Like Habibi last year, it will be one of the few comics that the larger public will hear about, and will be encouraged to read. It’s very likely that Chris Ware’s Building Stories will be the most publicized alternative comic release of 2012. Has anyone seen this technique used intentionally? Posted in Blog, Top Featured | Tagged Adam Hines, Building Stories, Chris Ware, Duncan the Wonder Dog, Jaime Hernandez, Love Bunglers, Orion Martin What’s In the Wonder Box It seems bizarre to structure a page layout in multiple ways, but I’ve found some comics that can be read multi-directionally with only mild discomfort. However, it can also be read in columns (+=#~) for a compatible, but different, meaning.
Image of path dependent comics: By Orion Martinīy traditional rules, the comic would be read in rows, +#=~. Instead of a narrative progression, I read the pages as clouds of remembered moments, letting each fall into place in due time.īut what if an author embraced a more fluid, path-dependent story-telling style? Recently, while reading Chris Ware’s Building Stories, I found myself completely ignoring the path that he had imagined. It is not the foresight into the future that one gains from glancing at the bottom of the page, but a jarring experience of learning that something you have already witnessed has not yet happened. On the other end of the spectrum is a book like Adam Hines’s Duncan the Wonderdog, in which I felt like I was constantly losing my way in a forest of nearly identical panels.Įach time I misread the sequence of panels, I experience a temporal hiccup in the flow of the story. In these comics, the panel design disappears, much like the word “said” disappears in literature. I appreciate the sturdy 2 by 3 layouts in the work of Chester Brown and the Hernandez Brothers.
It’s impossible to get lost in Jaime Hernandez’s Love Bunglers. Often I am forced to read for context and then sort out which panel occurs first in the sequence, like listening to a skipping CD and trying not to lose the beat. When I reach the end of a panel, I am pulled in multiple directions and clumsily leap towards whatever I feel is closest. I’ve never mastered the art of moving from one panel to the next.
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