MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

I was going to write about Oliver East’s latest book Proper Go Well High (Blank Slate, 2009), but after looking through my previous posts on his work (on first discovering his work, having read some of the minicomics, and having read the first book and a preview of what would become this second book), I [...]

Found this while digging through my collection of minicomics. Friday by Jenni Rope (Napa Books, 2005) is a small (3.5″ x 2″) book is a flipbook of abstract imagery. Like many abstract comics, it is sequence of transformation, expansion and contraction. From nothing, a bunch of beadlike objects slowly grow into a pattern, then they [...]

Matthey, Pascal. “A la plage.” Grandpapier.org, 2009. 15 p. –. “Greenfield Village.” Grandpapier.org, 2007. 10 p. These are two similar works by the artist Pascal Matthey from the Belgian webcomics site Grandpapier. Over ten four-panel pages “Greenfield Village” does not so much tell a story as create a space. I am tempted to call it [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]