MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 3: Yamato/Space (1969). Viz, 2003. ISBN: 1591161002. See previous post on Phoenix Vol. 2: Future. Viz’s Phoenix Volume 3 includes two stories, the third and fourth in the series. This is where the volume numbers and the story numbers will stop matching. Later there will be stories that take two volumes [...]

There’s a great interview with Dash Shaw up at the French comics site du9. It’s in English, so go check it out. He talks about Bottomless Belly Button, BodyWorld, D&D, and more. An excerpt on something I’ve written about in Shaw’s book: NV: I’ve noticed that you’re also using many graphic signs and words to [...]

Looking back at this post about a thought balloon with two vertical rows of ellipses in a manga. I found this quote: Some English-style punctuation, such as exclamation points and question marks, are fairly common but none matches the frequency of the ubiquitous ellipses marks (typically rendered as a vertical row of dots), which further [...]

Awhile back I made a list of ways to depict music in comics. This strip from Gordo by Gus Arriola makes a good addendum. Love those abstractions.

I’m working on a mini-comic of short experiments right now and one of them deals with representations of music in comics. I’ve come up with a few, and I queried the Oubapo list for more (those who responded are listed after their suggestion). I thought I’d share what’s come up so far: 1. Musical notes [...]

Gray Horses by Hope Larson. Oni Press, 2006. Somehow I’ve gone this long without reading one of Hope Larson’s books, despite rampant praise and some great illustrations I’ve seen around the web (including at her website). I’ve not seen a review that really explained the why of the praise. In Gray Horses, Larson displays skill [...]

In a rare move, I read a superhero comic this weekend. The first year’s worth of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil. I don’t have a lot of superhero books on my shelves, but one of them is Miller and Mazzuchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again. That sequence always impressed as showing a very human superhero [...]