i found myself paying more attention to the text's format in mccloud's book than the pix in order to understand his points. in chapter 2, he spent so much time with that pyramid, with its 3 points: realistic image, meaning through words, and artistic abstraction. in considering my own preference, i think i like jack kirby's style: "a middle ground of iconic forms with a sense of the real about them, bolstered by a powerful [text] design sense" (55). his images were simple enough to maintain the focus on the action, but detailed enough to give some personality to the characters. and his words, which really are the primary thing that at least i look to first, definitely have a personality of their own.