1) What is McCloud's definition of comics and what rhetoric does he use?

When Scott defines comics he first seperates form and content. He says that form is the vessel which can hold any number of ideas and images. The content of these images and ideas is up to the creator to use their imagination. He the goes on to rewrite the definition of comics in dictionary form. McCloud say comics are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

2) What is McCloud's definition of icon in comics and how is it important?

Scott uses the icon to mean any image used to represent a person, place, thing or an idea. He tells us that there are different categories of icons. Symbols, language, science, communication, pictures and non-pictorial. McCloud says that words are abstract icons but in pictures the abstraction varies. The triangle that McCloud talks about contains three verteces the picture plane, language, and reality. At the top of the triangle is where shapes, lines and colors can be themselves and not pretend otherwise. Towards the bottom is where the icons fit in.

3. How can we as writers amplify inofrmation by simplifying?

Because the abstract images in comics are not so much the elimination of detail as much as they are an effort to focus on specific details.