MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Over at The Comics Journal, Kent Worcester offers some commentary on the Abstract Comics discussion from the other week. I should clarify that the Trondheim piece in question (from La Nouvelle Pornographie) was not necessarily a candidate for the book (I have no idea). It is a book of its own published by L’Association. I’d [...]

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 [...]

This abstract comic is in L’Association’s “patte de mouche” series of small comics. Like a professionally published minicomic, the book is about the size of a quartered piece of paper, printed in black on off-white paper with a thicker, rougher cover printed in two shades of purple. This series, at least the ones I’ve seen, tend to be short, experimental comics.

In this case, Swiss artist Baladi has drawn a brief abstract comic about a “small line” (that’s the title). The comic amounts to the voyage of a short line through a series of encounters with other lines of various size, shape, and density.

Rüegg, Niklaus. SPUK (Thesen gegen den Frühling). Zurich: Edition Fink, 2004. ISBN 9783906086743. Almost all comics are figurative (that is, representational). More than that, the greater cultural awareness of comics is through characters. A great swath of the field (comic strips, comic books, manga, bd) is covered by the neverending (or nearly neverending) narratives of [...]

Baseball month isn’t over yet, but due to other obligations, my post on H2 is delayed a bit. In the meantime here’s something I found recently. This is piece by Raymond Pettibon from Raymond Pettibon: Plots Laid Thick (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona : Distributed by Actar, 2002). This one’s for Andrei.

Saul Steinberg: Illuminations by Joel Smith. Yale UP, 2006. [All Steinberg images © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.] I saw this book in the new books shelf at a bookstore and recalled how I’ve never really looked at Steinberg’s work, despite the praise I’ve heard. So, I grabbed the library’s copy and [...]

Sorry for the lack of quality posting lately… I should my review of Brian Chippendale’s Ninja up Friday. In the meantimes go check out Andrei Molotiu’s Blotcomics blog, where’s he’s been posting a slew of beautiful abstract comics in the last week.

I posted previously about Cy Twombly’s work. As I was returning the monograph on him I had back to the library, I scanned two images to share. The first is a “polyptych in 9 parts” called “Nine Discourses on Commodus” (1963). I’d imagine my interest in it is obvious. Layed out as it is on [...]