I’ve been indulging my comic book fixation on and of for quite a while now. One of the things that interests me is the single panel, taken out of context. A fragment of a story. It can suggest all sorts of possibilities, or it can take or give new meaning in juxtaposition with other information. Intrapanel does an amazing job of taking close-up looks at pages and covers, finding new art in the details. What Intrapanel is doing is not really Found Art, more a remix in the vein of the Cut Up Method or the Pentametron.
Then the other day I came across this Manowar story in Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine. I don’t know anything about the character and I didn’t even read the story, but I noticed the artist stuck to a 3×3 grid pretty consistently, which made most of the panels the same size. What would happen if I made a random slideshow out of them? It would probably turn it into gibberish, but maybe sequences would emerge that make some sort of sense.
I dissected the pages into their component panels, and left out the few that didn’t stick the the grid size. Then I found WOWslider, which can generate a random slide show and has a WordPress plugin. I played around with a few settings and came up with this.
I don’t know if it makes anything worthwhile. The sequences rarely make any sense. But it’s an experiment, and maybe I will find a use for it.
I went through the slideshow and it worked pretty well. Plus, I was impressed with MANOWAR’s glib, one-liner style. He is a superhero ahead of his time 🙂