Gary Panter's "Zomoid," 1983

(Posted with Gary's permission)









Originally published (on yellow copy paper) as an 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" four-page mini by Ray Zone, as part of his "Zomoid illustories" series of minis. This version from "Zomoid Illustories," a comic-book collection of the minis, 1989.

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Ray Zone, The Comics Journal 102, September 1985:



Though brief, it's one of the earliest and best analyses of what abstract comics can do--or how a work can function on the borderline between comics and gallery art.

I wish I had known of this piece earlier: I would have definitely included it in the anthology. Oh well, this way we know we have good stuff in stock for the (eventual) second volume!

Atension

Here's a new one done with ink and watercolor. I have abstract comics fever...

Vocabulary of emotion--cumulative results (so far)

In the spirit of Alexey's own work (just you wait till you see his piece in the anthology), I combined the responses so far--Alexey's, Mike's, Joumana's and mine:



Here it is without mine (because those big blots tend to overwhelm everything):



And here are mine and Mike's combined (I thought they worked well together, especially "femininity" and "peacefulness"):

Alexey's moodercise

Here's my response:



It's a bit, umm, conceptual. First I just made marks trying to stay unaware of the caption for each panel. Then in photoshop I moved those marks around, erased some, rotated others, switched them from square to square, until they seemed to echo their captions...

I did this because my first, more straightforward, attempt kind of sucked--it just felt overly literal and obvious. I like this one better, though I'm not sure it fully responds to Alexey's brief.