Virtual Memories Show #137:
Scott McCloud – Tumblings
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“I want to be working, making comics, and knowing that the thing I’m doing right now is the thing I should be doing and I shouldn’t feel guilty about doing it. I’ve been able to keep that going much of the time for the last 20 years, and it’s kinda great.”
Is Scott McCloud comics’ leading theorist or a deranged lunatic? Find out in this lengthy conversation we recorded during SPX 2015! Scott talks about applying (and forgetting) the lessons of Understanding Comics
“We’ve never seen the consumer dollar at full strength. In traditional print markets, somebody spends a dollar on my work, and I get 10 cents at the end of that chain, that massive army of middlemen. Now we’re seeing what kind of world happens when the consumer dollar stays closer to a dollar. That army of consumers really has an enormous power to put your boat afloat.”
We also talk about his next book (on visual communication and education), his strengths and weaknesses as a cartoonist, making a 500-page comic book that readers could tackle in one sitting, why Reinventing Comics was like “trying to eat 10 lbs. of potato salad”, how every success story in cartooning is unique, the differences in working in print vs. working for the screen, and trying to be a scholar for the first time. Now go listen!
“Craig Thompson’s Blankets
is probably off the hook now, because I finally did a comic even more sentimental. So now I made Craig look like Gary Panter.”
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We mention a few books in this episode. Here they are:
- The Sculptor
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
- Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form
– Scott McCloud
- Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
– Scott McCloud
- Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991
– Scott McCloud
- Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
– Art Spiegelman
- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
– Chris Ware
- The Complete Elfquest Volume 1
– Wendy Pini
- The Dark Knight Returns
– Frank Miller
- Watchmen
– Alan Moore
- Beautiful Darkness
– Kerascoët, Fabien Vehlmann
- Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
– Roz Chast
- Kill My Mother
– Jules Feiffer
- Blankets
- Here
– Richard McGuire
- Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)
– Matthew Farber
- The Year of Magical Thinking
– Joan Didion
- Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir
– Tom Hart
- Essays
– Orwell
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
– Joshua Foer
- How Music Works
– David Byrne
- Runaway
– Alice Munro
- Blonde: A Novel
– Joyce Carol Oates
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
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About our Guest
Scott McCloud is the award-winning author of Understanding Comics
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded during the Small Press Expo at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel on a Zoom H2n Handy Recorder
, as a standalone book and developing the skill and courage to tackle longer stories, his disdain for “the culture of like”, overcoming the shame and stigma of his OCD, the process of discovering an audience for his work, the pitfalls of autobiographical comics, discovering the power of negative space, turning his life into a narrative, how comics enabled him to communicate with people, and, most importantly, being an NFL bigamist. 
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