MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

The principle technique of storytelling is “analytical montage” (Groensteen L’Univers des Mangas (1991)) in which the sequencing of plates [panels] is very resourceful in comparison with a rather constrained Euro-American montage and page layout. In manga, there is no textual interference. Analytical montage entails the “scattering” of a story event over different frames. A scene [...]

A few months ago I transcribed and tacked to my wall something Milch said in the writers’ room: “The tactics of fictive persuasion have nothing to do with reasoned discourse.” Then a couple of days ago I reread a longer transcript of some notes Milch gave regarding an earlier episode. He was talking about the [...]

Webcomic examples talking about long serializations and how they work.

Looking at how comic strips can be ordered.

Most readers when they think of the way a narrative (novel, comic, tv show) is ordered will think about plot: what Brian Richardson, in his “Beyond the Poetics of Plot: Alternative Forms of Narrative Progression and the Multiple Trajectories of Ulysses,” describes as “a teleological sequence of events linked by some principle of causation; that [...]

American Elf: The Collected Sketchbook Diaries of James Kolchalka Book Two January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005 by James Kolchalks. Top Shelf, 2007. $19.95. Daily at http://americanelf.com/ American Elf is the only work of Kolchalka I’ve really enjoyed over the years. Something about the strip that maintains my interest and attention is lacking from [...]

Ninja by Brian Chippendale. Picturebox, 2006. 11″ x 17″. 144p. My selection of best comics for the year should be up tomorrow, and a last minute addition to the list is Brian Chippendale’s massive Ninja, an impressive volume from production to content. I read it twice in a row, and I’m sure I’ll be going [...]

The Mother’s Mouth by Dash Shaw. Alternative Comics, 2006. 128p., $12.95. Dash Shaw’s previous book Goddess Head was an ambitious and inconsistent collection of formal experiments that were often too oblique to make much sense. The Mother’s Mouth is a graphic novel that tells a rather straightforward narrative in a rich, experimental montage of comics [...]

Somewhere I read about (playwright, screenwriter, director) David Mamet’s book On Directing Film (Viking, 1991) in relation to comics: a brief quote that intrigued me. I no longer remember where I read this, but I did get the book from the library. It’s a slim collection based on lectures Mamet gave at Columbia in 1987. [...]

Les Bijoux Ravis by Benoit Peeters. Bruxelles: Magic Strip, 1984. (Out of Print and quite rare) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the more I read Tintin, the more I appreciate it. In a similar way to Peanuts, what at first appears rather slight, takes on greater significance through repetition and careful [...]

Morlac by Leif Tande. Montreal: La Pasteque, 2006. 152p., 23.95$C. Formal experimentation in comics is often overlooked and under-attempted. While one finds bits and pieces of experimentation in various works, rarely does a comic seem to be produced solely as an ambitious experiment. Leif Tande’s Morlac is such a work, an impressive and well-executed experiment [...]