In this unmissable look at the magic of comics, Scott McCloud bends the presentation format into a cartoon-like experience, where colorful diversions whiz through childhood fascinations and imagined futures that our eyes can hear and touch.
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Glossary
- fuss – a display of unnecessary or excessive excitement, activity, or interes
- ascertain – find (something) out for certain; make sure of
- endeavor – an attempt to achieve a goal
- dichotomy – a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different
- adjacent – next to or adjoining something else
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Think about it
Answer the questions below. Pause at times indicted in brackets.
- Why did Scott’s father lose eyesight? (1:55)
- Why does Scott put himself further apart from the other family members on the genealogical tree? (3:09)
- What four principles does Scott present? (5:54)
- Why does Scott pull himself back closer to the family tree? (7:38)
- What were the dilemmas when moving comics to computer screens? (12:50)
- What is Scott’s conclusion?
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Practice makes perfect
Fill in the blank spaces with the verbs in brackets used in appropriate tenses.
Of the five senses, vision is the one that I appreciate the most, and it’s the one that I can least take for granted. I think this is partially due to my father, who was blind. It was a fact that he ________ (not make) much of a fuss about, usually. One time in Nova Scotia, when we ________ (go) to see a total eclipse of the sun — yeah, same one as in the Carly Simon song, which may or may not refer to James Taylor, Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger; we’re not really sure. They ________ (hand out) these dark plastic viewers that allowed us to look directly at the sun without damaging our eyes. But Dad got really scared: he ________ (not want) us doing that. He wanted us instead to use these cheap cardboard viewers so that there was no chance at all that our eyes would be damaged. I thought this was a little strange at the time.
What I didn’t know at the time was that my father ________ (be born) with perfect eyesight. When he and his sister Martha were just very little, their mom took them out to see a total eclipse — or actually, a solar eclipse — and not long after that, both of them started losing their eyesight. Decades later, it ________ (turn out) that the source of their blindness was most likely some sort of bacterial infection. As near as we can tell, it had nothing whatsoever to do with that solar eclipse, but by then my grandmother ________ (go) to her grave thinking it was her fault.
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Explore it more
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