comics

All of the big names, high rollers, heavy hitters were there: WJT Mitchell, William Blake, Scott McCloud, Laura Mulvey, Jacques Tati, Barry Windsor Smith, Mikhail Bahktin, Frank Stockton, Jacques Derrida, Barbara Gordon, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Jacques Lacan. There was even a cameo appearance by Darby Crash, punk rock frontman for the The Germs. And I'm sure Sigmund Freud was lurking around in the background the whole time. It was quite a star-studded guest list.

Not surprisingly, however, they all showed up only in name, on paper, or via powerpoint. Luckily, the conference included work by Aaron Kashtan, Laurie Taylor, John Kennett [Panel 1], James Newlin, Tof Eklund, Mollie Dezern [Panel 5], and Jordana Greenblatt, Rachel Edidin, Katherine Schaeffer [Panel 6] - who all had enough sense to bring along the 'stars' of the conference, in whatever form suited their purpose.  read more »

So during class this week I found myself thinking of comic books for examples of image-text and typography. More specifically, I found myself thinking about Neil Gaiman's Sandman. For those who have never read it, I offer a link of a scan of one of the pages.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v88/sonokitsunekono/Comic%20Scans/del1...  read more »

Assuming that this picture upload works, you should see an example of a meta-picture that I have pulled from a comic book. The image comes from issue #15 (pp. 8-9) of Promethea by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III.

Promethea15p8-9: Promethea #15, pp. 8-9

(Yay, I got it to work! Thanks for the tips today, Zach!)

I recommend that you click on the picture to go to the content page and view it in its original size in order to read the dialogue.

In the image, we see Sophie and Barbara, two incarnations of the Promethea character, walking along a Moebius Strip. If you follow their conversation as they walk along the path, you will see that they are "stuck" in a loop. The only way for them to continue on their journey is for the reader to intervene by turning the page. This calls attention to the "characterness" of the characters. It's going to be difficult to explain what I mean here, so please bear with me.  read more »