When first reading McCloud and trying to apply his terms to the works for class, it didn't come easy for me. I have studied McCloud before, with comics, but I always get confused when looking at these pieces for class. I had to look at each of them a couple times, very closely, to find things that either represented what McCloud said, or represented the opposite of what he said but still relating to the term in some way.

First off, I think the best example of one of McCloud's ideas would be in Rice. The beginning/main page is just a block of small pictures. When you click on each picture, they then represent a bigger meaning. This is what McCloud talks about with icons. They are pictures, symbols, drawings etc. that represent an idea. Rice is definitely a good illustration of this.

From there I find it harder to find examples, besides in McCloud's own I Can't Stop Thinking. Of course he makes his illustrations with specific closures, icons, and amplification through simplification. In the very beginning he explains his closure and how it is all connected with lines, and that sometimes it will lead you to read in out of the ordinary directions. His drawings are simple, but they have a greater meaning in what he is trying to teach. Also, when he turns the computer and book into a face, it is so simple that is an icon, but everyone can recognize that the shapes he put together represents a face, giving the objects life. But because this IS a comic, I think it's especially easy to find these examples within his text.

Finally, theres a sort of anti-example. McCloud mentions sequential writing. In On the Night of Mr. Melvin's Murder, the writing is not necessarily sequential. It could go in any order that the reader chooses as they click all of the links and read the several parts of the stories. The reader determines the sequence in this example, not the writer. So, depending on how you look at it, it could or could not be a great example of McCloud's idea of sequential writing, but I lean towards calling it an anti-example. :)