This comic is by Ellen Forney. It’s part of her excellent collection, I Love Led Zeppelin, which you should read.
At the moment I’m really interested in comics’ potential for integrating fictional and non-fictional elements into one narrative. For example, if you were writing a short story about a hand surgeon, it’s hard to imagine reading paragraphs about the intricacies and fine points of reattaching digits without falling asleep. But with comics, it seems totally reasonable that something like the above might be part of a larger story, seemlessly integrated, and really engaging. (I should note that this is a standalone page, and NOT part of a larger narrative. But if COULD be.)
More on this later, maybe. In the meantime, check out Ellen’s blog.
Cool idea. Why not? That’s a page out of the David Foster Wallace book of literary devices, kind of like his hideously long footnotes that are engaging in their own right. And within a hands-on graphic medium, perhaps there’s potential for fold-out pages where the asides figuratively and literally branch off from the main body of work.
that’s a fun idea about the “fold out” pages…i’m going to play with incorporating the stuff into the actual flow of the story and see what happens
Reminds me of an instruction manual: another genre of image + word integration. Really, what else is an instruction manual but a comic strip? The punchline, of course, is the completed model–the coming together of each part to form something new. IKEA has thrown out words all together from their manuals, which is interesting to me–it’s like admitting that language fails, or is too clunky and costly, or it’s meanings don’t or can’t translate. The notion seems primitive and futuristic at once.
absolutely!!!
Oh, I’d love to see a comic short story about the character working his way through an instruction manual.