Abstract Comics: The Anthology 1967 - 2009

From Strand Bookstore

This publication represents the first devoted to this budding genre. It gathers the best abstract comics so far created, including early experiments in the form by cartoonists primarily known for other types of comics, such as Gary Panter, Moebius, Patrick McDonnell, or Lewis Trondheim, and pieces by little-known pieoneers such as Benoit Joly, Bill Boichel and Jeff Zenick, as well as by recent creators who have devoted a good part of their output to perfecting the form, such as Ibn al Rabin, Mark Staff Brandl, & many others. Abstract comics highlight the formal mechanisms that underlie all comics, such as the graphic dynamism that leads, i.e., the eye from panel to panel. Color/b&w.

Review

Douglas Wolk - New York Times Book Review
"[A] fascinating book to stare at, and as with other kinds of abstract art, half the fun is observing your own reactions: anyone who's used to reading more conventional sorts of comics is likely to reflexively impose narrative on these abstractions, to figure out just what each panel ahs to do with the next."

More about the book

As comics has come into its own and gained respectability as an art form in its own right, the focus has often been on different creative approaches to visual storytelling (whether that story is fictional or non-). This anthology, however, edited by Andrei Molotiu, makes the case for the validity of comics as art, whether or not in they are working in the service of some kind of narrative. This is an interesting proposition, one that might seem counterintuitive to many. But that is precisely what makes this volume so compelling--that and the gorgeous abstract visuals that fills is pages.