Monday, July 30, 2012

The Intercorstal: "Epic" Page 8


A month on from my last post and I've finally finished this page from the still to be retitled 'Epic'. A good part of why it's taken so long has been that the day after I posted page 6, my wife went into labour and I'm now a father for the second time. Things have settled relatively quickly and the break away from drawing has done me good -- already have a few projects on the go, one of which is finishing 'Epic' and also finally sorting the 'collected Intercorstal', Eplises, which I've been talkngi about for at least the past six months.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Monday, July 23, 2012

asemic editions: my small press for abstract graphic novels & similar

here's a page from my new edition of Michael Jacobson's The Giant's Fence, which he describes as a visual novella... written in a trans-symbolic script:

Asemic editions is a small press with a tiny budget, devoted to publishing novel-length works of asemic writing, abstract comics, Lettrisme & so on.

Currently available:
The Giant's Fence (large format edition), by Michael Jacobson [view sample]
100 Scenes, by Tim Gaze [view sample]
written in prose, by Alain Satié [view sample]
with 2 more in the pipeline. I'm not looking for submissions at this time.

"Une histoire pour les sourds" de Jean-Jacques Tachdjian





Visitez le site de Jean-Jacques.  It's well worth your time, even if you don't speak French.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

San Diego wrap-up: Kirby, Modernism and Abstraction

The session that Mark Badger and I gave at Comic Con on "Jack Kirby, Modernism, and Abstraction" went really well, and we got some excellent feedback on it.  (Unfortunately, we blabbed on for too long--my fault!--to take questions from the audience, but many came up to discuss it with us afterwards).


The session was covered (though without mentioning our names!  Grrr!) in two paragraphs of one of Seth Stevenson's dispatches from SDCC.  As you'll be able to guess once you read it, I find his take rather problematic.  Fortunately, I was also interviewed, on the same subject, by the San Diego Union-Tribune's Susan Myrland, and I'm quite proud of our exchange, I must say:  Susan's sensitivity to comics and her knowledgeable questions place it head and shoulders above most newspaper comics coverage.  I think we should get more art critics out there to write about comics!  Also check out the rest of Susan's pieces on comics; I especially like her interview with Scott McCloud, and her post, "Is Comic Con our Art Basel?"

Since the interview is largely a follow-up to my presentation, I should briefly summarize my argument here:  I analyzed, through a variety of comparisons, the formalizing/abstract aspect of Kirby's post-1965 art, and I argued that Kirby may have been prompted in that direction (among other causes) by his competition with and artistic dialogue with Roy Lichtenstein.  I already have publication plans for the piece (though it might take a while for it to come out), but this together with the interview should give you the basic traits of the argument.  See the relevant comparisons here and here.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

pages from Apeiron, by Miroljub Todorović



a couple of pages from Todorović's unfinished verbo-visual novel (verbalno vizuelnog romana) Apeiron or Apejron, created from 1973 to 1975. In an email, he told me that some pages had been published in literary magazines in the 1970s & '80s. 2 more pages are visible here & here (12th one down).

Miroljub was the founder of the Yugoslav avant-garde movement Signalism (or Signalizam), & was active as a visual poet, mail artist & publisher, as well as wearing other artistic hats. More information: >>>***>>>.

I'm interested in the idea of a visual novel, which is a cousin of the graphic novel, but emerging from somewhere other than comics.

[Added on 9 May 2013:
 Mycelium samizdat publishers has published excerpts from Apeiron here, including verbal sections translated from Serbian into English by Sibelan Forrester. With the verbal sections included, it has a feeling of poetic science fiction.

According to Wikipedia, the term visual novel is used in Japan to describe digital graphic novels which include some minimal sections where you play a game, & sometimes including non-interactive moving images.]

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

A reminder to attend our Comic-Con panel

...  on Kirby, Modernism, and Abstraction, Friday at 2:30 pm in room 26AB.  If Heidi at the Beat tells you to go, you know you ought to go.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Updates: Kirby and Abstraction at Comic-Con, new strip at Carousel, etc.

Ok, so I know I've been MIA off this blog for the last six weeks or so.  Sorry!  (I'm sure you don't want to hear my excuses, but rest assured that I have them if needed.)  But I have some news:



The San Diego Comic-Con is almost upon us.  If you are attending, please come to my session on "Jack Kirby, Modernism and Abstraction," Friday 2:30-3:30 pm.  AC anthology contributor Mark Badger and I will discuss--well, we'll discuss what it says in the title of the session, plus we'll show a number of published and unpublished abstract comics, by the two of us and by others, influenced by the King.


(Shown above:  two Kandinsky/Kirby comparisons.  Think of them as addenda to my earlier "Kirby slash" post.)

Also, I have a new four-panel strip at Carousel. (Online and in the new print issue.) I'm still trying to get this four-panel form down. This time: words & photos. The underlying story is that I took all the photographs on my flight, last year, to and from SDCC, where I gave a talk on abstract comics.  There's actually even more to the story than that, but I'll only have time to tell it after I come back from San Diego.



Thirdly--I have a batch of new drawings over at Blotcomics.  You might enjoy them.  Some are sort of Kirbyish.