First published 30 years ago, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is the definitive comic book about comic books. An illustrated lecture on storytelling mechanics and visual vocabulary, it’s become a go-to for those creating graphics for everything from street signs to app icons. Andy Hertzfeld, who helped design the original Apple Mac, called the book “profoundly wise”.
McCloud has given talks at Google and Pixar, and at games companies including Blizzard and Electronic Arts. At Bitmoji, the cartoon avatar developer in the group that owns Snapchat, Understanding Comics is given to every newly recruited artist. “That is our bible at the studio,” says Bitmoji founder Ba Blackstock.
One particularly fertile area for McCloud’s ideas right now is avatars. From World of Warcraft to Fortnite to Roblox, millions of gamers take on cartoon form to play and socialise online every day. As Silicon Valley strives to create the “metaverse”, big tech companies want their own avatar systems too.