Comic Strip - Object Writing

by Paul
(Melbourne Australia)

Comic Strip - Object Writing

Pages rustle in the paper, it’s a soft shoe souffle on my lap in the train, the seat vibrates as the train gyrates around corners and clickety clacks over joiners, the pancake of pages separates into layers that hold the weave of words and pictures, all yesterdays news today.

I hunt for the funnies, the comic strips, the fast lane of four panels create a story. Balloon talk rises above their heads, in my mind I invent the voices of the characters, probably filling them in with animated cartoon characters I’ve watched at some point in the past, the voices are a blancmange of every type of character I’ve encountered.

Their inky lives seep across the page, with clear definition outlined by a wisp of a line to denote action or inaction. The final panel draws together the moral of the story, the joke, the punchline, a boxing glove shooting out of the pane hitting you square in the eye, tasting the leather of the glove smelling its linamented texture ‘KAPOW’, ‘BAM’, ‘HOLY YIKES BATMAN’ etc etc.

CAPITALIZED words loom like tall buildings in a morning mist, all the lower case talk, is just the small fish , but when there’s action going on then they become a mammoth catch, blocks of text caught in a net, just like SHOUTING on the internet, when you forget to take off the CAPS key, caught in the moment - not bothering to look up to see what you’re typing and realizing a whole paragraph is JUST CAPITALS, fingers depressing the keys at fabulous speed because the idea is hot, the juice is flowing , the blender is on full bore, the high pitched whine of ideas are transmitting through fingers to the page as the characters come to life.

Ideas and more ideas, flowing like water from a faucet, no drip , a steady rush unimpeded flow, a rush a high, a moment of ecstatsis, but naturale’ The train pulls into Flinders Street and the inner world goes back to sleep as the real comic strip of the day begins to unfold panel by panel.