Happy Birthday Andrei!

Hey everybody, today is our editor's birthday!

I made this exactly one year ago at Jesse Reklaw and Andrice Arp's house and then when I sent it to Andrei, discovered that coincidentally, it was done on his birthday.

Best wishes, my friend. It was great to visit with you in New York - and of course, thank you again for putting together such a great book!

I like this.

It's alive!!! (Part 2)

This is just a preview copy--the book should be in stores within the next 1-2 months.

[for part I, see here.]

Early press on the preview copies of the anthology that were on display at MoCCA

Matthew Brady: "that book... looks incredible"

Yakov Hadash: "I saw breathtaking preview copies of Asterios Polyp and Abstract Comics, Wow, amazing stuff."

Madinkbeard: "The whole book looks fabulous and Jacob Covey did a beautiful job with the design. This book is going to get some attention, I think." Well, ok, this one really shouldn't count because Derik is in it. But he also adds: "Even if I weren’t in it, I’d be excited about it." So there.

...

Breaking News--one more:

Jog: "I ran into Andrei Molotiu, editor of Fantagraphics' upcoming Abstract Comics: The Anthology, one of the books I'm most anticipating at the moment. A preview copy was available for perusal; it's a lovely book to hold and flip through, full of varied contributions from major 'names' -- Robert Crumb, Gary Panter, Moebius, Lewis Trondheim, Patrick McDonnell, James Kochalka -- and new faces alike (not to mention comics bloggers Derik Badman & Noah Berlatsky). Andrei was very excited about the project, and for good reason." (Under no. XII)

(Unfortunately, I should point out there's no Moebius in there, that was just something that was a possibility early on but did not go further than that--though somehow it crept into early publicity material, and the rumor lives on on the internet.)

...

If you find more, please post the link in comments, and I'll add it to the body of this post. Or if you did see the preview copy at MoCCA, let me know what you thought!

Yours truly, interviewed about the anthology

by Shaun Manning, at Comic Book Resources, right here.

visual poetry with some comics genes

here's page 265 from Nico Vassilakis's book protracted type, which you can download freely from http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/protracted-type/6845937.

only pages 265 to 268 are in this style. the rest of the book contains many other styles of visual poetry, & short texts which explain Nico's purpose.

unlike most of you abstract comicsists, I know little about the history of comics, but do know some of the points of intersection between comics & experimental poetry.

Some horn-tooting (if I may)

I mentioned in my earlier post my book Nautilus that is debuting at MoCCA:



The red strip with the title is actually a band around the hardcover. On the back of the band are these two blurbs:

"Andrei Molotiu's comics are absolute marvels: hotbeds of evolving ambiguity where one never knows what disturbing or witty interaction between abstraction of objects and objects of abstraction is about to take place. Each time I've opened them I've been utterly absorbed, that is, drawn into places where I had no power other than to become what I was looking at. What he does is superb."
--Harry Mathews

"I love artists that break the rules and Andrei Molotiu breaks them all, with mind-bending and beautiful results."
--Scott McCloud