Talk at Victoria University of Wellington for the International Institute of Modern Letters, on visual language and poetry in comics (6 July 2018). All artwork is, of course, the property of the copyright holders.

4. Dialect

5. Clamp,
Cardcaptor
Sakura

6. Hergé, Tintin in Tibet

7. Yves Chaland

9. Rodolphe Töpffer, L’Histoire d’Albert (1845)

13. Idiom (genre)

14. John Stanley

15. Mike Sekowsky

16. Johnny Craig

17. Marjane Satrapi,
Persepolis

18. Ron Rege Jr, Diana

19. Register

20. Chris Ware

21. Chris Ware

22. “I think drawing is about… trying to see. It’s more about detail
and looking.
Whereas cartooning is making a story happen with symbols….
Comics are pictures to be read, not just looked at.”
Chris Ware

23. B. Kliban

24. Voice

25. Rob Liefeld

26. Robert Crumb

27. Robert Crumb

28. Robert Crumb

29. “To me, Crumb’s sketchbooks reveal an insatiable desire to see the world.
There are drawings in his sketchbooks of trees, and light through windows,
that to me are beautiful, even heart-wrenching.... I’m not copying Crumb’s
drawing style, but his overall empathy.”
Chris Ware

30. “Chris Ware’s work has single-handedly
restored my faith in humanity.”
Dan Clowes

31. Harold Gray,
Little Orphan Annie

32. Chester Brown,
Louis Riel

33. Jack Kirby Chester Brown

34. Charles Burns,
Black Hole

35. Dan Clowes,
David Boring

36. Gabriella
Giandelli

37. John Porcellino,
Perfect Example

38. John Porcellino,
King Cat

39. Gabrielle Bell

40. Edmund Baudoin

41. C.F.
(Christopher
Forgue)

42. Aisha Franz

43. Sam Alden,
It Never Happened Again

44. Syntax and grammar

45. Hergé
Tintin In Tibet

47. Kevin
Huizenga

48. Chris WareChris Ware,
Building Stories

49. Rhythm

50. Winsor McCay,
Little Nemo in Slumberland
(1905-1914)

51. Julia Gfrörer

52. Carol Swain,
Gast

53. Metaphor

54. Chantal Montellier,
La Fosse aux Serpents

55. David B.,
Epileptic

56. Anders Nilsen

57. Personal vocabulary

58. Leela
Corman

64. Leela
Corman

65. Gabriella
Giandelli

66. Simon Hanselmann

67. Shigeru Mizuki

68. Lorenzo Mattotti, Stigmates

69. Shary Boyle, from Kramer’s Ergot 7

70. Jesse Jacobs

71. Jesse Jacobs

72. Nicki Greenberg,
Shakespeare’s Hamlet

73. David Raw,
Drawing Silence

74. Latent poetry

75. Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy

81. Fletcher Hanks

82. Fletcher Hanks

83. Fletcher Hanks

84. Obsessions

85. Jack Kirby

86. Natsumoto Masato, Mobile Suit Gundam 83: Rebellion

87. Masamune Shirow

88. Junji Ito, Umuzaki

89. Junji Ito, Umuzaki

90. Minetaro Mochizuki, Chiisakobe

91. Minetaro Mochizuki, Chiisakobe

92. A poetry of space

93. Kazuichi Hanawa,
Doing Time

94. Julia Wertz

95. Julia Wertz

96. Joe Sacco,
Footnotes in Gaza

97. Joe Sacco

98. Richard McGuire, Here

99. Richard McGuire, Here

100. George Herriman,
Krazy Kat

101. George Herriman,
Krazy Kat

102. George Herriman,
Krazy Kat

103. Physical form

104. Tijuana Bibles

105. Jack T. Chick

106. Karl Wills

107. Chris Ware, Building Stories

110. “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new
medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of
digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and
emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much
modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium
pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the
sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The
blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too
powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of
bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too
momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
Brian Eno

112. Jack Kirby

113. Roy Lichtenstein

116. Art Spiegelman

117. Timothy Kidd,
Western Park

118. David Mazzuchelli,
Discovering America

119. A poetry of the body

120. Alex Schomburg (“Xela”) Matt Baker

121. Julie Doucet

122. Murphy Anderson

123. Burne Hogarth

124. Burne Hogarth

125. Tom of Finland

126. Tom of Finland

127. Lloyd Dangle

128. Pat Grant, Blue

129. Charles Schulz

130. Charles Schulz

131. Charles Schulz

132. Charles Schulz

133. Chris Ware,
Jimmy Corrigan:
Smartest Kid on Earth

136. “I like the colours. This is me. I made it.”
Karen Sutherland
(artist’s statement, IHC art awards 2015)