Comments on: Two Panels by Herge

By: Kuifje door Hergé « Sequentie

Kuifje door Hergé « Sequentie — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:52:54 +0000

[...] uit Kuifje was, omdat hij daar eigenlijk heel veel wist te vertellen in één beeld (zie ook op de website van Derik Badman). Als test heb ik dit beeld uiteen getrokken in drie [...]

By: J. Overby

J. Overby — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:26:41 +0000

Thanks, and ditto!

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:39:02 +0000

Guilty? Bah. As long as the work is interesting.

By: J. Overby

J. Overby — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:29:11 +0000

oh, yeah – love that stuff, of course, but it’s such a natural mode for me that I feel guilty, I guess.

By: DerikB

DerikB — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:47:03 +0000

I totally agree. The best parts, to me, of Tintin of these isolated moments where you can find something interesting going on. I think of it more as a learning experience, and I get more out of Tintin that way than as a story I get real engaged with.

I’ve never been real desirous of making work that is stylistically invisible or narratively seamless. Probably comes from my early love of 60s metafiction and that ilk (Borges, Calvino, Barth).

By: J. Overby

J. Overby — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:32:06 +0000

Hmmm… that said, I’m currently reading Denis Johnson’s “The Name of the World” and really liking the flat stylistic tone a lot. Pretty seamlessly well crafted… but the content is a lot different from Hergé’s, too.

By: J. Overby

J. Overby — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:21:10 +0000

I’ve talked quite a bit with Blaise about wanting to make comics that function as seamlessly as this, where the form is virtually invisible and nothing gets in the way of the narrative, but I just don’t Think I have it in me. I get caught up in tangents and weird ideas I have in the moment, and I feel weird about not revealing “myself” as the storyteller. I was listening to this Annie Proux audiobook today, and I just hated it – there was nothing urgent about it, just a re-hash of Jim Thompson and Elmore Leonard and stylistic “quirks” from creative writing seminars. I think I feel the same way about Tintin, and that’s, maybe, why I’m not so into it. I don’t hate Tintin, but it’s not very exciting to me. It’s crafted so well that it’s almost too seamless for me. I can’t make comics like that. But it may just be that I was too lazy to ever learn to draw well representationally…

By: DerikB

DerikB — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:02:59 +0000

With Tintin, Herge does some much subtly, from a formal perspective, that it's almost invisible. The way he handles the turn of the page, or the movement of characters across the page. It all reads so seamlessly that you don't think of it at all.

By: J. Overby

J. Overby — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:41:57 +0000

good post. Relates, I think, to Jason Miles's post on comicscomics about the Shadow and Kyle Baker. To me, Hergé, is much more subtle and artful. His explanations are so lucid and articulate. I'm not really a fan of Tintin, but the process behind his decisions is fascinating, and he is a beautiful draftsman.