Comments on: Pascal Matthey’s Scenic Descriptions

By: DerikB

DerikB — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:26:03 +0000

That idea of reading narrative into even the most abstract comic, is something that comes up in a piece I’m working on about the Abstract Comics anthology. It’s hard NOT to find a narrative.

By: David Berona

David Berona — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:10:38 +0000

Thanks for sharing…I am drawn to the wordless aspect of these non-narrative comics and the strong sense of place and a personal feeling that this elicits. Somewhat similar to Frans Masereel’s The City. What I find amazing is my own desire to ascribe a narrative to these panels…that endless thirst for storytelling.
Matthey’s work is really striking–great stuff!

By: Domingos Isabelinho

Domingos Isabelinho — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:40:48 +0000

That’s the general idea, but it seems to me that the locus leans more to the descriptive side. Even so if we join more than one image some kind of residual narrative emerges: the two women in “Greenfield Village,” as you pointed out, and the second tier of page 10 in “A la plage.”
Another interesting problem in descriptive comics is: does time pass from one panel to the next (as comics’ reading protocol seems to indicate) or are they simultaneous in time, if not in space. Even in the latter case we may imagine viewers at the different points of view (as in “narrators” for writing) and, so, some kind of narrative again: why are they there, what are they looking for, etc…
I can even imagine the most extreme anti-narrative non-abtract comic: the repetition of one image endlessly. My question would be: is the viewer some kind of obcessed mental pacient, etc…

By: DerikB

DerikB — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:31:01 +0000

Hi, Domingos. I like that idea of a “third way”.
Is it between narration and description because it is a little bit of each?

I’ll have to go reread the 100 views and give this some more thought.

By: Domingos Isabelinho

Domingos Isabelinho — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:12:56 +0000

Hi Derik:

Great find!
Here’s what I wrote on my blog about Hokusai’s _100 views_ (http://tinyurl.com/yaw7jbm):
“I also want to put a geometry concept on the comics theory table (Hokusai loved geometry, by the way…): the idea of locus (the totality of all points, satisfying a given condition; the locus, as applied to comics, is a third way between narration and description).”
That’s what I think these comics are. Examples of the locus applied to comics.