As of this moment, I have only read up to Chapter 3 - but this book, being totally awesome, can't go unread forever. Actually, I suspect I'll read the entire thing by sometime tomorrow.
I have to say that I'm Not a comic book fan - that is, comics in their most popular incarnation (superheroes, etc) do not excite me as such. I've been a guarded devotee of some (a half-dozen) manga titles, and I've taken in the more important works from the west (Watchmen, Sandman, Transmet, etc), but I am Not a comic book fan.
I am the panels in the dead center of page 3 - "Sure, I realized that comic boks were usually crude, poorly-drawn, semiliterate, cheap, disposable kiddie fare - BUT - they don't HAVE to be!"
I found a lot of the history that Scott presents in the first chapter to be pretty rad stuff - it was interesting to see Ernst pop up in there, too - but I feel that I already 'knew' a lot of that, even if not literally, at least virtually. I have been aware of the nature of comics just by piecing through them.
One of the things that jumped out at me in these early chapters is how the nature of comics could perhaps only be explained by a comic (or at least most effectively). When Scott says a thing, and he shows you a thing, he says and shows them in literally the exact method they would appear in an actual comic - that is some powerful juju. His examples are both examples and not examples, appearing directly in-line and in-situ with the explanatory narrative as it happens. No diagrams. No breaks. Only comics.
Totally rad.
