THOUGHT BALLOONISTS

Tiny Fragments (Craig replies)

Charles and I work together swimmingly as Thought Balloonists because we have complementary strengths. As his post proves, Charles knows both older comic strips and contemporary alt-comix like the proverbial back of his hand, and he took my "Tiny Fragments" idea a lot further than I ever could. Charles doesn't see one big picture; he sees dozens of them, hanging like huge canvasses in the metaphoric gallery of his theoretical mind. Me, I'm more of a detail man, more of a nit-picker, and in my post I'm a-goin' nit-huntin'. Specifically, I'd like to bring up some issues and examples that challenge the suppositions Charles and I have formed about the Tiny Fragments.

First, let's talk terminology. We should come up with a term for the Tiny Fragments that's more descriptive, and snappier. ("Tiny Fragments" sounds like the name for a new postmodern Mattel doll: "Tiny wets herself! She drinks from a bottle! She analyzes the limitations of the collage method in Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz!") Charles used the word "mosaic" a few times in his post, and I like the phrase mosaic technique better than "tiny fragments"; the word "mosaic" conveys the notion that the fragments, autonomous within their own boundaries, are still connected to a larger aesthetic whole.

But how do these fragments connect?

Tiny Fragments (a sequel)

What Craig said (in his review of Crickets on 2/26) about the "tiny fragment" technique in comics, particularly alternative comics, left me with plenty to think about (I especially liked his David Heatley examples). I agree with Craig that the use of "tiny fragments" is a fascinating page design strategy, one that seems increasingly common in alt-comix and indeed reveals something about the current state of alt-comix. Craig, I owe you one; I hadn't figured out how to get my mind around this issue until your post.

Multiple examples of the tiny fragment approach come to mind. Dan Clowes, of course, works with narrative fragments in Eightball #22 ("Ice Haven") and #23 ("The Death-Ray"), building up stories through the chaining-together of discrete sequences, each of which is titled as if it were a separate comic strip. Most of these "strips" are granted entire pages, or several pages, but on occasion more than one "strip" will appear on a single page layout, as in this example from #22:

In examples like these the tiny fragment approach seems designed to serve narrative indirection and insinuation; the increasing fragmentation of the story into discrete design elements puts the question of narrative ellipsis front and center.