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Arthur, King of Time and Space

11/25/06

David Morgan-Mar of Irregular Comic wrote yesterday about Scott McCloud's latest work, Making Comics, and went off on an interesting tangent in his comment:
... I heartily recommend it. And for anyone who's wondering about the four-way classification of comic artist tribes that McCloud introduces on pages 230-237, and where I see myself in it, I'd classify myself as one of those bizarre diagonal combos that he says are rare and unusual: a Formalist-Animist. For those who haven't read the book, this means that the two highest priorities in my comic making are exploring the comic form itself and stretching its boundaries to see what can be achieved, and telling a (somewhat) decent story. The other two options are the Classicist, concerned with making a skilled work of art, and the Iconoclast, who wants to use comics as a way of expressing deep truths and real life concerns, both of which I have to admit do not feature particularly heavily in what I'm trying to achieve here (although if I can, hey, I'll run with them).

I'm not a big fan of pigeonholing people or things into categories, but it can offer a useful way of thinking about things sometimes. And the very fact that McCloud says a Formalist-Animist is almost a contradiction and very rare in the comics world just makes me glow with pride. :-)

From Morgan-Mar's paragraph summary of McCloud's category system I'd classify myself as a Classicist. Yes, I have telling a "(somewhat)" decent story as a secondary goal here at AKOTAS. There are those (even, sometimes, I) who mistake that for the primary goal, but my primary goal for thirty years has always been making people laugh every day: which I'd say falls under Classicist of McCloud's categories [as Morgan-Mar defines them] if any. As for "skilled work of art"; while my execution leaves room for technical criticism to readers whose top criterion is that sort of thing, I like most of it and remain satisfied that each day's work was the best I was capable of for that day.

Webcomics I read mornings: Kevin & Kell, For Better Or For Worse, Shortpacked, Scary Go Round, Tux & Bunny, Sluggy Freelance, Irregular Comic, Real Life, Peanuts Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: El Goonish Shive, Theater Hopper, Nukees, Newshounds, Girl Genius, Todd and Penguin, Pibgorn, Ctrl+Alt+Del Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: AppleGeeks, Achewood, Kismetropolis, WIGU, Striptease, Digger
Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, Anywhere But Here, Starslip Crisis, Questionable Content, Devil's Panties, Queen of Wands, Schlock Mercenary, Narbonic
Webcomics I read evenings: LuAnn, Count Your Sheep, Goats, Pearls Before Swine, American Elf, Sinfest, Bruno, Boxjam's Doodle Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Reasoned Cognition, Two Lumps, Zortic, Order of the Stick, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Home on the Strange, Penny Arcade Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: Girls With Slingshots, The Green Avenger, Dandy & Company, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Get Out of My Head, Megatokyo
Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Something Positive, Medium Large, Station V3, Dinosaur Comics, Wapsi Square, Help Desk, Sheldon, Little Dee, PvP
Webcomics I read Sundays: xkcd, Minus, Mac Hall, Smithson, The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World, No Room for Magic, Something Happens, Li'l Mell, The Magnificent Adventures of Hieronymus Bosch, esquire, The Whovian Observer, Gossamer Commons, Butternut Squash, General Protection Fault, Perry Bible Fellowship, Ctrl+Alt+Del See also The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, Talk About Comics, The Living Comic, Online Comics Day, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Mister Bloo, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), Fleen, Comixpedia and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.

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