Worlds in Panels

Are Comics Like Reading with Training Wheels?

[13.Oct.09] :. Reading a comic requires multiple forms of literacy and levels of interpretation. Every movement from word to image and back again so as to create a coherent, narrative whole engages the reader’s brain in distinct ways.
 

Comic Re-Imagining

[18.Sep.09] :. Not all comic book adaptations are created equal, especially not when comparing our own imaginings with what actually happens when books are moved from print to screen.
 

Comics, Art for the Idiosyncratic

[11.Aug.09] :. With little pressure to conform to storytelling or visual norms, comics are rife with artists like Jason Shiga, who bends and splices genres, and whose aesthetic sense is readily identifiable as his own.
 

Barbara Thorson, Giant Killer, is Within Us All

[9.Jul.09] :. We needn’t substitute our daily fears with the supernatural to understand what it means to adopt different identities for different purposes and to feel both tied to and apart from others, but in Barbara’s case, it helps.
 

Is the ‘New York Times’ Tracking Porn Sales Now?

[2.Jun.09] :. That “comics” persists in connoting “pulp” and “graphic novels” implies something “literary” is purely a matter of convention, and is not because those are the inherent meanings or implications of the terms.
 

Meaningless Landscapes: G. Willow Wilson’s and M.K. Perker’s ‘air’

[14.May.09] :. Airports and airplanes are extreme manifestations of a placeless McWorld, and Jihad is a backward-looking form of resistance to that placelessness, but we need not be limited by those choices.
 

English-Only? Not Quite: Linguistic Difference in Jessica Abel’s La Perdida

[26.Mar.09] :. The interaction between cartoonist, language, and reader is unusually subtle and complex in Jessica Abel's La Perdida
 

Getting Through Hard Times: Re-visiting Andi Watson’s Breakfast After Noon

[25.Feb.09] :. In our sobering economy, Breakfast After Noon is more relevant than ever, as it addresses the psychic and emotional toll of unemployment.
 

Convergence Culture: the Many Faces of Hellboy

[15.Jan.09] :. Different media means different Hellboys. Mike Mignola's versus Guillermo del Toro's.
 

Capturing the Abstract in the Concrete

[16.Dec.08] :. What do the worlds contained within comics, within and between panels, tell us about the worlds in which we live out our lives?