Comics as Communication: A Functional Approach

My academic monograph, Comics as Communication: A Functional Approach is now available from Palgrave Macmillan. It explores an approach to the description and analysis of graphic narrative texts using an approach modelled on the work of MAK Halliday.

You can find out more and purchase a copy via this link.

Welcome to the blog archive

This blog is mostly dormant, and remains a place to see samples from 2009’s Because I Am collection.

You’ll find some scholarly comics on the page linked in the menu above, and more details on my academic work at my academia.edu page.

Thanks for visiting!

Research as comics - Applied Comics Network

Selina lock has blogged the excellent Applied Comics Network meetup I attended recently -- with illustration including some of the comic-form notes I took at the session.


Graduate School Reading Room: Research as comics - Applied Comics Network

BCCS Symposium & Comics Tea Party

Coming soon: British Consortium of Comics Scholars are hosting a symposium and 'comics tea party' at Sussex University. Details are here: https://britishcomicsscholars.wordpress.com

The event is on 30th May 2015 from 10pm. Looking forward to it!

Modernist Afterlives

I'm speaking at University of London's Contemporary Fiction seminar this weekend, on the subject of echoes of modernism in Abstract Comics. Should be interesting!

http://events.sas.ac.uk/ies/events/view/13432/Contemporary+Fiction+Research+Seminar

Over at Graphixia, Peter Wilkins has a writeup of the Bournemouth Comics Rock conference, at which I presented on the work done at Park College creating '24-hour' comics. Both days are covered over two posts, and Peter's review is also appearing on The Comics Grid.

Comics Forum FB Page

Just started helping out with Comics Forum by starting a Facebook page - which you can find at http://www.facebook.com/comicsforumpage.

Article: 5 Film-School Violations in Videogame Cut-Scenes

5 Film-School Violations in Videogame Cut-Scenes
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/09/videogame-cutscenes/

Popped into Dave's Comics today to find that they'd sold all the handful of copies of Because I Am they were keeping there.  Yay!

I'll take them a few more soon - just going to add sticky labels including quotes from the generous reviews it's got. ;)

Cinematics Sans Cutscenes

Excellent article about storytelling in videogames - without giving up and making you sit down and watch a movie.

Notable for its use of Mascelli's Five C's of Cinematography - though I think there's more to be explored here.

"Jaws" by "Charles Schulz" blo... (ifc.com)

A more 'pop culture' R. Sikoryak. 

"Jaws" by "Charles Schulz" blows our minds
http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/08/charles-schulz-jaws.php?fb_ref=news

Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions

Interesting article on the evocation of emotions in fictional media, contrasting the emotions evoked by videogames with those evoked by, say, the novel. 

The argument here is that video games can evoke 'real' ('primary') emotions, such as loss and anger; whereas other fictional media can only evoke 'shadow' emotions - empathic feelings experienced at one remove, hence weaker. 

(In fact, videogames designers often go all out to evoke more of these 'shadow' emotions, by utilising the strategies of traditional narrative and framing the game experience with them.) 

I can see that there is a counter-argument to be made here, exposed by a change of terminology: if we call them empathic emotions, rather than shadow emotions, then we stress their social function - it's the 'higher' response of feeling-for-another, rather than the 'selfish' emotion for oneself. 

Of course one can feel 'real' loss from a book, if one loses the physical book - but is this feeling more valid than the empathic loss felt about a character's death?  Perhaps I'm cheating here by shifting diegesis. 

Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions
http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/07/shadow-emotions-and-primary-emotions.html

Acceptance of Comics (thecomicsbureau.co.uk)

I guess the Blabin will do as a spot for comics links...

Acceptance of Comics
http://thecomicsbureau.co.uk/2011/06/acceptance-of-comics/

Park Language Blog

I think links are more likely to lead the other way than this way, but nevertheless: In other areas of Blogger, I've started a blog dedicated to language-related links for the edification of my A Level English language students.  You will find it here. :)

Pumpkin

Added a link to the fan page for my cute new baby bunny, Pumpkin.  We acquired him over Christmas and he's been settling into life here - and growing up, though he should still remain fairly small, being a dwarf lop.  'Like' him, 'fan' him, 'follow' him, whatever you do these days.

Mention At DownTheTubes

Belated update: got a nice notice and link at Down The Tubes, a British Comics blog and website. No new review, but helpful linkage and heads-up.

Review at Optical Sloth

Optical Sloth have a review up for the book. After a brief diatribe about Twitter - I guess I should have included alternative contact info! - and a note of disapproval about the cover, the review settles in to be very positive. Thanks to the very busy Kevin at the site for reviewing!

A Handful of Sales

Since getting the review out over at Grovel, I've had just a few mystery sales reported on lulu. This means that just a few people out in Internet land who I don't actually know have been moved to buy the book. That in itself gives me a little happy feeling. :)

New Review at Grovel

Got the excellent news this morning from Andy at Grovel that their review is up for Because I Am.

Grovel is a leading graphic novel review site, and it's humbling to see my stuff rubbing shoulders with Charles Burns, Lewis Trondheim and Peter Bagge!

Check out the review and you can pick up a copy from lulu.com. :)

10% Discount

I forgot to mention that lulu.com's introduced a new feature that allows creators to set discounts on a per-item basis.

So naturally I've introduced a 10% discount off the price of the comic for this month only.  Get 'em while they're hot!