The Webcomics Examiner interviewed Scott McCloud last month. Scott talked about his upcoming book, Making Comics, to be published in September. He described what the focus of his new book will be:

It’s not so much a book about the step-by-step procedure of constructing a page. It’s more about how all comics, regardless of what processes we use to create them, force us to confront a series of choices. And there are really just five of them: choice of moment, choice of frame, choice of image, choice of word, and choice of flow.

Scott goes on to explore with his interviewer some of the ramifications of his insight, which leads to a discussion of the fact that most people try to learn how to make comics by learning a style first rather than learning the basics first. He also has some interesting comments about the way in which theatre, especially vaudeville, influenced the development of early American comics. From there, all sorts of interesting tangents develop. There’s a tangent about the value of the 24 hour comic-making exercise, a digression about Zot, a nod to Manga, and other topics. Then the interview winds up with a discussion of Scott’s two books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics.

Scott had this to say about Reinventing Comics:

It has nothing to do with experimentation. It’s just taking the reader into account. We, the longform creators, are terrible at that. We’re constantly forcing people to unnecessarily scroll, then click, then hunt, then scroll, then click, then hunt. We never for a minute let the reader just lose themselves in the story.

I always like to learn what influential people have to say about their own motivations and intentions, since they’re often more down-to-earth and simple than one might be led to imagine. Too often, highly brilliant people don’t teach others very much. What one tends to learn from them, more than anything else, is that they know a lot. A mind that is not hindered by an ego is a beautiful thing. Scott gave us a lot in this interview.