all the titles we discussed on our Retrofit Comics/Big Planet Comics publisher spotlight episode of the podcast, sitelink com/episode , this one truly stands out, I hesitate to say that this was the best of the bunch, . . but really, it was. At least for me, as I tend to gravitate toward experiment in form, metafiction, and a selfaware narrative, This isn't the first time Madden has successfully played around with format and our expectations of an effective story, But this one is nicely contained in a short comic, This is certainly one of my favorites of, so far, A man and a woman cross paths in a series of chance encounters in the New York City Subway system, As obsessions grow and falter, these characters walk closer and closer to the edge, striking a dangerous balance, With each new panel Drawn Onward adds a layer to the puzzle, using a mirrored structure of time and place to illustrate the fragile nature of love, and how we seek each other in our own reflections.
Matt Madden is a member of the formalist experimental comics group Workshop for Potential Comics Ouvroir de la bande dessinée Potentielle Oubapo which is devoted to discovering and inventing constraints for making comics.
Most of Matt's work sinceWays to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style has been created using some kind of rule or formal structure as a starting point.
In Drawn Onward, he creates a palindrome comic, a "crab canon" or "cancrizan", modeled after one of JS Bach's compositional techniques of a single melody running
backwards and forwards simultaneously.
Reading the comic in either direction will give two different experiences of the story, but only together will the complete story be revealed if either version can be trusted.
Seriously excellent structure. Loved the roughness featheryness of the inking and enjoyed the narrative, Cleverly drawn palindrome comics. You will "discover" the ending, MATT MADDEN is a cartoonist and the author ofWays to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, Together, they are the authors of Drawing Words Writing Pictures, .