maverick_weirdo | McCloud Tour

Today I went to see Scott McCloud (Author of Understanding Comics) who was speaking at Northeastern University, to promote his newest book Making Comics.

Ivy McCloud (who Scott is married to) introduced the author, listing many of his published works (except the most recent).

Part 1 of his presentation was an overview of the topics covered in the book. This is his fourth time doing this speech on the tour (not including Comicon, which was pre-tour) and he has his timing down well. He describes it as "magic carpet presentation" where he knows the slides, and he knows what he wants to say, so he just talks and trusts the image he wants will be there when he moves forward. The content is essentially the same as the book, but the presentation was entertaining and flowed well. (I guess he chose the right slides to leave out. Good Choice.)

I did notice one tiny mistake. That when he got to the 'x pages of a person getting up from the snow' image, that the page numbers at the bottom were reversed (mirror image).

Part 2 of the presentation was "Scott McCloud the early years, in eight minutes" where he explains that Lexington, Massachusetts was once a veritable Athens of comic book artists. This allows him to bring up his "four tribes" principal.

Part 3 was a reading of MONKEY TOWN. Words cannot describe...

Part 4 was Sky's presentation of The Making Comics Fifty State Tour which included a sneak-preview of the Winterviews opening sequence. (Which was then available online just a couple of hours later.) Sky's presentation was well organized and entertaining. I talked to her about it afterward, and she was concerned about her "um" count. I will admit she had a couple of "um's" but not as many as her father.

Part 5 was Audience Questions, which is Winter's chance to participate. Many of the questions were about the McCloud family's use of technology, and "Where does Scott see comics going in the future?"

To find out More about the tour check out