The Purest Communication

Had a discussion that was a little more than a volley and a little less than a debate with my good friend Scott last week: what's the purest form of written communication?

He says poetry. I say comics.

I'll admit that I've wholeheartedly bought into every manifesto Scott McCloud has ever spouted about the wonder and necessity of the medium. It makes sense: cave paintings, hieroglyphics, even words themselves are all, when you truly get down to it... comics. But what's a comic? In my opinion, any set of sequential illustrations (however naturalistic, stylized or abstract) formulated to communicate an idea or event to a viewer is a comic.

The beauty of comics is that they can be as elaborate or as simplified as they want to be. Like prose or film or friggin' radio plays, comics are just as powerful a medium of communication as anything else.

What's the most important piece of information an airline company can communicate to you while you sit on the tarmac, waiting for takeoff? Well, obviously, it's What To Do In Case Of An Emergency. The airlines could have written out a detailed description of exactly what you need to do to survive a sea landing, but they chose to, instead, place a little comic at the back of each seat to explain what they mean.

I probably love comics a little too much, I'll admit it. It's a passion I've never managed to shake (or "grow out of", if you want to be pretentious about it).

So why aren't I doing them for a living?
...


Occasionally, Carey confronts me about the things I write on this blogger. "You exaggerate," she says, "It didn't happen like that. You twist the story around or leave out important bits to make it funnier or more clever."

I suppose that's true. I can't really blame her for protesting, either. The poor woman's been exploited and misquoted to pieces on this little corner of cyberspace.

I've had a couple of conversations with Gary, a fellow blogger, about the mysteries of this strange practice of weblogging. In the "diary" sense of a blogger, who cares about journalistic integrity? It's my thoughts on my life, does it really matter if I exaggerate or abreviate? On the other hand, there's the whole "published for the whole world" side of it, which makes it a bit more complicated.

But, whatever, it's everywhere. More and more, I'm finding old friends and casual acquaintances that have their own bloggers. Gary does, of course, and so do Jon and April (even though they're not exactly faithful with updates). But a quick poke around the web and it looks like Andy's got a blog, Joe's got one, Gabe, Dave, Megan, Drew, Eric, Adam, Jeremiah & Marcie... even Dallas has a weblog for pete's sake! Then, there are always the folks who manage to maintain their own website, journal or no journal, like Nate & Deb, Andrew, Kary, Kirk, Damien, Steve... ah, I'm leaving out hordes of folks, I'm sure..

It's everywhere. But I love it. I spend far too much time reading blogs, I'll admit, but I'm genuinely interested. In a weird way, I wish everyone would keep one.

By the way, if I weren't so lazy I'd probably set up a links page on my own website, but who has the time? After all, I've got blogs to read.