finishing Understanding Comics

First off, for some reason the idiom stage of the six steps discussed in chapter seven confuses me. So... it's like genre, but not quite? I think more than anything, the fact that he calls it the "idiom" stage bothers me. That term does not fit there. Idioms strike me as things like "bull in a china shop" or "killing two birds with one stone". The picture associated with step three made more sense to me, at least - a comic artist can wear many hats. But that's an idiom (in the literary cliché sense), too. Is that supposed to be ironic? Is McCloud just trying to mess with me?

It also amazes me that McCloud doesn't go more in depth with the color in comics branching more into the abstract, picture plane of things. I think, for once, he may've missed an opportunity to throw that triangle in again. I was surprised the chapter was so short.
Still, I was left wondering what kind of impact the expensive nature of color has had or continues to have on the comics world. How many weird and revolutionary things would've been not only tried but exposed to the broader audience by now had starving artists of, say, the sixties and seventies had greater color access (and in a broader range)? It seems like much of this innovation was happening abroad while America was still caught in the superhero time warp. I'm curious to explore that further. It's like a parallel timeline of innovation which this book kind of skims over.

Okay, well, I'm sort of out of time, but I might actually continue this post/line of thinking later on today. Ranting is fun.