With James Kochalka, Alexander Danner, Bob Stevenson, Steven Withrow, and Neal Von Flue; moderated by Joe Zabel

Introduction by Joe Zabel

"Conceptual art or Conceptual Art - Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity." --Artlex.com

In a way, all webcomics could be considered conceptual art, because by definition they have no physical existence. But in dubbing a group of webcomics as Conceptual, we're following more the spirit than the letter of the Sixties art movement being referred to.

Conceptual webcomickers are dispensing with something more than physical form. They're dispensing with some of the key values that define traditional comics art. Values such as skillful drawing, cunning composition, shrewd scripting. Like Wile E. Coyote, these artists walk off the edge of a cliff and somehow manage to stand there.

In grappling with this difficult and elusive subject, our crack team of analysts will identify important works in this movement. And they'll attempt to explain what makes a webcomic conceptual, and why so many artists are taking this approach.

Staking Out The Territory

Zabel: We need a tangible starting point in our discussion-- the comics themselves. Can you name some webcomics that seem to be particularly conceptual? My own nominations are Daily Dinosaur Comics and A Softer World.

Danner: I don't know that anyone would consider it an "important" work, but Matt Shepard and Roy Boney's Dead Funny would certainly fit into the conceptual arena.

And A Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible certainly dispenses with any sort of traditional narrative, often presenting snippets out of what seems to be the very middle of unfinished dreams. In most cases, the total effect of the comic is more important than any linear narrative. Of course, ALILBTDII is also in some ways moving back toward the art object -- each story has the visual cohesiveness of a painting, beyond the normal dictates of narrative design. These are comics that would look perfectly at home framed on a wall.

Von Flue: In thinking of examples of conceptual webcomics, it seems like there is a subgenre which deals mainly with context as a motive. Specifically, taking an existing work out of context and remixing it. Examples would be the CastleZZT Garfield parodies, the Ready.gov comic parodies (for example ). I also remember a series of Spider-man newspaper strips by Jay Pinkerton remixed to be mostly obscene. [Editor's note: this series was recently taken off the web.]

I would tend to put Get Your War On in the same category as DDC (due to it's common properties of using the same clip art repeatedly), and would definitely call GYWO conceptual. Although, it could also fall under your same scrutiny of DDC. So, it's a fine line. I also tend to think that T-rex has developed as a character in his own right which, if anything, brings it out of conceptual territory and towards a more straightforward narrative. Really the only element that makes it conceptual is the the fact that the art is not new each time. Is this enough to be conceptual?

Danner: Like DDC, Dead Funny uses very limited artwork (even more limited than DDC believe it or not -- North has occasionally given his characters goatees, at least), and what's more ends every strip with the exact same "punch line." Whatever was being discussed is interrupted by one of the zombies shouting "BRAINS!"

Also in the repeating image category would be Partially Clips. Despite the concept at play there, though, Partially Clips is a pretty straightforward gag strip.

Von Flue: I'm getting the feeling from these examples that conceptual comics means "gimmick comics" to an extent. Each of these comics has some kind of exception to standard comics convention.

Case in point, DDC is a mouthpiece for the musing of the artist, BUT, it uses the exact same art every day. Dead Funny may not use the exact same art (Close but not exact, they changes based on dialogue) but it always end in "Brains". CastleZZT uses someone else art and writing but visually abstracts them. A softer World has the gimmick of three "beats" which usually fit together or reference the same source. If these comics strayed from their trademark approach they would not be as successful, right?

Would it be fair to call these exceptions "gimmicks"? It seems to be what makes these comics stand apart from the rest as conceptual.

Danner: Clearly, those of us with art backgrounds are approaching the term very differently from those of us without!

What I usually have in mind when I refer to conceptual comics are comics where a formal or structural idea takes precedence over telling a story or delivering a laugh. I will admit to some overlap with "gimmick comics," if we can leave aside the usual negative connotation of the word. But, I wouldn't automatically include all the repeating image comics under the header of conceptual: DDC and Dead Funny, definitely. Partially Clips, not so much. The structure is fun, but the gag is the comic's primary goal.

Whereas ALILBTDII, which doesn't have any clear gimmick per se, is driven primarily by an interest in visual and narrative non-linearity. It has stories and it has jokes, but neither of these are constants--it's the comic's dream-like form that makes it consistently interesting. Thus, my instinct to include it.

But if by "conceptual comics" we're actually alluding to the established school of "concept art," then all of the above is irrelevant. And I need to do some extra reading to catch up with everyone else.

