Tuesday, July 17, 2012

pages from Apeiron, by Miroljub Todorović



a couple of pages from Todorović's unfinished verbo-visual novel (verbalno vizuelnog romana) Apeiron or Apejron, created from 1973 to 1975. In an email, he told me that some pages had been published in literary magazines in the 1970s & '80s. 2 more pages are visible here & here (12th one down).

Miroljub was the founder of the Yugoslav avant-garde movement Signalism (or Signalizam), & was active as a visual poet, mail artist & publisher, as well as wearing other artistic hats. More information: >>>***>>>.

I'm interested in the idea of a visual novel, which is a cousin of the graphic novel, but emerging from somewhere other than comics.

[Added on 9 May 2013:
 Mycelium samizdat publishers has published excerpts from Apeiron here, including verbal sections translated from Serbian into English by Sibelan Forrester. With the verbal sections included, it has a feeling of poetic science fiction.

According to Wikipedia, the term visual novel is used in Japan to describe digital graphic novels which include some minimal sections where you play a game, & sometimes including non-interactive moving images.]

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

A reminder to attend our Comic-Con panel

...  on Kirby, Modernism, and Abstraction, Friday at 2:30 pm in room 26AB.  If Heidi at the Beat tells you to go, you know you ought to go.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Updates: Kirby and Abstraction at Comic-Con, new strip at Carousel, etc.

Ok, so I know I've been MIA off this blog for the last six weeks or so.  Sorry!  (I'm sure you don't want to hear my excuses, but rest assured that I have them if needed.)  But I have some news:



The San Diego Comic-Con is almost upon us.  If you are attending, please come to my session on "Jack Kirby, Modernism and Abstraction," Friday 2:30-3:30 pm.  AC anthology contributor Mark Badger and I will discuss--well, we'll discuss what it says in the title of the session, plus we'll show a number of published and unpublished abstract comics, by the two of us and by others, influenced by the King.


(Shown above:  two Kandinsky/Kirby comparisons.  Think of them as addenda to my earlier "Kirby slash" post.)

Also, I have a new four-panel strip at Carousel. (Online and in the new print issue.) I'm still trying to get this four-panel form down. This time: words & photos. The underlying story is that I took all the photographs on my flight, last year, to and from SDCC, where I gave a talk on abstract comics.  There's actually even more to the story than that, but I'll only have time to tell it after I come back from San Diego.



Thirdly--I have a batch of new drawings over at Blotcomics.  You might enjoy them.  Some are sort of Kirbyish.