Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics

The book Understanding Comics is truly a fascinating look into the production of comics that I was not expecting to be nearly as deep as it was. Its kind of funny, since in the beginning he talks about how comic books as an entertainment medium are usually discounted as being simplistic and childlike, and because the book itself is told in the form of a comic, I didn't think it would be as content-laden as it was. I found the section on iconography really interesting and almost philosophical in a sense. The idea of relating to simplistic faces and emotions more readily because we have a simplified image of our own face in our minds at all times had never even occurred to me. The techniques used to keep characters interesting while more realistically designed backgrounds are behind them was something that actually made a lot of sense and is something that should be considered in all picture making. Overall I thought the  book had a ton of insight in to things I never even considered before, and makes me rethink the depth of storytelling that is possible in chronological picture-making.