Comics With Spines

2011-03-14

“Comic Book Logic.” Does anyone know who drew this?

This is good news. The new website design looks mad hip and exciting. I’m looking forward to reading a good deal of quality writing. They’re posting every issue in the online archive, starting from the first one in 1977.

2011-03-06

I addressed the elements hitherto regarded as “instinctive” and tried to examine the art form’s parameters. In doing so I found that I was involved with an “art of communication” more than simply an application of art.

— Will Eisner, Foreword to Comics and Sequential Art

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Google’s birthday tribute today to Will Eisner. Also, Scott McCloud wrote about Eisner’s legacy in the official Google blog.

2010-07-20

Drawing is easier to teach than critical thinking. Don’t get me wrong, rendering well is a tremendous asset for a cartoonist. Still, I think it is often over emphasized. In fact, many of the great cartoonists sublimate their drawing skills and instead favor a style that relies more heavily on graphic design. They distill images until they function more as language or picture-writing.

— James Sturm, founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, on accepting students with weak drawing skills but strong literacy (Slate). Perhaps when comics first came out, it was much easier to make the comparison to paintings and such. But, now that graphic design has become a ubiquitous art form in addition to being seriously studied, the knowledge built from graphic design seems to be more translatable to comics than older visual art forms. At least this is how I like to think about it because I lack a traditional visual art background. I’d be interested in hearing what comic artists think about Sturm’s opinion.

2010-07-16

For me personally, I have to be mindful of my own way of seeing the world. I’m not trying to reproduce the way the world actually looks as much as the way I imagine that it looks. Years ago, cartoonists would have a “morgue file,” which contained photos of every imaginable reference: cars, radio sets, boats, buildings. But I don’t want anything like that. To me, it’s much more valid to remember what something looks like. For instance, if I wanted to draw a Starbucks store, I could take a photo and then trace it. But what I really want is an internal impression of what a Starbucks feels like.

— Daniel Clowes on capturing his own reality (McSweeney’s). This responds well to my question about what drawing adds to the mind and body processes of creating and digesting comics. Somehow, you are also capturing your own impressions of what something feels like, in addition to what it looks like. That, to me, is the difference between a cold photograph and an emotionally rich panel.

2010-07-15

Whereas Chris Ware talks about cartooning as typography, I think of it as calligraphy. I like the panel borders, lettering, brush or pen lines to all read as the author’s handwriting.

— Craig Thompson on how he would describe his style of drawing (Doot Doot Garden Blog). I love the idea that drawing comics is a form of handwriting. It makes me think about what subconscious details go from an artist’s eye to the brain to the hand — and, on the other side, from the page, to the reader’s eye, to the brain, and then that moment of recognition that what you’re seeing is art.

2010-07-14

Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s

William Utermohlen, an American artist in London, did a series of self portraits after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. Details faded and his perception became highly abstract as he slipped deeper into dementia. The two pieces are from 1967 (left) and 2000 (right). This is a very sad example of how integral the mind is to understanding and conveying images. Full article available at the New York Times.

2010-07-13

“Steam from warm air expelled during conversation can be seen. It is logical to combine that which is heard within that which is seen resulting in a visualized image of the act of speaking.”

— Will Eisner on the comic convention of the speech balloon in Comics and Sequential Art (1985)

2010-07-12

I use very simple, flat colors and that’s something I have an affinity with and really love, and I really like some painterly comics but at a certain point, they don’t feel like comics any more. They feel like illustrations with some text slapped on top of them. I feel the main genius of the cartoons like Peanuts, Krazy Kat, and others is the simplicity of it.

— Paul Hornschemeier on his use of detail and coloring (ArtStyle Blog).