Response to I Love Led Zepplin: I love Ellen Forney.

Those comics were fun, I'm enjoying these comic etudes quite a bit. You may also have noticed that I discovered the "Live Paint" tool in illustrator. Wow, it's useful.

There is so much to take in and chew on in McCloud's work--but I think I'll have to move on at this point and revisit the concepts throughout the rest of these responses. (And I agree--the last page of Understanding Comics was so sweet!)

Ellen Forney picks up just the right things in her comics to make them spark. The first section of I Love Led Zepplin is a collection of "How to. . ." comics. These are no ordinary expository writings--Forney's comics show people anything from "How to Make a Nice Sciue-Sciue Dinner" to "How to Talk About Drugs with Your Kids" (for both parents who do or don't do drugs) to "How D'ya Survive the Coming Chaos?" The advice she gives is informed (often through collaboration), practical, and funny. She uses comics as a medium to answer the questions that everyone feels too embarrassed to ask (but really, we should know these things)!

Other "How to" comics offer advice that may not apply to everyone but still holds a good deal of social commentary. Her style and zings are perfect satire in that they are funny and true enough to make the reader think.

Forney captures a lower diction that feels so familiar and friendly. Her autobiographical, non-fiction, and collaborative comics do this especially well by capturing facial expressions and dialogue in a very sincere way. Many of her comics feel much like a form of Confessional Poetry. The theme of sexuality feels intimate and unashamed. It is uncensored and addictive. Through this candid demeanor, Forney's works do an excellent job at demonstrating the bridge-like capabilities of medium as McCloud defines it in Understanding Comics. She connects closely with the reader, and gets her points across effectively. She even does this without words in some instances; her Yoga comic (pp. 42-43) shows an apt use of icons to express sensations, emotions, and motion. "After Hours" (pp. 57-70) shows how the simplification of stories upon their retellings by simplifying the images--pushing them more toward the abstract corner of the pyramid. Finally, "Trapeze' (pp.71-75) manages to capture so much action and emotion merely through the use of a body, a trapeze, and some squiggly lines!

Her collaborations are another great demonstration of medium--how much further art can go when there are two or more minds working toward a similar goal!

In a way, Forney's works are a blend of comics, confessional poetics, and creative non-fiction. They are functional, but the function is crafted in such a way that it does not interfere with the art--rather, it interacts with it.