Dragonhand

I want to wish all of my friends who are hard at work with National Novel Writing Month good fortune and diligent muses. I would love to do it as well, but can't justify the time taken away from late commissions and preparing for Anime USA in three weeks. Commence flailing in T-minus seven days and counting. I did have a brainstorm about it though. Two years ago, actually, but I'm thinking about taking up the challenge this time. If the NaNo goal is 50,000 words in one month, and a picture is worth 1,000 words - and if the NaNo goal is just to write, without regard to polish, might an artist produce 50 pieces of work, ranging from rough sketches to finished pieces, and meet a reasonably equal goal?

Even if you all answer "heck no, you visual punk, go back to your drawing board and stop trying to copy us!", I think it's a good enough idea, and will support my efforts to get things done, that I'm gonna try to do it. So nyah. ^_^ ...so I'm already a couple of days behind, but I'll be posting my progress. Which I desperately need. To avoid the scheduled flailing.

In the book "Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics", by Stanley Wiater and Steven R. Bissette, Alan Moore, a British comic artist, is quoted in an interview as saying:

"I think there are possibilities for the comic medium that have yet to be imagined. Comics are an ancient language, going back as I said earlier to Chinese ideograms, and what we're doing here is establishing the most basic grammar and vocabulary. I hope that later generations will be able to use this grammar and vocabulary to compose magnificanet works. We've barely scratched the surface od what can be done! I mean, when you've got the whole world of words and pictures in conjunction to play with, then you've got everything at your disposal.
  There is nothing that comics cannot do. There's nothing that has been attempted in any other artistic medium that comics could not, eventually, equal or better. It's up to the people who are alive at this time to explore the language as thoroughly as possible to find their own themes, and to follow them relentlessly."  (p. 172-173)


I really like this idea. Comics are a form of art, no matter how the elite deny it, and they can do so much more than they've been allowed to. It's really a wide open field with no limits, and it should be explored. With all that has been done, I have a hard time imagining daring new venues for comics, but I know they're there. Maybe I'll find one in my lifetime. Maybe I'll think of one tomorrow.