I don’t remember when I last had a physical copy of this around the house, but I just got my hands on another crate full of my 2006 graphic novel, Sortmund!

Quite basically, the book is a murder mystery with a heavy tinge of occultism, but insidiously uses that framework to discuss religion, love, and community. What makes life worth living, really—as seen from a Faustian point of view.

If you’re not a Danish reader, you’ll have to take my word for it (the book remains unpublished in other languages) or hey, why not trust Rod McKie instead? He got the gist of the story from the pictures alone, and even seemed to like the drawings all the same.

Sortmund is a 292 pages hardcover, featuring black/white/red interior art. It was published 2006 to critical acclaim in major Danish print media. $4030+shipping

Yes, this has been a sales pitch. Until I set up a proper web store, contact me via mail to inquire about shipping to your location. Or DM me on Twitter for a really fast reply

I find that incredibly fascinating; that a book, which I have always thought of as rather dialogue-driven, narrates so well visually, too. Mind you, I’m not blowing my.own horn here, a lot of water has run under the bridge since I finished Sortmund, and I’ll be the first to point out its flaws.

Once again, it’s mostly to Rod’s credit that he got it. What follows is a rambling meditation on the comics form, which fell out of my head after reading his post:

You often hear the question from non-comics readers, “How do you read these things?” People don’t know if they’re supposed to read text or image first, where I suppose we trained readers take both in at a glance. So yes, Rod is not just a reader, he’s a professional drawer; he knows the language of comics, as his review also shows.

But everybody can read comics, it’s just a matter of the visual grammar used in the individual work that might pose an obstacle. There are different kinds of visual shorthand that make sense to readers accustomed to the genre, form, or even culture in which the comic is created—but may be incomprehensible to beginning comics readers.

Take the banner image at the top of this site, which is my own joke on those clouds of dust that follow people running in gag cartoons and strips (only in my drawing, the cartoon-me isn’t moving, so oh man, I just ruined the joke). It may originate in animated cartoons from the ’40s, where Tom & Jerry, et al would leave a cloud behind when they broke into a sprint.

Or, remember when DragonBall appeared in the West? Didn’t take anybody long to figure out what those instant nosebleeds meant, but I’m sure we all had a short, head-scratching moment before the shoe dropped. That. That’s how untrained readers feel about comics all the time.

Provided of course they only pick up manga, or superhero comics. Those things are like being thrown into Advanced Mechanics class when you just want to learn to drive a car. No, everybody can read comics, across language barriers. It’s mostly the idiomatic trappings that cut off new readers, or the required trivial knowledge of, say, Wolverine’s past as a mercenary in WWII. That was all the cape-bashing for this post, I promise.

Everybody can read comics, and most of us do on a daily basis. If not daily strips in the newspaper, then instructional infographics. They help us not going into the wrong toilet, finding the emergency exit, or using chopsticks in Asian restaurants, etc. Of course, polemics aside, what we think of as comics tend to be a tad more narrative, or even expressive, than the assembly of a Billy bookcase.

Instead of just using framing for clarity and focus, cartoonists use it in a narrative manner, to convey setting, ambience, mood, tension, or release. The same goes for layouts, pacing to time the page turn; light, shadow, colours. Those are the elements of grammar used by the comics creator.

And intuitively so—making comics, we play on the heartstrings of the reader no less than the Don Drapers of the world, or any other propagandist. The most important part of that is not letting them feel it when we play them. Or making them like it (and by “them” I mean “you,” but ignore that for now).

Even when you learn to recognise the techniques and slights of hand, a story well told suspends that cold rationality, because it is more interesting than the mechanisms that switch the backdrops and make the puppets move.

At their finest, comics are not the even balance of text and image that some people would claim; they are visual narratives, using text only for emphasis, or for elaboration. For those things that absolutely must, or cannot, be told, not shown. Most of the time, however, the words just fly out of the characters’ mouths in abundance, like the celebratory pomp of an Olympic opening ceremony (that was a pun on “balloons”. You’re welcome).

Circling back on our starting point: Aside from the fact that Rod works with visual storytelling for a living, I think the language “barrier” became a reason in itself for him to read the images more intently. I’ve had some great experiences personally, trying to wrench meaning from foreign-language comics. You become more inquisitive as a reader when you approach the work as a puzzle to be solved.

Rod speculates briefly on how his comics horizon might have expanded if he were not an English reader, or if he had learnt more languages and been able to read more works untranslated to his native tongue. I’m in the same situation by proxy, so to speak, teaching myself only english so I could read the US comics I was mostly interested in, in my pre-teens.

I’m not sure anymore if we should regret it so much. We share another language.

[I]n order to exist the series must:
1 – Have an hero. The hero (be it Tintin or Corto Maltese or John Difool) is not a fully developed character, it’s more of a void designed to be filled by the reader with positive things.
2 – A cast of stereotyped characters: the faithful reader knows that this one does this, that one does that. The reader who likes mainstream stuff usually doesn’t want to be surprised (Obelix *always* says that he wants to drink the magic potion; Captain Haddock *always* wants to drink scotch; etc…).
3- A set of stereotyped situations. The plot obeys to a few fixed rules. In adventure comics the thing goes more or less like this: the bad guys attack, the bad guys defeat the good guys, the good guys make a come back and win. The End. In comical comics the hero (or antihero) always commits the same errors, etc…
4 – Adventure follows adventure and the hero and his friends never age. It’s as if nothing happened from story to story (the few exceptions to this rule are far from being perfect).
5 – Psychological depth, what’s that?!

