Scott McCloud examines the role of closure, icons, and color in comics in his book "Understanding Comics". He discusses how closure, the space between panels, allows readers to imagine what happens in between and become actively engaged in the story. Readers naturally make assumptions that help them follow the narrative. McCloud provides examples from the graphic novel "Flood" to illustrate how the artist uses different types of closure throughout to convey emotion and keep readers engaged. Simpler icons without distinguishing features also allow readers to imagine themselves in the story and better understand the perspective and emotions of the character.

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Closure: Finding the True Perspective
In his book “Understanding Comics”, Scott McCloud examines
the literature of comics in a very deep prespective, discussing
the importance of topics like closure, icons, color etc and how
these small things come together to play a crucial role in
writing and comprehending comics and graphic novels. With
closure, for instance, McCloud writes about how the space
between the gutters help readers dive into an imagination world
of their own and how they assume things that must have
happened between the two frames (67). All this happens
unconciously because as readers we are accusomed to some
universal truths like, if there is a face we will assume that it
will have legs, like other human beings. But also beyond these
simple notions, we, as readers are tend to create an involuntary
action in our minds to run the story like a film in our heads, that
help us read through such graphic oreinted books and it varies
person to person. McCloud goes even further to enunciate that
“Closure in comics fosters intimacy surpassed only by the
written word, a silent secrect contract between creator and
audience” (69). He adds furthur to this subject that it depends
solely on the artist to what extent and how much he want to
manipulate this art. This is a very important claim maid by
McCloud because an artist uses different types of closure in a
single book which shows that type of closure depends on a
particular scene or emotion at that very particular momemt.
To support the above statement I would like to take a few
examples from Eric Drooker’s graphic novel “Flood”. The book
revolves around a man living in the corporate superessed city of
New York. Drooker proficiently employs closure throughout the

2. book by focusing on critical details and dropping unexpected
images, to keep readers engaged and apply their notions to
complete the bigger picture. Like in the image below (right
after the scene where the protaganist is kicked out of the house
after the one night stand), by just looking the first few pictures
we can easily make out that the protaganist is looking down,
and wandering alone on the streets on an urban city which
symbolises the emotion of sadness and lonlines.
Also in the third row of the picture, in the series of images we
can see two types of closure. First, “moment to momemt” where
the protaganist is asking for something and the couple
completely ignores him as if he does not even exist. The wide
eyes open out as soon as the couple passes by depicts the
emotion of shock. This is how humans react to a surprise, they
open their eyes wide to make themselves absorb in the feeling.
This example explains how small details aid the readers to
perform closure. Also, taking this thought forward we see that
the protaganist is in supermarket and is likely trying to steal a
fruit or vegetable, which help us understand the previous scene
more better that the protaganist must be asking for money for
food as he was hungry but as he was unsuccessful in his attempt
so he tries to steal but fails in that as well. In this particular
sequence we performed a much bigger closure as we relate and
connect the unlinked images. This is called “aspect to aspect”
closure, as place, time and idea all come together to make sense
of the emages (72).
All these thoughts and emotions are not written but as a reader,
we are able to make sense of the images without giving it much
thought. Because we as a human relate facial expressions to
emotions and actions to situations. Like in this case, hands of
the protaganist are still reaching out even after the couple has
passed by and when he looks back to them reflects a sense of
surprise/shock. Similarly, the action of stealing food shows that
the man must be hungry and do not have money that describes
his situation. Closure is basically an extention of our thoughts
that assist us in completing the unseen part of a story which is

3. significant to understand the real meaning behind the graphics.
Like here the aim of Drooker is not to narrate a story of a sad
man in a big city. Instead, he uses the space between the gutters
in the images above to show how indifferent people have
become to their surroundings and how this corporate revolution
is eating out all the emotions out of the world. And closure
helps us in understanding this bigger context.
But its hard to perform closure without meaningful graphics or
icons. Therefore, McCloud also explains how icons help in
bringing a story to life. Icons can be of various types and each
icon depicts a different meaning. Unlike closure which cannot
be seen and is just experienced, icons are visible to us and their
characterstics help us shape our thoughts around them. In his
book “Understanding Comics”, McCloud mentions how a
simplicity in drawings lead to universality (31), which is very
true because the less there are critical details on a drawing the
more difficult it becomes to distinguish it from others.
Like in Eric Drooker’s “Flood” , the protaganist is just a solid
plain black drawing of a human with hands and legs, no details
except the occasional heart or bones we see inside him which
makes it more obvious that it is a human. This simple drawing
has no face to it, and as readers while reading through the book
we are able to relate ourselves to him because we don't see any
distinctions to differentiate the drawing of the protaganist to a
particular person. In McCloud’s language, the drawing of the
protaganist has no mask to it and so we can put and imagine it
anyone we can, even ourselves (34). Not because we are sad or
lonely in our real lives but this adoption of character from the
book help us in diving inside the story and making it as real as
possible in our heads. Therefore, we are then able to better
understand the flow of emotions the protaganist must be going
through.
This phenomenon of simplicity is highlighted further in his
book as well. The two consecutive images below will help us
understand it bit better. The images represent the scene after the
protaganist ran away from the police officer.

4. The main point here the author is trying to show is the
insignificance of the protaganist in the world and to show this
he uses simplification to amplify the effect. We can see in the
first image how the person is still a black body with some
weight to it but as we turn the page the image of person is
represented through the stick model, i.e the most basic way to
draw a human. The use of such an unadorned icon is to
showcase how negligible the protaganist is feeling during this
point. He is not able to distinguish himself in the crowd of
millions and is somehow lost among it. This example shows
how powerful role does these small details play in shaping the
bigger meaning of the narrative. Icons is a tool, that empowers
the author to help him put his ideas and thoughts on paper, so
that his/her audience can relate to them.
This explains how small details or the way of drawing i.e icons
trickels certain societal or personal notions in the minds of
readers and help them comprehend a story and understand the
broader picture more easily. In addition, we understood how
icons complement closure by dropping in ideas or moods
through certain kind of images, which gives readers the
headstart in the parellel world of imagination to create a unique
story on their own. And how closure aids the writers to engage
their audience with varied emotions of drama, comedy or
actions by skipping certain scenes and leaving it to the
imagination of the reader to interpret it in his/her own way.
This explains how closure is being constantly peformed by the
readers in the back of their minds and pave a path for them to
get the true prespective.
References:
Drooker, Eric. Flood!: A Novel in Pictures. New York: Four
Walls Eight Windows, 1992. Print.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York:
HarperPerennial, 1994. Print.

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