In this reading McCloud analyzes the relationship between words and pictures over the course of human history. I really liked how they described the development of both writing and art and how they grew further apart from each other. McCloud describes the earliest words are stylized pictures and how gradually they became so stylized. I found it interesting how in the beginning language/written word was tied to the “visible world” in the sense that it was representing things pictorally; however, now it only represents sound/most written languages do not correspond to the image of the word.

Another connection to history I never considered was the was the idea that “each new medium begins its life by imitating its predecessors”. McCloud says that the beginning of each new media form is a replicated version of the early ones (e.g. early television is radio with pictures). This brings up the point that comics are trying to match other modern medium forms, but are often not taken as seriously as other art forms because they combine words and pictures. Its hard to reconcile these differences and prove that the way in which words and pictures are being brought together in a deliberate and unqiue way is an art form of itself, but McCloud’s method of categorizing the different ways that words and pictures can be combined helps to show this.