All PostsI spoke in Second Life at Met@Morph, the first annual Web Comics Comic-Con and Conference, on Friday October 3rd (today). My presentation was called “Freedom within Boundaries: the Theory and Practice of Constraint in Comics.” I only had 20 minutes so it’s a fairly shallow look at the topic. You can see the slides here (1mb pdf).
Unfortunately, Verizon disconnected my internet connection while I was presenting. Fortunately, I did a rough run through the night before and made up a slide plus audio version for those who didn’t make it to the event. Should be viewable below:
[Edit: 10/4/08 11:05am: This may be broken right now. Edit: 11:43am: I think it's fixed. You could also go here to see it.]
[Edit (10/08/08): Per Isaac's request, here are links to everything from the presentation. Items that aren't webcomics are links to the record in WorldCat.]
- Wonder Woman Archives (DC Comics)
- City of Glass by Auster, Karasik, Mazzuchelli
- Verbeek art from Art Out of Time edited by Dan Nadel (Abrams)
- Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 by Charles Schulz (Fantagraphics)
- La Litterature Potentielle by Oulipo (Gallimard)
- Oupus 1 by Oubapo (L’Association)
- Oupus 2 by Oubapo (L’Association)
- Oupus 3 by Oubapo (L’Association)
- Oupus 4 by Oubapo (L’Association)
- Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North
- Orchid Anthology edited by Dylan Williams (Sparkplug)
- Nogegon by Schuiten and Schuiten (Humanoids)
- Exercises in Style by Matt Madden (Chamberlain Bros)
- Hutch Owens 5 Obstructions by Tom Hart
- Satisfactory Comics 8 by Isaac Cates and Mike Wenthe
- Things Change (that sequence) by Derik Badman
- Tintin reduction from Oupus 2 (see above)
- TNT en Amerique by Jochen Gerner (l’Ampoule)
- Garfield Minus Garfield by Jim Davis and Dan Walsh
I enjoyed this, Derik! While it was a pleasant surprise to see Satisfactory Comics #8 crop up in the discussion (I didn’t know it would feature in the presentation!), I especially enjoyed seeing unfamiliar (to me) work like Nogegon, which looks quite interesting and impressive. I’ll keep my eye out for later installments on other varieties of constraint!
Hey Mike! Glad you enjoyed it. If you want to hear more about Nogegon I reviewed it here:
http://madinkbeard.com/archives/nogegon-by-schuiten-and-schuiten
You might also check out some of my other comics and constraint posts all over this blog.
Hey, Derik —
Thanks for the mention of the latest Satisfactory. That’s an interesting paper.
It’d be interesting to hear you talk a little more about the ways in which the form of, for example, a sonnet counts as “constraint,” when other formal considerations (Schulz’s four-panel layout in Peanuts or the generic assumptions of, say, detective fiction) don’t count. In some ways, the formal constraints of a sonnet are dictated by genre, so that they hardly seem optional for Shakespeare; on the other hand, if someone chose to draw a webcomic with the same constraints of panelization that Schulz used (four square panels only), wouldn’t that be a formal constraint?
It’d also be great if you could make a clickable list of the links that appear in the slideshow, since they aren’t clickable there…
(Also, Mike’s probably too modest to point this out, but you mispronounced his surname in your presentation: it’s two syllables long, and it rhymes with nepenthe.)
Apologies to Mike. I’m notoriously bad with pronunciations because most of my learning is book learning. I don’t even know how to pronounce “nepenthe” so that doesn’t help. “Wen-tha”?
As for your other comments, I’ll have to work that up later (both a reply about the sonnets and the links).
I figured you could look “nepenthe” up in the dictionary. (It’s in “The Raven,” too, which your talk referred to — and that’s probably why I thought of it.)
Anyway, Mike’s last name is pronounced WENNTH-ee. It would rhyme with tenthie if that were a word, and it sort of rhymes with lengthy, depending on your accent.
Look it up! I was too lazy for that. I’ll get Mike’s name right next time.
[...] going to be presenting in Second Life again (see my presentation from October). Here’s the official announcement, though my presentation topic has been changed: [...]