MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Overby, Jason. Exploding He[a]d Man. Self-published, 2009. 96p for $6 from discretefunk.com. This is going on my best comics of 2009 list, no question. Jason Overby impresses me more and more with each new comic of his I see. (Beautiful piece in the Abstract Comics anthology, by the way.) I’ve been sitting on this one [...]

The profusion of “graphic novels” into the regular book market amounts to a full blown publishing fad. I’m often bothered by the publications I see released and the often poor quality of the results (that Howard Zinn adaptation being a great bad example that came my way). The impulse seems to be to create a “graphic novel” without a lot of regard to the appropriateness of the form for the content.

I picked up 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail at a bookstore (kudos to them that I found it in the political section and not the comics section), partially expecting a disaster, partially hoping it would be a really interesting use of the form for non-fictional reporting. At first glance, the visuals in the book are something different, which also piqued my curiosity.

Having read this twice, my first question is: Who is the intended audience?

Overby, Jason. Solipsist’s Doodles. 2008. 5.5″ x 8.5″ mini, 32 pages, $2.75 from his site. After I wrote about his previous mini, Jessica, Jason Overby was kind enough to send me his most recent publication. While I was impressed by the style and disappointed by the story of Overby’s last work, the three short stories [...]

When you look at people reading manga on the train for instance, you can see that when there is dialog on a page, they read them, but when a page is without text, they just breeze through it. And yet, the author’s intention is just the opposite: if there’s a page without text, it’s because [...]

By way of a column by Jennifer de Guzman where she is lamenting the lack of depth and breadth in comics criticism/blogs, I was lead to Katherine Farmar’s two part (part one, part two) comparison of a page from Gaiman’s Sandman and a page from Matt Fraction’s Thor. She is mostly concerned with the text, [...]

Two strips from the 1967-1968 volume of The Complete Peanuts by Charles Schulz (Fantagraphics, 2008). These panels from the February 14, 1967 strip have a certain manic energy to them that contrasts with Schulz’s usually calm images. Even images such as Charlie Brown getting knocked out of his clothes by another well hit baseball does [...]

Shaw, Dash. Bottomless Belly Button. Fantagraphics, 2008. 9781560979159. $29.99, 720p. If I summarized the plot of Dash Shaw’s brick of a comic, Bottomless Belly Button (henceforth, BBB), it wouldn’t sound like much. Three grown-up children return to their family home for a week to learn that their aged parents are getting divorced, psychology ensues, then [...]

My previous post about using words instead of images (borrowing an example from Ben Towle) was a bit of a throwaway post, a brief thought that I did not elaborate. Thanks to some of my insightful commenters, I am forced to give more thought to my post. The point of my original post (almost completely [...]

Over at his blog, Ben Towle, in discussing layouts and finishes asks of a particular panel: Now, why can’t I just write “breathtaking view” and be done with it instead of having to draw hundreds of buildings!? I’d hazard that he could. I’ve posted a few times about comic artists using words as a descriptive [...]

Trains Are… Mint by Oliver East. Blank Slate Books, 2008. Hardcover, color, 122p, $24.99. (You can order from here.) Trains Are… Mint #5 by Oliver East. Rolling Stock Press, 2008. 52p. color mini, 5 pounds. Oliver East walks around England (Manchester and its environs), from train station to train station, trying to follow the tracks [...]

Jon Vermilyea and Frank Santoro. Cold Heat Special #1. 11″ x 16″, 16 p. $3. Dash Shaw and Frank Santoro. Cold Heat Special #3. 5″ x 8.5″, 16 p. $3. Chris Cornwell. The Chunky Gnars: A Chocolate Gun Tribute. 7.125″ x 5.5″, 16p. $3. Posts following up on my best of 2007 list seems to [...]

All Over Coffee by Paul Madonna. City Lights, 2007. 178 p, color, hardcover. $24.95. View the online archive. I like to think I keep up on what’s new in comics, so I wonder how it is that I found this book by happenstance on the shelf of Million Year Picnic in Cambridge while vacationing in [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]