Understanding Comics

Reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I found it an interesting point McCloud made was when he said we see ourselves in cartoons. I never really took into consideration how we perceive ourselves in reality. Unless we're looking in a mirror, we never see ourselves. Our faces anyway, which is the most important part of a person. It's where we show emotion, see each other, and speak to each other. Just looking at another person in the eyes as they speak is intimate. To us, I think, it's what makes us us. But in our head, when we are aware of ourselves, our face is just an abstraction. I never thought of relating to a cartoon character more than a realistic image of another person. After thinking about it though, I do see the idea behind it in a way. If there is a comic of someone portraying something relatable with a stick figure with a face that's just dot eyes and a line for a mouth, it's easy to put your own face on it or picture yourself as that cartoon because there's absolutely nothing identifiable about it, so it could be anyone. It’s a generic, blank slate to fill in. If it were a drawing of a hyper realistic person, it becomes, well, a person, and that comic is their experience, not ours. McCloud makes a good point then.