Zabel: There's no harm in doing a little homework on this, but I was using the '60s art movement merely as a jumping off point. The original CA was a reaction to art galleries and art collectors, a rejection of art as a collectible object. But webcomics have never been collectible, so that idea has little relevance.

Ironically, print comics are moving more and more towards becoming collectible art objects, with fancy printing and production values. McSweeny's Quarterly, f'rinstance, is not only gorgeous to look at but also luscious to touch. In a way, it's almost as if print comics are going through an anti-conceptual phase!

A lot of ideas have been mentioned that we should get back to, but for now I think we're doing a great job of accomplishing our initial task, to identify a number of works for consideration.

Let me add something else to the mix-- the website Oubapo-America. This is a site for experiments in artistic constraint. The participating group of artists submit their solution to "challenges" such as "Alphabet City: a 26 panel comic featuring letter of alphabet in each panel, in sequence."

Von Flue: Oubapo is fantastic at art under constraint (which seems like a facet of conceptual art or at least a tool to get there?)

Why don't we adopt a definition of conceptual webcomics as being any comic who's primary artistic intent is not a specific narrative or story? Maybe this is too vague?

Also:

Toonbots was mentioned on our board a while back and would be a conceptual comic in my view. Each comic is created with clip art and a program called "the toon-o-matic" and each installment is presented with the code which created it. I don't claim to understand exactly how it works, and it's far from frequently updated, but this is a comic which defies conventional storytelling, to be sure.

Kochalka: I think what's going on in some of these comics is certainly a reflection on what's going on in the world in general. Between the Atomic Bomb and Einstein's theory of relativity it's hard to believe in absolutes. There's no such thing as good and bad, right or wrong. Art reflects that. People even draw "bad" on purpose now, because... well, why not? If there's no such thing as good and bad, it doesn't matter how you draw. It doesn't matter if jokes are funny. Nothing matters at all.

And yet somehow, everything matters.

Questioning Assumptions

Withrow: Are we talking about comics that intend to present a concept--an idea or sequence of information--rather than a story or joke?

Or is it some qualitative measure, as perceived in reaction to what is generally accepted to be "the standard," that makes a piece of art "conceptual"?

But if it's closer to the latter idea, then I'm afraid I'm having trouble setting some conceptual (and constructive) boundaries for discussion. The idea of "rejecting the preciousness of fine art" doesn't seem solid to me in this context.

It seems to me that the differences you're seeking are all based on aesthetic judgments by an outside observer rather than more objective matters of technique. There is, after all, a huge gray area between perceiving an artist's laziness or immaturity of craft and noting an intentional "junking" or "drubbing" of art for reactionary (or ironic) purposes. Who's to say which is which? And does it fundamentally matter?

When a new type of art emerges, nearly every example seems innovative and against-the-grain. But as more imitators and influenced works arise, then the "conceptual"--another term might be "experimental"--becomes commonplace. Once dozens of photocomics exist to compete with "A Softer World"--and they more than likely will--then the novelty will have worn off and the concept becomes just another convention.

Stevenson: Is a discussion about where to draw the line on conceptual versus conventional a bit of a fool's errand? There are concepts that underlie and constrain most strips, aren't there? Some of those constraints are visual, some narrative and some structural. Charlie Brown never kicks the ball (Though people may view that as a mere narrative tool, I think Schulz might have considered it to be of central importance to his work, a philosophical idea that he worked on for more than fifty years. Then again maybe he figured out it made the strip funnier). DDC always uses the same several panels in sequence. A Softer World always employs words and photographs. Every issue of Groo the Wanderer held a hidden secret message that always said, "hidden message." Hell, one of my strips only uses three colors, is always accompanied by a blog, always allows comments. There are concepts and constraints underlying all of them, but are we willing to sort out and label some conceptual and others not so? What purpose does it serve? In the case of the Webcomics Examiner, I guess the purpose is to look for comics that have stepped off the ledge, as Joe said "Like Wile E. Coyote."

I find the Warner Brothers mention interesting because if I remember my Looney Toons, there were a set of pretty strict written rules underlying every Road Runner cartoon, rules that the story and animation had to operate within. Yep, here they are. Don't the rules present a kind of conceptual undertone?