The graphic novel is a strategy to fight the blunt commercialism of the series, it’s the anti-series. Calling a collection of children’s stories (about superheroes, for instance) a “graphic novel” is a co-optation by the sharks, smelling fresh money.

From a blog post by comics critic Domingos Isabelinho.

I think comic people are recognizing the importance of having revenue streams at all levels of publication, to make it sustainable

April 17, 2012 14:43 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

...says @Inkybat who has cut out the middleman and is self-publishing his gothilicious Marrowbones comics for tablets! #fromthehorsesmouth

April 17, 2012 15:17 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm It actually has more to do with speed than economics, wanting more material available. Trad. publishing is very slow.

April 17, 2012 15:26 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat I know, in more ways than one. One reason I'm making my own little books now.

April 17, 2012 15:32 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

Said “little books” available here, here, here, and here… We return to our scheduled program:

@haverholm I'm still working all this out, publishing seems to be a bunch of things now....

April 17, 2012 15:41 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@haverholm as in digital is an ongoing changing process and print is the artifact.

April 17, 2012 16:02 via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat Yeah, blogging, for one thing. Imagine every blog having an ISBN...

April 17, 2012 15:45 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@Inkybat I guess it's really just making something public, in a distributable or accessible form?

April 17, 2012 15:47 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm Yeah, I think access is a big thing. Acceptable pricing to a lesser degree.But that needs a lot more research.But access for sure

April 17, 2012 15:53 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat Somehow I would like to see people publishing paper objects with the same (lack of) filter they publish things online.

April 17, 2012 15:49 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm I think visibility and access are the 2 big things in digital.

April 17, 2012 15:54 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat When you see it that way, putting your book on TPB isn't that big a step. It's all publishing.

April 17, 2012 15:58 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm absolutely. I'm adopting the philosophy that digital publishing is more fluid and less exact while print is a more finished thing

April 17, 2012 16:00 via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat Exactly, which is why we make certain updates and samples freely available as "blog posts" :)

April 17, 2012 15:57 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm and both free content and paid online content is all part of that fluidity.

April 17, 2012 16:04 via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat It's more like being a street musician. People can stop and listen; if they like the music they'll tip, and maybe buy the CD.

April 17, 2012 16:03 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

@haverholm yes! And I've received 'tips' or donations beyond the price of the comic.

April 17, 2012 16:04 via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Inkybat

eric orchard

@Inkybat And with digital publishing you won't have to play guitar in the rain...

April 17, 2012 16:04 via twiccaReplyRetweetFavorite

@haverholm

Allan Haverholm

And it kind of petered out from there. Eric went on to write an almost shocking blog post about his rookie experience with digital self-publishing. “Shocking” in the ease with which he got the technical side sorted out, making one wonder how long there will still be a mass market for dead-tree books…

Warning, language barrier! It’s in Danish, but a Google or Babelfish translation will cause much merriment:
http://nummer9.dk/artikler/tweets-og-pantomime/

Nummer 9 is really a very respectable, Danish comics news site, so make sure to laugh with them, but at me!

KŌAN collects a selection of sketchbook comics from winter 2011, thematically arranged in three sections: Travel, Home, and Surveys.

In Zen tradition, a kōan is a statement that is meant to evade reason, but rather rely on intuition and lateral thinking. KŌAN attempts to present you with a visual equivalent.

This 64-page book measures 21x26cm, colour cover printed on heavy 200g/sm watercolour paper, BW interiors on ivory 130g/sm Munken Pure. $25 + shipping.

Every copy is lovingly spiralbound, and cut by hand by the artist (sizes may vary slightly due to this).

Enquire about availability and shipping costs.

Visit the KŌAN minisite for samples!

SEX & VIOLENCE is a flipbook made in collaboration with Mattias Elftorp, creator of the cyberpunk saga Piracy is Liberation.

The book contains two mirroring first-person narratives, VIOLENCE by Mattias Elftorp, and SEX by yours truly. Anti-authoritarian and erotic, respectively, both are probably NSFW.

The book is 24 pages total, measuring 20.5x26cm these are hardly minicomics! Colour covers printed on 180g/sm artist’s paper, and BW insides on semigloss 120g/sm stock, $12 + shipping.

Every copy is lovingly stapled, folded, and cut by hand (sizes may vary slightly due to this).

Enquire about availability and shipping costs

LOTS is a long dive into the universe of the TV series Lost, 40 pages of spontaneous impressions from the Island.

Drawn during a feverous night of watching season 2 of Lost, the book depicts only background elements and compositions, this is not a retelling of the storyline.

The colour cover is printed on both sides of 200g/sm watercolour paper, the crisp BW interiors on 110g/sm artist’s paper. Format 14x14cm, $10 + shipping.

Every copy lovingly folded, stapled, and cut to size by the artist (sizes may vary slightly due to this).

Enquire about availability and shipping costs!

30 DAYS OF COMICS is a print collection of my work during November 2011, one comic for each day of the month.

All material is available on this site, but here is why you want to get your hands on the print version:

The book is 44 pages BW & colour in a heavy stock latte-coloured cover with flaps. Format 20×14.5cm, $10 + shipping.

Every copy is lovingly stapled, folded, and cut by hand (sizes may vary slightly due to this).

Enquire about availability and shipping costs!