MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

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.

Two panels from “87th Precinct: Blind Man’s Bluff” Four Color #1309 (Dell, 1962) drawn by Bernie Krigstein, reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics edited by Paul Gravett (Running Press, 2008). As usual Krigstein’s work outshines the mediocre stories he has to work with. I love the kinetic energy in this panel. Krigstein [...]