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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In comics, words represent that which can only exist in time, _______.

2. What is the space between comic panels called?

3. What symbol does the author use to demonstrate the universality of cartoon imagery?

4. What is not one of the vertices of the triangular pictorial vocabulary?

5. What does McCloud name the two bastions of cartoon art?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the three most popular transitions in mainstream Western comics and why?

2. According to McCloud, everything that people experience in life can be separated into which two realms?

3. What is McCloud's notion of the Picture Plane?

4. For what do Japanese mainstream comics use aspect-to-aspect transitions?

5. Is a single image equivalent to a single instant in time?

6. How do words introduce time into a single frame?

7. What is the difference between the art form ("medium") and the content?

8. Describe the author's first impressions of comics as a child.

9. Is Scott McCloud the ultimate authority of comics?

10. What is McCloud's explanation for why the human mind has little difficulty converting shapes and images into faces?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

McCloud states that "to kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousand deaths." What does he mean by this statement? What is the reader's involvement in the space between panels, the gutter?

Essay Topic 2

McCloud explains how you introduce time in comics by way of the depiction of time and the perception of time. Compare and contrast the two strategies. Does a preponderance of one or the other affect the end outcome?

Essay Topic 3

Art can be thought of as any human activity that doesn't grow out of either basic instinct of survival and reproduction. Do you think this is a good definition of art? Can you think of how art could be motivated by survival or reproduction?

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