My Robot 6 column keeps on rolling with a look at a gorgeous page from a book that probably would have made my top 10 had I read it last year, The Wrong Place. Its artist, Brecht Evens, is one of the most interesting young cartoonists working -- his comics take nothing of the form as it's usually displayed for granted, instead forging a unique path with virtuosic talent and a strong abstract understanding of what the medium is and what it does. I think the page I talked about is a pretty good example: it's a silent watercolor painting that uses a single background spread over every panel of its six-grid -- not exactly Jack Kirby, but just look how beautiful! The kind of departures Evens makes in his work are what keep comics fresh and exciting, so come here and read a lot more about them! The column starts like this:
The printed comics page is rarely allowed to exist as a whole. In comics as they’re traditionally done, the page is basically a vehicle for strings of panels, connected to one another by narrative and the flow of action but usually nothing more. Panels are typically conceived as isolated moments, with poses and camera angles and color schemes unique unto themselves. When one follows the next it almost always tracks the same dialogue streams, the same characters, the same forward thrust of time; but rarely if ever does it expand on the actual space set out in the box before it. Comics cut and cut and cut again, like a film helmed by a hyperactive editor. This is most often a searching medium, forever sliding into new angles and new compositions, looking for a newer and more immediate way into the spaces being set out by the story. Read more
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