MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

What is the function of a critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services: 1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware. 2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them [...]

Nick Mullins writes about David Carrier’s The Aesthetics of Comics. I have to say, I was excited by the prospect (aesthetics! comics!) of Carrier’s book until I started reading it. The whole aspect of word balloons being a defining aspect of comics discredited Carrier with me. I never did finish the book.

And while I read a lot about negative criticism, I read less about the need for analytical criticism — an approach to reading in which the critic focuses on explanation over judgment. I think that if more of any type of criticism is needed it’s this. What matters to me is: does the critic help [...]

Ken Parille (the most interesting writer at Blog Flume) writes about David Chelsea, autobiography, and point of view (p.o.v.). He summarizes Chelsea’s comments in 24×2: He argues that that well-known autobiographical comic creators like Crumb, Pekar, Paley, and Spiegelman “get it wrong.” They falsify experience by employing what could be called an “objective camera” point [...]

…nous nous placons dans la lignée de David Kunzle et de Francois Garnier, écrivant, le premier sur la bande dessinée ancienne, le second sur l’image médiévale. Une image isolée est narrative si elle contient des liens de causalité et de consécution. Kunzle note que: “To narrate is, first of all, to polarize a sequence of [...]

A s’en tenir à cette analyse, une narration en images est tout à fait possible (elle repose sur la monstration et est permise par le caractère d’énonçable de l’image). Paradoxalement, c’est l’opération de description qui est impossible dans le récit en images. Tous les éléments de l’image sont rendus avec le même degré de précision [...]

In a recent post on his blog (1), Craig Fischer, shared this quote: An essay is a search to find out what one thinks about something. –Phillip Lopate, “In Search of the Centaur: the Essay-Film.” In a way that sums up my feeling about the criticism I write. To write about something I’ve read is [...]

In further explorations of criticism (with an eye towards specifically comics criticism), I’ve been reading (and now rereading) David Bordwell’s Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Harvard, 1989). Bordwell’s primary focus is the process of interpretation in academic film criticism with an eye towards conventional and institutional norms. It is a [...]

David Bordwell wrote a post about film criticism, “In critical condition”, which is worth a read. He lays out four activities of the critic–describe, analyze, interpret, and evaluate–and relates these to three types of format: review, academic article or book of criticism, and critical essay. The evaluative activity becomes a key part. Such as analyzing [...]

More on defining “comics.”

A review is a buyer’s guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. [...] Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and [...]

Trying to define “comics” again.

At the new Thought Balloons blog, Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer discuss Groensteen’s System of Comics (my old review). Fischer provides an excellent example of Groensteen’s “braiding” (tressage) in Jason’s “Hey Wait…”: Across the multiframe of the book, the motif of six-panel repetition appears and reappears at central moments, creating a series that transcends the [...]

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean by Douglas Wolk. Da Capo, 2007. 406p, $22.95. I hope the title of Douglas Wolk’s book was forced on him by the publisher, because not only is it a misnomer for what is contained within but it is kind of pretentious to boot. I am [...]

Write sounds into the background of scenes, setting them up for fuller presence later. If a train becomes important late in the story, mention the wail of a distant train early in the screenplay. This sort of auditory planting quietly strengthens the structure of the story in your reader’s mind. -David Bordwell summarizing Amos Poe. [...]

Everyone’s A Critic: The Best Criticism of 2007 round-up that I participated in is now up. You can see my runners-up here. The choices by the other participants are disappointing to me. Some of them seem to have a strange idea of what constitutes “criticism,” which is a post for another day. There are a [...]