MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

My selections from the judging.

There’s a roundtable going on at The Comics Journal, about the Best American Comics Criticism anthology. I wrote a little bit about it a few weeks ago. So far, the entries (six at this point), are oddly divided into contributors (Ben Schwartz, Jeet Heer, and Brian Doherty), who are mostly positive about the book, and [...]

After a rather than long period of minimal content on this blog, it seems indecent that I write a piece about a book of comics criticism. But, part of the silence was a renewed effort in making comics, and part of it is an indecision about my writing about comics: what are my goals, how [...]

When a post at The Comics Journal appeared in my feed reader promising “R.C. Harvey on R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis“ I was excited to see what he had to say, especially since (as I mentioned in my review) I think the particular text-image interaction in the book would be of interest to Harvey. Unfortunately, [...]

More metacriticism: “[Porcellino's] line is confident, strikingly so, betraying no hesitation in hand or head. It is stolidly gestural, brawnily lyrical, unconsciously sublime.” (Rich Kreiner reviewing Thoureau at Walden by John Porcellino in The Comics Journal 294, p. 132.) I came upon these two sentences and stopped short. Describing artwork can be difficult. Trying to [...]

Carroll, Noel. On Criticism. Routledge, 2009. 9780415396219. I’ve been trying to read more about criticism lately with some hope of improving my writings for this blog (and potential branch out to writing for other places). What is the purpose of criticism and how is it accomplished? In this short and readable volume Noel Carroll, a [...]

What is the function of a critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services: 1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware. 2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them [...]

And while I read a lot about negative criticism, I read less about the need for analytical criticism — an approach to reading in which the critic focuses on explanation over judgment. I think that if more of any type of criticism is needed it’s this. What matters to me is: does the critic help [...]

I’ve not read Blurred Vision 4, though that anthology has been on my list (of comics to check out) since I first saw copies of the series at MoCCA last year. Caleb Mozzocco at Every Day is Like Wednesday reviewed the book last week and he hit a lot of my pet peeves. He started [...]

In a recent post on his blog (1), Craig Fischer, shared this quote: An essay is a search to find out what one thinks about something. –Phillip Lopate, “In Search of the Centaur: the Essay-Film.” In a way that sums up my feeling about the criticism I write. To write about something I’ve read is [...]

A review is a buyer’s guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. [...] Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and [...]

At the new Thought Balloons blog, Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer discuss Groensteen’s System of Comics (my old review). Fischer provides an excellent example of Groensteen’s “braiding” (tressage) in Jason’s “Hey Wait…”: Across the multiframe of the book, the motif of six-panel repetition appears and reappears at central moments, creating a series that transcends the [...]

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean by Douglas Wolk. Da Capo, 2007. 406p, $22.95. I hope the title of Douglas Wolk’s book was forced on him by the publisher, because not only is it a misnomer for what is contained within but it is kind of pretentious to boot. I am [...]