Reaction to Blood in the Gutter - McCloud

The third chapter in Scott McCloud's graphic novel covered some things that I had already heard of; the gutter effect in comics, various types of transitions between panels, etc., but also covered some that I hadn't. In reading a variety of both western and Japanese comics, I had passively taken in the very different styles, whereas McCloud has cleverly pointed out where they can be so different. Western comics tend to focus much more heavily on "action to action" transitions and a few others, but very rarely a transition called "aspect to aspect" in which time is sort of at a stand still and various images are used to depict the mood or setting. Japanese comics, on the other hand, make much more frequent use of "aspect to aspect" transition in comparison to their Western counterparts. I'm sure that now when I go to read a graphic novel, I will be looking much more closely at the scene transitions than I would have prior to reading Blood in the Gutter.