MadInkBeard

Up today at the French comics site du9 (which has an English section) is my English translation of a French article by David Turgeon called “Poison River and the vertiginous ellipsis.” I’d be wanting to work on some French translating, and I’d had that article saved to blog about since it was published. So it was a natural fit.

I highly recommend the article, even if you aren’t familiar with Poison River. It begins:

In comics, the ellipsis — a spatio-temporal jump in the narration which happens between panels — is a given which the reader, quite often, ignores. This is normal: if you were constantly distracted by each ellipsis, reading a comic would quickly become tiresome. Most ellipses in comics are “mild”, made to be ignored, but certain ones stand out. This isn’t necessarily because of an error on the artist’s part.

Look for more from me at du9 in the near future.