Independence and Incorporation (sounds like politics!)

In an effort to highlight this uniqueness and independence from new media, McCloud clearly emphasizes the need for distinction between on-line comics and animation, which has been becoming fuzzy as of late. He conversely supports the blurring of media forms in promoting the application of comics to re-present such traditionally recognized media forms as poetry (as done with Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” on page 226). This seems to deny the inevitable blurring of media forms, that all new media are composed of old media. (For example, Kittler claims that, “Around 1800 the book became both film and record” (108, my emphasis).) However, in asserting the distinction of the two forms, McCloud is actually not denying the need of new media to incorporate older media, but is rather urging that the older media not lose their identity once combined; just because these “ingredients” cooked up something new and distinct from their component parts, they should not lose their identity as ingredients, or whole and useful entities in and of themselves.