I've been reluctant to get into the discussion because I have no background in artistic or literary theory, and I'm still not sure I care about what the term "conceptual comics" means. I'm thinking someone, in response to our casting such a broad definition, might want to add a phrase or two, like "primary goal," or "main intent." If so, I'm not sure the audience is in such a great position to decide what that primary goal is. For example, although we might decide the Road Runner cartoons were intended primarily to make money or entertain movie goers, the rules imply there might be another set of goals at work, say, developing an environment within which to conduct artistic experiments with representations of gravity. Those experiments might be further intended to stretch the artistic range of the animators.

I don't offer these questions as a challenge. I genuinely do not understand the term conceptual art. As each link has been added to the discussion, I've visited the sites and thought they were interesting concepts, but as a topic, it seems like what we're really after is more simply comics on the edge, "Aggressive Experiments" to borrow the phrase.

On a side-note, I will admit I was at one time fascinated by a book called "Puzzles About Art: An Aesthetics Casebook" by Margaret P. Battin, John Fisher, Ronald Moore, and Anita Silvers. I find its concept humorous. It is filled with examples of what you might call conceptual art. For example, is a de Kooning that has been completely erased by another artist still a de Kooning? Is the newly empty canvas still art? The subtext throughout the book implies that all of it is art. Why humorous? It seems to me that the authors don't really have any intention of truly making their case as the broadest implications about what counts as art would seem to put them out of a job.)

I think Steve and I were thinking along the same lines.

Danner: There is some overlap between the "Aggressive Experiments" idea and what we're getting at here. But not all that much. Most of the comics covered in Aggressive Experiments are focussed on technical innovation. "Outside the Box," for instance, wouldn't fit into this conversation. It's a good story with an innovative delivery mechanism--but at heart it's a traditional narrative.

It's sort of the difference between doing the same thing with a new tool, as opposed to turning the existing tool toward accomplishing a new thing. Technical experiments expand the boundaries of how you make comics. Conceptual experiments expand the boundaries of what comics can be. (Not to be confused with expanding the boundaries of what can be comics--which was one of the major themes of Understanding Comics.)

The Sketchbook Diaries is a perfect example of this. When James first started, it was something that hadn't been done before--not so much for being autobiographical, which was already commonplace, but for being autobiographical in a non-narrative way. That was the new idea. Of course, this also gets at Steven's comments about the conceptual becoming commonplace--these days James has many imitators, and The Sketchbook Diaries itself has become a mainstay of the indy world. That this work represented a major conceptual innovation would be lost on many readers today.

If "A Softer World" fits into this discussion, it is not because it's a photocomic, but because of the particular emphasis on the disconnect between the words and the photographs, and the haiku-esque minimalism in the writing.

Zabel: Robert and Steven raise some excellent points in questioning the basis of this discussion.

I agree that one can find conceptual overtones in almost any comic-- the ideas of a work tend to manifest themselves in the form of the work. So is it justified to say that this work is a conceptual webcomic, and that work is not? I would say yes.

First of all, conceptual webcomickers often state their intentions explicitly. For instance, the "Metacartoonist" of Toonbots writes, "To me, the Toon-o-Matic itself is the work of art. The strip is a by-product. Like hot dogs." Or how about Neil Cohn's comic titled Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. An academic comics theorist, Cohn specifically states that the piece is "part of my ongoing research about how sequences of images communicate (syntax)."

Another distinction is that truly conceptual webcomics make radical departures from the norm. Of course, the definition of "radical" and "the norm" are open to interpretation.

Finally, I think it's legitimate to make this distinction because it gives us a critical tool for investigating comics and talking about them. The critical investigation of conceptual webcomics is not a well-traveled road with fixed signposts-- it's a frontier where we may find gold, or even the fountain of youth! Or we may just get lost and contract malaria, there's always a risk.

Kochalka: Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown is a great example. It's meaningful, in that it represents the kind of frustrations and cruelties that truly exist in the world... but then it's repeated for so long... FIFTY YEARS... that it becomes arbitrary and meaningless nonsense. And then a new generation comes along and says... hey, if everything is arbitrary and meaningless nonsense, then I'm not going to draw my comic, I'll use video game sprites and all the characters will talk endlessly about cheese. (I made that one up... if there's a video game sprite comic about cheese, I haven't seen it.)

By the way, I don't even know if The Perry Bible Fellowship qualifies as "conceptual", but it's so awesome!

The Art of Destruction

Zabel: I find it perversely gratifying to read Get Your War On and Daily Dinosaur Comics because the artists seem to be saying "You want me to draw pictures for you? Go fuck yourself!"

