Understanding McCloud: (En)Countering Closure in the Context of Trauma

ABSTRACT:As Professor of English and Director of the Honors & Scholars Program at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), I have twice selected Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993) as a foundational text in my upper-level, undergraduate seminars on Storytelling & Graphic Narrative. In particular, I have found that it is essential to teach students—and particularly English majors specializing in literary analysis—to resist McCloud's assertion that reading comics is often, if not always, about formulating a sense of "closure."