The blog combining two passions most people could give a rat's ass about.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Review: "Parenting. Illustrated in Crappy Pictures"


Parenting. Illustrated in Crappy Pictures is a weird mutant of a webcomic.  I'm not sure it's breaking any rules but it certainly seems to because I think it only by accident reads as a comic. Let me back up a little. Amber Dusick is a crunchy granola mama that blogs about parenting. Along with this blogging are skill-less yet wonderful and effective illustrated re-enactments.
The sequential illustrations tell the story well enough on their own. But Parenting doesn't use the sequential art as a comic. The art is used almost the way other blogs might use clip art between paragraphs to break up the text. Yet, reading the blog as part of the comic doesn't take away from either.
Either the blog or the sequential illustrations could function independently but they work so well together. I have never before seen webcomics presented this well in the blog format. I see this as a new sub-genre: a blogcomic.
The blog comic pulls off some interesting dynamics. Comics in general seem to be better at parallel narratives than any other media. And the use of the visual-literary devices to create layers of depth in Parenting could be used in other ways.
The main difference between what Dusick is doing and what most web cartoonist do, is the way our minds separate pixels/panels and text/blog material. It works here because it isn't seamless. and we absorb it differently than we would if she used text fields within her paint software to write all the content.

PS
For all you people who say they can't make comics because you can't draw. This is yet another example of what a lame excuse that is.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review. So I'm a "blogcomic", huh? I am defined! It now sounds like I know what I'm doing. Seriously, awesome. So honored to have gotten in your radar somehow.

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  2. Well I would argue you already know what you're doing but now you have understanding as to why it works.

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