Rick Veitch's "Abstract Krackle"

Comic-book legend Rick Veitch (Swamp Thing, The Maximortal, Supreme, Rare Bit Fiends, etc etc.) has recently made some abstract comics based on "Kirby krackle." He has generously allowed me to re-post them here:











Rick has also been collaborating with poet Peter Money on a series of poetry comics, which I know will interest many of our readers. Here's one page:



The rest can be viewed here.

By the way, here is a page from Rick's run on Swamp Thing which I bought from him when I met him at MoCCA 2007. We discussed abstract comics briefly (I picked this particular page because it looked so abstract to me, not to mention so beautiful), and look how he signed the page:



(Thanks to Marcus Parcus who first drew my attention to Rick's recent posts of "Abstract Krackle.")

Recently posted abstract comic???

Hello everybody--I will remove this post as soon as I get an answer to my question. A couple of days ago I left a comment on a blog where an artist had posted his first attempt at an abstract comic and said he was planning to do more of them. If you are that artist, please get in touch with me! I had found your blog through my periodical Google search for "abstract comics" but forgot to bookmark it, and now can't find it again.

Edit: ok, I won't remove this post, rather I'll put up the image I was looking for:



By EscapeHatch, from here.

We're educational!

This very blog is listed (at no. 77) among Online School's 100 Best Book Blogs for Kids, Tweens and Teens.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, for apes

here's a page from Wilfried Hou Je Bek's translation of parts of the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh into the pictograms used by ape researchers. (he had to invent new symbols for the characters Gilgamesh & Enkidu.)

obviously not abstract, being a translation of a story originally in words. but if you took the subtitles & IS & HAPPY away, very few humans could read it, therefore bringing it back towards abstraction.

this work might sound like a completely crazy idea, but Wilfried explains himself in a few free-to-download e-books: http://www.socialfiction.org/primatepoetics.html

two pages

Street Scene Abstract 18 series 2

Abstract 18 series 2 This is my first attempt at revisiting the process making these comics. I like the ambiguous role of the paint. Sometimes it functions as a gutter sometimes as a panel. Abstract 19 is another piece done with the same found image.
Drawingsilence.com

Asian aesthetics

this is a photo of a frame full of penjing (Chinese miniature tree and rock landscapes), by Cao Hua, which was part of an exhibition by the Singapore Penjing and Stone Appreciation Society. (scanned from the book Bonsai Master Class, by Craig Coussins [D & S Books, 2006]).

which way does the energy flow in this composition? is there a sequence, comparable to abstract comics?

there's a sensibility in Asian artforms such as penjing, bonsai, bunjae, gongshi, hon non bo, tieu canh, suiseki & so on, which could be incorporated into abstract comics.

a quote from Craig Coussins, comparing bonsai to penjing:
it is generally thought in the West that if a styling is an abstract form, as opposed to a recognized form, the tree is a penjing.