It seems that many conceptual works are exhibition of destruction or partial destruction, or are works that have something deliberately removed so that seemingly they can't function anymore.

Is there an aesthetics of destruction at work here? Do conceptual works indulge our enjoyment of watching things explode and fall apart? And if so, what are the limits of that?

Kochalka: There is a wonderful punk rock quality to it, which can be empowering to both the cartoonist and the reader. The sense that anybody can do it is classic punk DIY. Also, since the world is rather cruel and arbitrary, so for the artist to cruelly and arbitrarily subvert normal comics drawing and narrative is a rather fitting comment on the way things are.

The limits are that they might not emotionally move us. In fact, they might serve to distance us even more from emotional truth. The arbitrary nature of it, if it became culturally pervasive (and I think it is on the way), might serve to make us feel that our lives are arbitrary and meaningless. Personally, I think that life is arbitrary and meaningFUL, which is only a half-twist away, but more invigorating perhaps. And really, I think both of the strips you mentioned actually do portray a world-view that sees life as arbitrary but meaningful, at least some of the time.

Von Flue: I think one conceptual angle of clipart comics (or any comic where the art is lifted or pre-made) is the way the information gets distilled. The reader doesn't get hung up on new rendering in each strip, and focuses solely on the "point" or the narrative (i.e., what the text has to say). GYWO seems so much more angry and potent than most anti-war comics because the art is standardized. In itself this is probably a puposeful comment, but one that is a bit deeper than the usual hostile narrative.

There's another simpler side to this, I imagine. Most of the creators of such strips are writers primarily.

Zabel: I agree about GYWO, Neal. The artwork has a kind of friction with the commentary that generates heat. If you look at Fetus-x, I think you see a similar thing. The artwork in this case is created by the artist, but the commentary seems to mock the interrelationship of art and text. Millikin is always having his weird Lovecraftian characters commenting on current events, or throwing in asides in the storyline about "U.S. Soldiers ass-raping Iraqis."

The destructive aspect of conceptual works doesn't necessarily have a hostile, negative intention. It may simply be a means of removing a barrier. As James said, "The sense that anybody can do it is classic punk DIY." By using clip art or recycled art, a writer is creating for themselves the opportunity to make comics without having to work with an artist.

And Neal makes a very good point, that the use of clip art frees up the narrative so that we aren't concerned about the art, and focus more attention on the narrative.

Kochalka: Assuming there is a narrative. There's also pure nonsense. I was on a video game forum and some kid posted his video game sprite comic of Super Mario Bros. characters hallucinating photoshop effects and screaming AAAAH! Andrei Molotiu made a 24 page non-narrative minicomic called "Alcoholalia" (a remix of a single one-panel Maakies strip. On the Comics Journal message board he posted this overview of all the pages laid out as a single big image:

Unfortunately it's too tiny in this format to see very well. As non-drawing, it kind of starts in the same place as Get Your War On or the Dinosaur comic, but then goes in a totally different direction. It's non-drawing taken in the visual direction instead of the prose direction. The art in Andrei's other comics are created more by his own hand.

Von Flue: This is in the same vein as the Garfield parodies, it seems. (And interesting that they both make use of mirroring as the primary abstraction tool.)

Kochalka: Both Molotiu's Maakies remix and these Garfield remixes destroy the original comic art, but create something new and wonderful from it. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, destruction equals creation.

A good example of the destruction Joe referred to is the book TNT EN AMERIQUE by Jochen Gerner. He takes Herge's Tintin in America and reduces each page to series of very simple graphic symbols and key words. You can find a few preview pages at the publisher's website. [Editor's note: navigate to "livres" and find it in the lower left corner.]

It's not a webcomic, though, of course. Any worthwhile cultural trend will manifest itself across media boundaries because it's source is not in the particular media itself but rather in the psyche of the people.

Danner: I have to confess, the accomplishment of some of these pieces is lost on me. The Molotiu is visually interesting, in much the same way that an image viewed through a kaleidoscope or one of those bug's eye toys is interesting. It may still be art, but I think it well exceeds the bounds of how far you can take the idea before it ceases to be comics.

The Garfield piece is still clearly within the realm of comics, but is it interesting? Personally, I find it silly, repetitive, and even a bit petty. The point, so far as I can tell, is that Garfield comics are funnier without the punch line than with (which is to say, Garfield just isn't funny), which is a much too easy point to make. Yes, creation can come out of destruction, but this just looks to me like tearing down for the sake of tearing down. What makes destruction interesting is that it forces the creator to be inventive in how they compensate for what was lost. There's no inventiveness here--it's just the same mirroring trick over and over again.

