Theory

Michael Roberts’ Perl generated webcomic Toonbots has returned, in a manner of speaking, after a grueling nine month hiatus. Continue Reading →

When Scott McCloud tries to explain Understanding Comics to people, he invariably gets asked if it is a “how-to” book because the overview “[a] comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication along the way” may not resonate with too many people not already interested in the inner workings of comics.

Since the release of his first book, McCloud has kept busy in the lecture circuit, with seminars and workshops on comics & technology and the art of comics storytelling. These visual lectures have culminated in a new book, Making Comics, his answer to the “how-to” manual for creating comics. Continue Reading →

Inspired by a debate in a talkaboutcomics.com thread (Read the original thread) about which medium is denser, in terms of storytelling-by-the-inch — prose or comics — I’ve issued the following challenge to cartoonists on my blog. It’s strictly for fun. If anybody wants to play:

A Challenge to Cartoonists

Draw a comic which adapts the following paragraph (click read more for the paragraph), the first paragraph of a classic novel from American literature. The entry must be no more than one standard-sized comics page. It must contain no words. The winner will be the comic that manages to get the most information from this paragraph illustrated clearly, and bdo so in an aesthetically pleasing, entertaining manner. Continue Reading →

No not an article about “Understanding Comics”, but an article about the medium of comics. From Kochalka comes this link to “Comics, Games and World-Building” written by Dylan Horrocks. Definitely worth checking out.
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Jan Van Tol is the author of the software program Comictastic mentioned in an earlier news post this week. Van Tol posted an open letter to cartoonists this past Wednesday. Continue Reading →

Journalista! linked to another article of this “online magazine of the visual narrative” but this article, “Too much is too much. The never innocent laughter of the Comics” is the only one I found somewhat thought provoking. On the other hand I may simply have too much of a short attention span for most of this site.

Here’s the abstract for the article:

The article points out that most of the common theories on comics underestimate this medium. Understanding comics as a medium with a lack of whatever necessarily ‘forgets’ that comics are too much before they are lacking of something. Discussing an early sunday page of the Yellow Kid the essay shows in a condensed way the possibility of an aesthetics of comics that enjoy what is too much for most of the critiques and defenders of comics. Continue Reading →

A discussion between filmmaker Sebastien Dumesnel (director of the upcoming Adventures into Digital Comics) and John Barber (of JohnBarberComics.com and ModernTale’s Vicious Souvenirs fame) is online at TopTwoThreeFilms.com.

Barber opines about mainstream comics, both online and in print, and discusses if it’s even possible to not read comics, which he doesn’t think it is. Barber’s comics are to be among those featured in Dumesnel’s forthcoming film on the impact computers have made on comics. Continue Reading →

Erik Ferguson, over at Bookslut, posts an interview with Scott McCloud that covers Bitpass, some comics theory, and an update on the most current McCloud projects-in-progress. Continue Reading →

The first part of a series focused on the graphic novel and giving form to the “it” in it.

Eisner and Ignatz-nominated creator Rob Vollmar returns to Ninth Art with a new four-part essay that aims to thoroughly address one of the great questions still troubling the comic industry. What exactly is a graphic novel? Continue Reading →