How to Comic

I have to admit, I am not a huge fan of comics. Every once in a while, I enjoy the Sunday comics, but that is about the extent of my admiration. I do appreciate certain story lines that are derived from comics, most especially those that are brought on to the big screen. Despite the fact that I may not personally hold the appreciation for comics that I should, I do feel like they have a lot to offer the English classroom. I think that it is a type of text that many students are familiar with, which could help in aiding them deal with more difficult texts. I think it exhibits a relationship between words and pictures that often go unrepresented in more traditional texts. So when I started reading Making Comics, I tried to keep an open mind.
I think the book has a lot of great teaching tools in it. It gives great explanations to different concepts, types and terms regarding comics. I really like how the book explains things through the comic layout, so there is a visual representation through both text and pictures. I really like the face diagram on page 92 and 93. I never realized that by simply shading a face in different ways you could achieve so many facial expressions through drawing. I also like how later in the book McCloud explains how to gain distances through a grid. It really is a very educational book in terms of creating comics.
I do have to mention that like comics themselves, this book does have a few pictures that might not be entirely considered school appropriate. I think that as a teacher I would probably would not assign this entire book, but perhaps use it as a supplementary tool, only pulling certain aspects of the text that would allow students to learn some tricks of the comic trade.