Von Flue: I'd have to disagree (and bring in another point at the same time).

I can't argue your point about Molotiu's comics, mostly because the level of abstraction is so high that they cease to have any semblance to their original strips. You could argue that just knowing that they came from Maakie's strips is enough to "get it"; they begin to resemble singular images in their own right and cease to be comics in a way.

However, in the Garfield strips (probably because the level of abstraction is minimal in comparison to Molotiu's) there is indeed the spirit of the original strips still very present. They are notable because they take an existing (and what most would consider bad) strip and turn it into a new, visually interesting piece of art, which still resembles comics (mostly due to the still-present gutters). And now in these new incarnations, portions of Garfield blend together or float in empty space like something out of Woodring's Frank, and strange faces can be seen in mirroring of tired title images.

To me, this is an exemplary remix of material that we've all taken as outdated and useless, and an excellent example of deconstructionist comics.

Danner: I'm certainly not disagreeing that the Garfield strips are still comics. I'll even agree that they're clearly deconstructionist comics. But what is the deconstruction accomplishing? Does this tell us something new about what comics are or what they can be? Or is it just poking fun at Garfield?

I was honestly intrigued by this at first--the first couple of strips achieve a certain surreal creepiness that had me interested to see where the creator was going to go with the idea. But then the artist just keeps playing the same trick each time, with nothing new accomplished in the further iterations. What began as an interesting experiment ultimately rings hollow.

I suppose my problem here is that I did see some hints of real potential in the first couple of strips, but I was disappointed by the lack of interesting follow through.

Zabel: I had just the opposite reaction-- at first I thought, "so what?" Then I started to get into it more. What develops in the series is the way the symmetry is arranged, and the odd side-effects of it, such as the floating vagina-like objects.

Von Flue: hmm... I think I took it more like studies for a concept. Some work better than others, but I didn't necessarily think of them as building up to something. (Although I can see it in light of the cryptic quote at the end. "Ignorance is the foundation of sanity")

Kochalka: Here's a couple more examples (example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4, example 5, example 6) by Andrei Molotiu, along with an explanation in his own words of what he's up to:

"I guess with this one I've realized more what I'm trying to do (or at least one of the things that I'm trying to do): recapture the visual energy of some of my favorite comics from childhood without any specific object to get in the way of, and dampen, that energy... This is how I often remember images and comics pages, as a visual impression of sequence and movement, rather than as any kind of story.

"A little demonstration, instead of a long essay, which I can write later if people are still interested (I used a page from Little Lulu, and colored it as unrealistically as possible, to emphasize the formal rhythms)."

Artistic Constraints

Zabel: My next question also deals with the tendency of conceptual webcomics to subtract elements.

Many conceptual comics are based on the idea of establishing a constraint for the artist. Oubapo-America for example is based on that idea; the Garfield parody we've been discussing also apparently is confined to a single idea, to transform Garfield panels into symmetrical designs.

Why do artists choose to restrict themselves? And what does this say about the relationship between freedom and creativity?

Kochalka: I think because culture has become increasingly fractured there is a sense that "anything goes" in art. To some artists, this sense that anything goes is actually crippling. If the possibilities are limitless, the inability to choose what to do amongst all limitless possibilities can become crippling. For those that suffer from this feeling, to impose some kind of arbitrary limits on their own work might actually be incredibly freeing.

Danner: There's also an important element of self-education in placing those constraints. When we stick to doing what comes naturally, many of us will just end up repeating ourselves. A creator who's good at dialogue will naturally focus on dialogue driven comics. A creator who's good at action will do lots of action scenes. Sometimes the best thing a creator can do for their own benefit is to bar themselves from following their natural instincts. The reason so many of my comics are silent is precisely because I was training myself away from a tendency to write a lot of talking heads. Limiting yourself forces you to think in new ways and develop new skills.

Start taking those restrictions into increasingly complexity, and the challenge starts forcing you to come up with more and more inventive solutions. How do you write a daily comic that uses the exact same art in every strip and still have it be interesting? North has to solve that problem every single day. It's like being an escape artist -- the tighter the binds, the more flexible you have to be to find a way through them.

Zabel: Constraint also represents another choice-- an extension, really, of artistic freedom.

