The Creeps

(From Hellblazer #25 by Morrison and Lloyd.) Note the thickness of each nested mask's outline. This is for tomorrow.

Hockey Hauser, Eh

In Kaspar Diane Obomsawin does the story of the 19th century foundling with many many placid effects like above's scissored starburst and below's delightful locomotion.

Who Am I? Ware Am I?

Though I'm still working my way through Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library #19 (stupid small words), I wanted to halt and appreciate this wheezy sequence from the volume's lead story, a Rusty Brown-penned tale of woe on Mars.

Outward-facing flashlight demands judgment.

Sneak Peek: Victor Cutwell

Page 3 of a 4-page prologue to an in-the-works Charles Grocery comic.

More Like Dull-uge

My title's unfair but I wish more pages in Josh Neufeld's A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge were like the one above: distorted, detached, outside-looking-in. The book is generally concerned with one-note in-the-thick experiences of good will and survival. It's too earnest, its criticisms of Bush too tranquil, and its color-coded mood shifts arbitrary. But Neufeld manipulates panel size to great effect: scenes often lead up to dramatic and sometimes grim two-page spreads.

Fumbling Loggerheads

I regret that I've seen so little of Tony Millionaire's work save for this, a Sock Monkey story, and his recent piece about Iron Man battling criminal cold cuts in Marvel's Strange Tales #2. This is "The Bat-Man" written by Chip Kidd in DC's Bizarro Comics.

I could inhabit those nostrils.

Gotham Ain't Venice, Son

Look at that sewer steam, goddammit! Good to see Kelley Jones do Batman again, especially since I missed out on Gotham After Midnight. I'll commit to 5 issues (well, maybe), not 12. Doug Moench's script for Batman Unseen #1 is herky-jerky at best, but I'll always have a soft spot for Moench and Jones' spooky run on Batman (#515-552, minus a few) when I was a youth.

Enjoy my meat puns.

Okay, There's Talking Now

Under the watchful eyes of these two pages from Sammy Harkham's Poor Sailor and as a kind of summary of comics silence, I offer the following:

-Inwardness, isolation
-Suggestion
-The end of communication/interaction
-Body language, the tip of the hat to imagery
-Disorder, scramble
-Anticipation of communication/interaction
-Suspense
-Tranquility
-Effort, work, process
-Emptiness, minimalism (certainly silence is opposed to the splash page. Silence, I think, depends on panel size; a two-page spread transgresses silence by being loud even if silent)

The scene in Poor Sailor: a husband contemplates going to sea with his brother, which would result in abandoning his wife and their unfinished home.

I'll finish with Chester Brown's Louis Riel. This typical-for-Brown four-panel sequence dramatizes at least a few of the modes I've entertained above.