Comments on: Nonplot-Based Narrative Ordering

By: wcraghead

wcraghead — Fri, 18 May 2007 02:47:40 +0000

I’m jumping in a few days late, but wanted to add something. Thanks Andrei for the heads up about this thread and blog.

For non-linear comics I think of them as non-cinematic, with most other comics going along with a film-idea of how to make the comics work.

The imposition of structure is an artifice, and for me right now it’s best when its out in the open, like in Jimbo.

I like the idea of Gasoline Alley as never ending not just because I want good things to last, but because it more closely resembles the way we experience the world.

Hernandez is a great example – he’s had many places to stop but just doesn’t and each episode makes Maggie and Hopey etc seem more real to me. It meanders like our lives do.

I watch the TV show LOST ( I pretend its for my job, but really I enjoy it) and I’ve heard people complain about how things never get resolved, or each resolution brings more mysteries. My answer is, yeah, like life.

By: Andrei

Andrei — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:28:21 +0000

No, not at all. Jimbo in Paradise is late ’70′s-80′s material. The Zongo comics, from the mid-late ’90′s, have not been collected.

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:50:37 +0000

Well that’s a little confusing. So Jimbo in Paradise is not the collection of stories that lead up to Jimbo’s Inferno?

By: Andrei

Andrei — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:46:50 +0000

There is no direct connection between “Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise” and the other two books. JAiP just collects much of the early Jimbo material from Raw and other places. I honestly think it’s amazing–in many ways, it’s closer to my heart than the Inferno and Purgatory books. The problem with the Inferno book is that it was originally published as issue 7 of the Zongo Jimbo series. While issues 5 and 6 were fill-ins, it directly continues the storyline from issues 1-4 (which, however, are not Dante-, or anything else, based), and makes A LOT MORE SENSE if you have read them. Actually, I guess those issues 1-4 are a bridge from the earlier Jimbo material (including Cola Madnes) to the Dante-based works. The other book that feeds into this is his early mini (reprinted a few years ago), “The Asshole,” whose protagonist reappears in the Zongo series.

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:38:41 +0000

Jimbo in Paradise is on my list to get a copy. I’m still not completely clear on the relation between the three books.

I’m awaiting the DalTokyo book from Fanta (later this year?), but I found the few samples in… Kramer’s Ergot(?) interesting if inexplicable (wasn’t sure if that was a context thing or not).

By: Matt Madden

Matt Madden — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:15:54 +0000

Have you read Cola Madnes or hunted down a copy of the old Pantheon collection, Jimbo in Paradise (that’s the best place to start, I think). Actually, the Jimbo works as a whole and also DalTokyo form a similar kind of open-ended serialized narrative we were talking about earlier.

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:33:00 +0000

I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of Panter’s work, but the Purgatory book has me intrigued enough that I got a copy of Jimbo’s Inferno too. Plus I love the giant oversized volumes.

By: Matt Madden

Matt Madden — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:12:47 +0000

I had the pleasure of touring the Masters exhibit with Gary Panter acting as docent for SVA students and factulty and he explained some of the organizing principles behing Jimbo in Purgatory–each page corresponds not only to a canto from Dante but also to stories from the Decameron. I can’t explain his technique because it seems to be a blend of the quasi-scientific and the intuitive, but it’s pretty intense either way. Also: the first page of the book has the opening lines of Canterbury Tales encoded into the decorative border, starting at the top left, which Gary demonstrated by reciting the prologue in Chaucerian English: “whan that Aprill with his shoures soote” and so on….

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:26:51 +0000

Andrei: Your comments (and emails) also give me much to think about and at a loss for writing a decent reply. As it happens two comics you mentioned–the Jimbo books and Hankiewicz (in this case, Asthma)– are on my list for reviews/posts.

I only later realized my omission in not listing the Jimbo books as an example of “ordered based on other works”.

By: Matt Madden

Matt Madden — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:33:02 +0000

Derik, I’m sorry you’re right that I fundamentally misread the distinction between cause and effect ordering and conflict/resolution plotting… no great harm done, anyway.

Andrei, first of all thanks for re-capping the Russian formalist plot/story distinction, I did have that in mind. You are stating more pointedly something that I see too, an overall conservative trend in culture these days. I’m not overly concerned about it in the long run because these things will always run in cycles and I think western culture as a whole is worn down by modernism and doesn’t know where to go next and so has retreated into more comfortable forms for the time being. I think a lot of readers will come back around to more experimental form and content in the years to come (I just hope not TOO many years!).

I do indeed refer primarily to narrative work in prose, film, and comics in my last comment. I think long-form poetry and especially music lend them selves more easily to less linear, cause-and-effect, central-conflict type structures.

In comics I think John Hankiewicz is one of the most challenging narrative artists working right now. I read Warrens’ stuff a little differently, like poetry, whereas John’s stuff always feels like it’s telling or about to start telling a story. Maybe the quasi-realistic, clinical line drawing (which has become increasingly beautiful and eerie over the years) is part of what make his stuff feel more narrative, Warren’s work tending to more open layouts and sketchy pencil drawing. Anyway, that’s what excites me as a reader the most: works that skirt that edge of traditional narrative form and content.

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