Imposing a constraint is a method of arriving at a different and distinct effect. Take the use of duotone color schemes, for instance-- they produce distinct, highly tasteful compositions. An artist working in duotone creates a kind of hyper-reality in which only the two colors exist.

A constraint such as duotone also serves as a powerful unifying principle. And unifying principles are especially important in the art of comics, since comics is an art form composed of fragments, i.e. juxtaposed images.

Withrow: Interesting topic, and I agree with what's been said here.

My take on it:

Making art is solving problems--both technical and metaphorical. And the more defined the problems, the more confined their scope, the more skill--and inspiration--is needed to fashion intriguing solutions.

When the options are limitless, or (more to the point) when the central problems are ill defined or nonexistent, then both the artist and the audience must struggle to discern whether or not a work of art is effective and how it rates in comparison to other works of its type.

Art is competitive, and when several artists "play by the same rules" or attempt to solve a similar set of problems with a similar set of tools, then what emerges is often superior to art created in a non-competitive vacuum.

Competition leads to cooperation, in the form of schools or genre groups of artists--such as the French Impressionists, Dutch still life painters, 3D animators, superhero cartoonists, etc.

Robert Frost wrote that writing verse without meter is like playing tennis without a net. This applies to comics as well. When we set creative limitations, we are pushing ourselves, as Alexander suggested, to reach beyond the immediate and comfortable answers. And we are also testing what "works" for flaws and, best of all, for original variations.

Zabel: I agree. Actually, I think it's doubly appealing, because you're presented with a problem to solve, and simultaneously there is a set of tasks that are eliminated. Say for example you are challenged to do a sequence without dialog and captions-- you have extra work because you must carry the narrative or text with pictures alone; but you save work because you don't have to write a script, worry over word choice, etc.

I have a pet theory that audiences generally perceive when a shortcut is made, and if the shortcut is successful, they appreciate it almost as much as the artist does. Not only do they vicariously feel the relief that the artist feels at dodging a shitload of work; but the audience themselves are being given less work to do-- less imagery to study, less text to read.

Another way of viewing conceptual webcomics is in McCluhanesque terms:

To quote an academic source, "McLuhan is also well known for his division of media into hot and cool categories. Hot media are low in audience participation due to their high resolution or definition. Cool media are high in audience participation due to their low definition (the receiver must fill in the missing information)."

It seems to me that by excluding elements or constraining a work, cartoonists are creating a condition of greater audience participation in their works.

Von Flue: I don't think we've mentioned McCloud's Story Machine yet either (or even 24 hour comics, the ultimate constraint device.)

Constraints are definitely good for getting you to see in new ways and create work you would not normally do, but in a way they are also good for getting you out of artistic blocks. There's even a card deck for it, called Oblique strategies. The idea was created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt as a way out of artistic paralysis. When you're stuck, pick a card at random and do or apply whatever it says to your work. Sometimes the cards give you some very sage advice, or tell you how to proceed and from what angle. Sometimes they just tell you to get up and away from what your working on, and do the dishes. There's an online version for us webcomickers with art block. I've used it a few times to success. At any rate, it's a good example of constraint in the middle of the art process, as opposed to the impetus for it.

I'll add on another experience with constraints:

I teach a kids' class in comic illustration at the local rec center. One of their favorite exercises is when we make collage comics out of old magazines. There is something about using premade "artwork" that frees them to make completely different stories. In this sense, the clip art constraint makes them free to do stories they would feel too selfconscious to do if they had to draw them.

Zabel: Neal-- Your discussion of Oblique Strategies and McCloud's story machine got me to thinking about the use of randomly-created decisions as a kind of constraint in comics; or you could think of it as a way of destroying a particular element of the work, i.e., eliminating artistic intention. What makes random comics so entertaining, I think, is that they invite reader participation, not only to invoke the random sequence, but to interpret the results.

Comixpedia recently provided links to several excellent examples of this strategy:

Five Card Nancy is reportedly a Dadaist invention, popularized by Scott McCloud. There's an online perl-scripted version by Dave White. As McCloud explains, the classic comic strip Nancy is so simply conceived that it has an elemental quality about it. "A Nancy panel is an irreducible concept, an atom, and the comic strip is a molecule."

Unfortunately, the rules of Five Card Nancy introduce selection into the creation of the panel sequence, subverting the randomness and imposing some kind of interpretation. Not so Mary Worth, Threat or Menace, a satire of incomprehensible serialized plots. Each time the page is refreshed, the panels rearrange themselves in new random patterns without any rational intervention. Creator Mike Collins says he hopes that by randomly combining the panels of Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, MD, and Apartment 3-G, he can finally discover a plot in all of it that makes sense!

