McCloud Understanding Comics...is there only one way?

First of all, I've been wanting to say this for awhile if you look at McCloud for awhile his cartoon looks alittle like Waldo-like "Where's Waldo"...just a thought.

The title bothered me at first, "Understanding Comics", I honestly thought that how we read and interepted comics was going to be wrapped up in some neat little box. I was not happy about that since I'm quite a fan of graphic novels and knew that it was a pretty broad and relativaly new genre, ie. un-boxable in my mind. McCloud piece surprised me by going against my first impressions of his title. Basically, McCloud goes over the history and unboutbly board ever changing history of the graphic novel, which showed how a lot of unlikely things could be considered graphic novels, like the hyrogilphics(sp) the Eygptians painted, which spurred me to think of the cave painting of the Mardu Aboriginies which would paint sequential pictures that told the tale of different piesces of The DreamTime. Sequential, not an everyday word, but a word that is key to the graphic novel. McCloud breaks down to the nitty gritty what a graphic novel is or atleast kinda is, which is no easy task considering the vastness of the genre. I feel that McCould presented this infromation in a comical/entertaining/interesting way, which is great considering all the long boring text we are used to reading. By McCloud presenting this wealth of knowledge in this way, he actually, intentional or not, is adding to the argument that graphic novels are promoting literacy. By McCloud showing the vastness of the genre, he is pointing out the difficulty in boxing the understanding of this new form into one school of thought.