Tuesday 13 March 2012

Images Degrading Forever

One of the artists to contribute to the postcard section of Stripped is Robin Banard of Broadside of a Barn Productions.

Robin is responsible for the regular pamphlets & 'zines, that can be found at the front desk of Orbital, entitled Images Degrading Forever & Images Degrading Monthly. In these publications Robin examines the work of classic comic creators by re-drawing, page by page, key issues.
The latest of these being an analysis of Jack Kirby's classic 2001 issue 1.

Robin brought in 3 cards for Stripped representing his past, present & future, and elements of what he loves about the medium.

Firstly 'past',


This is a panel from the first comic Robin featured in Images Degrading Forever, Jim Steranko's marvelous adaptation of 'Outland', Steranko of course being the master of high contrast 'comic's noir' artwork.


Robin's present is Kirby's 2001, Kirby's deceptively simple and powerful artwork looks beautifully powerful in a 4 panel grid. 
Kirby was the King of making very complex abstract compositions look incredibly simple, crude even.
As Robin says "I ironically have the "caveman" state 'it's not primitive'"

The future, or at least one possible future, as once the current 2001 project concludes Robin is considering looking at Dave Gibbon's seminal work on The Watchmen graphic novel.


The third of Robins' cards focusses on lettering. Being the third of 3 the speech bubble repeats 3 times.

I'll let Robin explain "finally for a bit of fun and more irony I actually hand traced around computer lettering of the rather infamous 'comic sans' font, yes even on the Dave Gibbons one, which would probably annoy him endlessly

But it kind of abstracts the message about lettering even more so given it's almost like a chant and makes you wonder what the real message is, especially given the panel i chose of Rorschach unmasked" 

Look out for "Images Degrading Monthly" at Orbital Comics or contact Robin care of his blog: Images Degrading Forever

These hand drawn postcards are available for £20 each, contact info@orbitalcomics.com for details.

No comments:

Post a Comment