Grafik Dynamo by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett represents the Nuclear Option of random comics-- both the text and the pictures are pulled at random from outside sources, in this case LiveJournal blog entries. Personally I haven't found the results very involving, but the concept was impressive enough to attract funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The most sublime use of the random principle I've seen is The Infinite Gag Strip by Tym Godek, a sendup of gag strips that use the "setup, beat, punchline" formula. What's especially fascinating about it is that it demonstrates conclusively that the pause in the middle of the sequence has a spooky ability to make something seem funny, even when it makes no sense. Are we hard-wired to laugh at a punchline that follows a pause? This comic seems to prove it.

Note, btw, that because of their electronic nature, webcomics are uniquely suited to package these random schemas in convenient, easy-to-use forms.

Detournement

Zabel: Consider the comic Cat and Girl Are Situationists. A number of webcomics are obviously trafficking in detournement-- Daily Dinosaur, the Garfield parody, Partiality Clips, Get Your War On.

A key element of this technique, it seems, is that the reader recognizes the original source of the appropriated work, and experiences a disconnect when they view it in its new context.

Is there a significant difference between detournement and Mad Magazine style parodies?

Von Flue: As near as I can fathom (Which would come from a yahoo search and this page) Detournement is when an artist takes older (or famous) works out of context, Making the viewer look at the original in a new light.

I'd say this idea is directly proportionate to how famous the original work is. It seems like Garfield or Spiderman or even the status of clipart itself in GYWO, make successful detournement. But Daily Dinosaur seems more like conceptual constraint, due to the fact that T-rex and friends aren't necessarily "icons".

Kochalka: Dinosaurs are icons. Maybe not these particular drawings of dinosaurs, but dinosaurs themselves are, and you wouldn't expect a dinosaur to say these things.

Von Flue: Well, I only mean in terms of detournement. This comic uses icons of camels: to a certain conceptual success, but this ad used a camel icon with about as successful as you can get in detournement. (if it really is proportionate to the original art's recognizability...)

Zabel: I think the Joe Camel piece illustrates the difference between parody and detournement. The artist, Turner, is putting J. C. in a situation that ironically comments on his role as an advertising icon. The piece comments on the advertising symbol specifically, and not on society as a whole.

For comparison, look at what Robert Williams does with popular culture images. For example, this piece, a head-on collision between the Disney film Bambi, the Mickey Mouse icon, and the map of the United States. It's not really a comment on Disney's products, though. It's just using them as a way of portraying American culture in the darkest and most savage light.

Williams is the more determined detournementalist; he seeks total negation of the images endeared to our society.

Von Flue: Hmm.. I think the Williams piece does comment on society (at least the section that smokes and where we draw the line of "cool")

How about Wally Wood's Disneyland Memorial Orgy? Parody or Detournement? It seems to follow some of the same paths as William's Bambi painting in it's repurposing of icons, but it seems more aimed at Disney's puritanical image, right?

Zabel: You could say the Joe Camel parody, the Wally Wood illustration, and the Robert Williams painting are on an ascending scale of detournemental intensity, with JC at the lower end and Williams at the upper end. But I think there's still a fundamental difference. The Wally Wood parody, while more general and more daring than the Joe Camel parody, is still an ironic juxtaposition of the characters; it's about the Disney genre. But I don't think Williams' painting is about Disney; it about the naked id in all its horrific glory. The combination of this with pop culture puts it in kind of a nether zone where we are forced to consider it as satirical commentary instead of as sheer horror.

This is an illusive distinction, I'll admit. It's why we need artists to express it instead of essayists.

I also see a link between what Williams is doing and Daily Dinosaur Comics. Of course DDC isn't about the naked id. But it does seem to suspend the normal laws about art and commentary. It's not just the fact that the artist is using jurassic clip art, it's how the strip is written in a mocking tone that is rather hard to categorize, and impossible to ignore.

Danner: Do you find DDC's tone entirely mocking? There's irreverence, certainly, but I also get the sense that there's an honest struggle to make sense of the ideas being put on display. One of the prime routines for DDC is to take an established philosophical idea to an absurd extreme, and then explore the repercussions of that. But it seems to me that it's usually the extremism that's shown to be absurd, not the core idea. There's an exploration of the boundaries between where an idea is useful, and where it crosses into the ridiculous.

