This isn't off topic.
Following on my from last comments on comic making, I've had the opportunity to explore my POV more actively at the coal face.
I'm now composing another series of strips on my experience with Fibromyalgia.
This autobiographical exercise is engineered under the influence of American Splendor but without Harvey Pekar et al's street level realism.
ASIDE: American Splendor offers a very mundane take on the world. It's day to day narrative existence is held in place by a superb ear for dialogue and considered narrator's voice interventions. That's its strength -- says I , as I work my way through all of the comics in the series.
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I don't know where my work actually locates itself in way of its form. It reminds me of a monologue ( as in a stand-up narrative) driven by a mishmash of 'offers'/suggestions from graphic items that help drive the story line.
If I was drawing the thing I'd fill each panel with intended art, line by line. I'd have to start composing each panel with a completed image in mind.
It would be rather conventional, by default...and it would take me much longer to create each strip.
But since I'm doing this with photomontage, each panel comes together via found graphics and every time I find an item its further manipulation is an unknown option until I start fiddling. So the process is layered by this pulling in of mixed elements and aggregating. The photos I take, hold the mix together and hopefully consolidate the narrative.
It would be rather conventional, by default...and it would take me much longer to create each strip.
But since I'm doing this with photomontage, each panel comes together via found graphics and every time I find an item its further manipulation is an unknown option until I start fiddling. So the process is layered by this pulling in of mixed elements and aggregating. The photos I take, hold the mix together and hopefully consolidate the narrative.
What I am doing I actually began doing way back when I was an adolescent. I used to make cartoonish drawings to illustrate science projects and history lessons. I later kept scrap books where I pasted magazine and newspaper cuttings in the form of collage.
I even collected, cut and pasted a few years of Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip...
Over the years I've designed and laid out many political leaflets so I got to fiddle with images especially found ones. More recently I've paid my dues as a web page designer...
I've also been a dedicated follower of DADAism and am an aficionado of the cultural explosion during the Weimar Republic (Germany before Hitler). Think: montage.
So everything I know, everything I've learnt, is coming together in this effort. And that's besides the theatre -- street theatre, cabaret, puppetry, mask making and performance -- background I also rely on as a toolkit.
Why I should contemplate the question of whether anyone else is doing this, I don't know. It has to be rather eccentric...
But hey, I keep looking for like stuff. Nonetheless, my great inspiration is the political cartoons of Mr Fish. I would look at his cartoons and say, "Wow! What a great way to comment!" He uses a lot of self evident montage elements in his work. The Fish got me thinking....what if?
All my chickens have come home to roost.
How good it is, in terms of other peoples' endorsement, is not something that concerns me at all. It certainly appeals to me and I get one helluva kick out of doing this.
That's enough.
Since I began, only in July, I have created almost 50 comic strips although I began without any of my current montage-ing skills and preferences. Now my routine and learning curve are consolidating.
Some panels, in my estimation, are impressive -- ie: by my standards of what I want or like.
The other interesting feature of this process is the logic of the 'one home', the one comic strip of a set size. The template forces me to actively try to bend the form in order to go where I want to take it. While the formula has its limits and imposes a certain discipline I am surprized how far I can push this as I learn the graphic language.
