SO, my memory is probably not that good because I thought I never read any comics, but as soon as McCloud mentioned Osamu Tezuka and Japanese style comics, I remembered that I read most of, if not the entirety, of Tezuka’s Buddha comic series. I mean, I read it in elementary school so I can’t be expected remember everything that I did at age nine. But anyway, the Buddha series had eight volumes and I’m fairly certain I read six of them…. and I really enjoyed them!

I don’t know if this is a widely accepted thing, but I feel like Japanese comics feature stories that happen over a longer duration of time. For example, the Buddha series featured the entire length of Siddhartha Guatama’s life and I don’t know how common that is in western comics. Another thing that I’m trying to grasp is McCloud’s idea that time and space are one and the same. Can there be an instance where time and space do not have a linear relationship and is that possible? Cause if comics artists really wanted to manipulate time or even just get rid of its construct, couldn’t the closure make up for it? Even if time is never stated and nothing in implied about it, then it’s up to the readers to decide, making comics kind of an interactive art. The only question with that is, will readers be satisfied with making time up for themselves? In a way, everything the artist or author doesn’t give away in plain text is somehow not real to readers. They want to know exactly what the author was thinking instead of guessing on their own. When the author states the time and meaning of something in their work, that makes those meanings and illusions stand out and are in a way, more meaningful.

I found McCloud’s notion of a single moment pretty interesting and how he mentioned that time doesn’t really exist in comics. Many things could be happening which can’t possibly be one moment, but they could all be happening at the same time which would suggest that each panel has a life of its own. Just as I’m writing this blog post, someone in Germany is probably eating a chocolate bar. Even though, the German chocolate eater and I are on different continents, we are still living in the same moment–kind of like McCloud’s mention that all events happen on a single vertical axis.

Now that I think about it, I wish I had read a bit of comics from western artists so that I can see the differences myself. But having seen western comics like Spider-man and Watchmen, I do know that Japanese comics tend to have less words. Is that deficit somehow made up in other ways? How can they get around showing as much emotion as American comics but with fewer words? In a way, they’re drawings are more visual and contain more minute details. Maybe smile lines on a character’s face as well as dark eye circles and bags under eyes. And I love the idea of making emotions visible. Comics art thrive on invoking emotional responses in readers and it’s not to say that it is any harder than how emotion is portrayed in books, music, and television.