In any case, I would argue that where detournement applies to Daily Dinosaur Comics isn't in its subversion of iconic dinosaur figures, but in it's subversion of iconic philosophical propositions. Granted, these are only iconic in abstract, intellectual spheres -- but that's precisely what allows for the subversion. He's taking very heady, intellectually revered ideas and dropping them into the mouths of silly cartoon dinosaurs.

Zabel: I think you're right on target there, Alex.

I may have put too much emphasis on trying to distinguish parody from detournement; I just have the impression that they represent distinct sensibilities.

Another angle to look at are works that take an existing piece and reinterpret it, creating a new story or revealing an underlying one. An example of that is Jay Pinkerton's Spider-man parodies.

For the reader, these kinds of works involve a complex interaction. The reader is simultaneously keeping in their mind the original version of the text, while overlaying it with the new version of the text. This encourages a high level of critical thinking, and fosters the understanding that the pictures and the words needn't have a single organic relationship with each other.

Language Lab

Zabel: One of the ways of spotting a conceptual webcomic is to find a comic that seems to stretch or breech the conventional definitions of the term "comics." The web is simply exploding with such creatures; take for example Craig Robinson's hyperlink piece What If. In fact, Joey Manley started a thread about it asking what Scott McCloud would think.

Robinson wasn't necessarily even thinking in terms of comics; he has some rudimentary comics on his site, but they're mixed in with animations and other kinds of oddball delights. But intentionally or not, "What If" raises interesting questions about the comics medium. Is there a difference between a chronology chart and "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence?" And since it charts alternate timelines, what is the nature of the juxtapositions above and below between alternate timelines?

I'd also like to mention again Cohn's Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. The juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images challenges the reader to invent some form of closure. Also significant is the context of the comic, a message board where the artist solicits interpretations of the work. Can the comic be separated from the reader's comments?

Cohn explicitly states that he created Colorless Green is part of his "ongoing research" as a comics theorist. Indeed, many of the webcomics we've been talking about appear to be conceptual mazes, with the reader playing the role of the perplexed lab rat.

What is the potential of these experiments? Are they simply stretching the boundaries of a definition, or can they teach us new ways of understanding what the reader perceives, and new ways of expressing ideas?

Withrow: For me conceptual comics call into question the notion that comics is a unified or unifiable language (if any such thing actually exists, and many linguists dispute the claim).

We are familiar with and accustomed to certain "grammatical" structures--panel arrangements, object-oriented (or camera-like) perspective, word-picture interdependence--but if we treat these as only a subset--a dialect maybe--in a broader panorama of graphical languages, then the options for "speaking through comics" explode in number and complexity.

If the goal is to be understood, or to converse, then certain shared symbols and grammars must exist, and the ordered use of a simplified or streamlined (if not elegant) set of communication tools is usually the most effective method.

Yet it is the (self-imposed or critic-imposed) calling of the conceptual artist to introduce new symbols/grammars and test the existing ones.

What happens when, as we have seen, understanding and conversation are not the overt goals? Can comics, as music is said to do, bypass the logical processes and tap the emotions more or less directly?

I say yes--that even the most unintelligible comics can still be felt on some level.

Can other comics bypass the most obvious emotional triggers and serve as intellectual exercises, like geometric proofs or some uncodified form of calculus? Another yes from me.

And then there's complete nonsense. Though taken in the right context, or with a certain spirit, is anything honestly devoid of meaning?

Most comics fall somewhere in the middle of the intellectual/emotional spectrum, but it's all fair game.

But is it comics? We could be here all century with that one--and I'm not sure that's the best question to be asking when faced with something new and different.

How about: Does it work? How does it work? What do I now know--or think--that I didn't know before I encountered it? How does it make me feel? And can I use any of it in my own work?

I repeat--it's all fair game.

Now, can the reader--and the writer--get lost in the game? Sure can, and often do.

Still, it only matters if and when you choose to play.

Von Flue: Joe's discussion of Craig Robinson's What If puts me in mind of Godek's My Life with Pets. I think when he published it, he asked the same question, is it a comic? It has it's own iconography and set of rules and no real gutters (unless you count the computer monitor as taking the place of the gutters), but I think the burden is on someone who doesn't think it's comics, to explain why.

As vague as it is, we know how a comics "feels" when we read it, and all these examples (including Cohn's) have that feeling. Then, the only thing left to do is make sense of it.

Zabel: Ok, that's a wrap. Thanks, everybody!