MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

The “inconsistent” drawing style of Cave-in [Rakuban, 1959] makes this short story unique. The five memory scenes (free motifs) are depicted in five distinctive styles, ranging from simple, comical line drawings reminiscent of prewar children’s comics to more detailed, “gekiga-like” figures. The degrees of detail in the drawing style represent the reliability of Maehashi’s story. [...]

Buzzati, Dino. Poem Strip [1969]. Translated by Marina Harss. NYRB, 2009. ISBN: 9781590173237. New York Review Books publishes quite a number of excellent novels, including one of my favorites Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau. This Italian comic from the 1969 is certainly a bit of an odd choice for them. Outside of the works themselves, [...]

Sikoryak, R. Masterpiece Comics. Drawn & Quarterly, 2009. ISBN: 9781897299845. Masterpiece Comics is a collection of R. Sikoryak’s short works from various anthologies and publications. These works are all pastiches of various comic strips or styles used to tell stories from classic literature. In some sense, these are analogue mash-ups, two disparate sources put together [...]

Koch, Aidan. Yes. Self-published, 2009. 16p with silkscreen cover. –. Hypnotizing. Self-published, 2009. 8p. Back in September I reviewed a minicomic and a webcomic by Aidan Koch. I emailed her after that and got a few more recent minicomics. One is called “Hypnotizing” you can read it at Flickr, starting with page one (though note [...]

McShane, James. Archaeology. Self-published, 2009. (You might be able to get a copy from him through his blog, though it is an edition of 100, so it may be gone by now.) –. James McShane: Selected Comics 2003-2008. Self-published, 2009. (You can purchase ($4) or download (free) at his blog.) Back at MoCCA 2006 I [...]

Overby, Jason. Exploding He[a]d Man. Self-published, 2009. 96p for $6 from discretefunk.com. This is going on my best comics of 2009 list, no question. Jason Overby impresses me more and more with each new comic of his I see. (Beautiful piece in the Abstract Comics anthology, by the way.) I’ve been sitting on this one [...]

I was one of a bunch of bloggers to participate in this year’s ComixTalk roundtable on webcomics. You can read the whole long thing to find out about our favorite webcomics from the year, thoughts on portable devices, and more.

Amano, Kozue. Aria v.5. Tokyopop, 2009. ISBN: 9781427805140. This just arrived the other day, and I read it straight through that same night. Light fare, yet refreshing. I can’t think of another comic that is so resolutely non-dramatic and non-comedic while maintaining a fairly standard narrative setting. It is a narrative without any guile. I [...]

DuBois, Gaylord (writer) and Jesse Marsh (artist). Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Volumes 1-3. Dark Horse, 2009. If you’d told me a couple years ago that I would be reading and enjoying a Tarzan comic from the 50s, I would have scoffed. But, this stuff is good. After reading a few convincing articles on Jesse [...]

Tatsumi, Yoshihiro. A Drifting Life. Drawn & Quarterly, 2009. 856p. ISBN: 9781897299746. This massive autobiographical manga has been appearing on a lot of the early best of 2009 lists, and while I can, to a point see, why, I’m not in agreement. A Drifting Life is, basically, the story of Tatsumi’s early entry into the [...]

Yoshinaga, Fumi. Ooku: The Inner Chambers v.1. Viz, 2009. ISBN: 9781421527475. I wasn’t convinced I’d keep reading this series after my first reading of volume 1. The concept of the series seems right out of a sociopolitical sci-fi novel like something Joanna Russ would write: a plague kills off only men, leaving Japan with a [...]