After taking a look at Understanding Comics I was surprised to find that I already knew most of the information being given. I wouldn't consider myself the biggest comic book reader or any comic book reader at all for that matter (although when I was a kid I Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes like it was my job) but I still found that most of what Scott McCloud was saying was common knowledge, or at least to me. However, there were several points in his book that did grab my interest. The first of which was the fact that he teaches you about comics with the use of a comic. I know we touched on this a lot in class but it really is the option that makes the most sense. Some people, myself included, learn better either by doing or with the help of imagery. One point I found interesting was the way McCloud broke down different comic book styles in terms of realistic to abstract. He had a whole pyramid dedicated to showing this. He also showed a diagram in which he takes a realistic looking drawing of a face and breaks it down piece by piece showing the different stages in between realistic and abstract. Another point he made was that the general or basic idea of a human face in its most abstract form can be found in a lot of everyday items such as an electrical socket or soda can. It just made me think just how much humans build and create things in their own image. One other topic that I actually found very interesting is the discussion about the gutters in between each panel. I never would have though of using them as a gateway to fill in time between each panel. Knowing it now it seems obvious but I always just saw them as a way of breaking up the images without getting them mixed up or canceling one another out. But the example in class about someone aiming a gun at someone in one panel and having the guy shot in the next leaves us to fill in the image of the person with the gun pulling the trigger almost like we are the ones responsible for his death. That is really deep and it dives into an idea that will forever change the way I view comics.