Two for No: theory in practice
I’m happy to be able to announce that my friends Alexander Danner and Tym Godek have a new weekly comic series called “Two for No.” What makes it even more exciting for me is that the comics are all based around ideas from my theories!
Several years back, I wrote a paper about “visual language poetry” for ComixTalk where I proposed a “formal” type of visual language poetry that did not imitate the structures of verbal poetry, like when people create “comic haikus.” Rather, my poetic form—and my proposal for how to make more poetic forms in visual language—drew directly from the properties of the structure of the the visual language of comics.
That poetic form was called a “Reducto” and it’s been played with a bit previously by Grant Thomas, who also explored some of his own manipulations of it.
Now, Alex and Tym offer a whole series that is based on these ideas. They also go further than just using my form and have started making another visual language poetic form, the “Dissociation.”
When I lived in Boston, I’d often wax theoretical with Alex and visited classes he taught on comic literature and creation. He frequently queried my thoughts on how my ideas might translate back around to the “practice” side of things, and got very excited when I recalled these ideas about poetry. I’m really glad he and the ever-talented Tym have been exploring these further, and I was glad to be able to see a sneak peak as they started on them.
In fact, Alex’s pushing me about this stuff lead me to seriously consider adding a chapter in my upcoming book about visual language poetry. Alas though, I started running out of space and it didn’t make the cut. Who knows, maybe Alex and I will one day get around to writing the “visual language theory in practice” book we’ve discussed in the past, with a whole chapter on this stuff?
For now though, go check out “Two for No,” bookmark it, and visit every Monday when they post new comics!
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