Whose Mind is it Anyway

I chose a comic from McCloud's The Morning Improv section on his site. It's a lengthy comic (9 pages) about a homeless guy in Boston who talks to himself. What I liked right from the start is the way McCloud wrote the way people from Boston speak ( I have a few friends from Boston - anyone who has talked to someone from Boston knows what I am talking about). This comic should really be read out loud for the full effect. The second panel says "Yeah? So dress warmah, ya pansy! I like this time a' yee-ah" The main character is Sean, the homeless guy. It starts out with him having a conversation with himself. He sees a girl on a park bench and his other "self" is telling him to go talk to her and he is arguing - with himself - that the girl won't talk to him. He finally gets up the nerve to go talk to her and she is actually nice to him. Turns out that she is homeless too - She just got to Boston a couple days ago - although her accent is identical to Sean's. Her name is Sophie and Sean talks to for a while then convinces her to let him walk her to a homeless shelter for women for the night because it's going to get cold that night. She agrees and they talk as they walk. Sean's other "Self" seems to be gone or quiet when Sophie is near. Once he drops her off, he begins his conversation with the voice in his head again.



The comic was interesting - funny at times, sad at others. It was like a short story - not what I would consider a comic to be like. Check the comic out here: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html

I thought some parts of this comic could have been omitted. There was a lot of one on one conversation between Sean and his "mind" that seemed to add material that took away from the "less is more"(83) theory. As McCloud states, "...finding the balance between too much and too little is crucial to comics creators the world over"(85). The author of "whose mind is it anyway" could have still had a great comic if he left out some of the overly descript conversations between Sean and his "mind". I realize most of these conversations were crucial to the point of the comic - but I believe in the "less is more" and think less would have had a better effect on the comic as a whole.