Finally, Berger decribes how this decentralization influenced art, but how can it help us understand sociocultural movements, biases, wars etc. that occurred before such decentralization? How hast it influenced globalization? How has it morphed how we share information (our blogs, facebook, youtube) and how does that change the way we see ourselves?