Gutter Space # 18: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weiner

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Gutter Space

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cartooning, gutter space, Humor, leslie salas, openmindedness, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Sequential art, serious, SMBC, teaching, unexpected, webcomic, Zach Weiner

Gutter Space # 18 by Leslie Salas

Utilizing Humor to Teach: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weiner

I’m a big fan of comics that like to teach random facts in unconventional and humorous ways. Comics like xkcd fit this bill, but so does Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a daily webcomic by Zach Weiner.

While all of the characters in this comics are drawn in a particular style, there are no recurring characters and there is no serialized plot. Each comic stands alone, and the humor ranges from silly to dark to seriously introspective social commentary. In addition to the occasional literary joke, there are also jokes about discourse analysis, physics, economics, statistics, life in academia, the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and life after death, to name more than a few topics.

SMBC has an openmindedness that I enjoy. The site regularly features LGBTQ couples, biracial couples, and polyamourous relationships. The joke of the comic almost never relies of the characteristics of the couple. It is simply a fact that—to be honest—should be overlooked and unnoticed by readers.

I like to think of SMBC as a random exercise in amusement and learning. You stumble across unexpected nuggets of wisdom along the way, but overall the experience is interesting and fun. This has gained SMBC a lot of attention over the years, and qualified it at an award-winning webcomic. Take the time to check it out, and let me know what you think.

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Leslie Salas writes fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and comics. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida and attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute. In addition to being an Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Leslie also serves as an assistant editor for The Florida Review, a graphic nonfiction editorial assistant for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and a regular contributing artist for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Gutter Space #8: Interactivity in Randall Munroe’s XKCD

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Gutter Space

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Tags

exploration, Humor, interactivity, internet culture, Literature, math, Randall Munroe, romance, sarcasm, stick figures, webcomic, xkcd

Gutter Space #8 by Leslie Salas

Interactivity in Randall Munroe’s XKCD

I’ve already talked about xkcd, “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” before, but I think Randall Munroe merits a second post for comic 1110, “Click and Drag.”

Regular readers of xkcd will tell you that xkcd is known for a certain level of intelligence and Internet sophistication from its readers. So for a comic to be titled “Click and Drag,” and for the hover-over text to also say, “Click and drag,” one would hope the readers would get the hint: click on the largest panel, and drag your mouse across the screen.

The result of following the commands yields hours of exploration in this giant black and white canvas of stick figure people interacting with their silhouetted environment. Hidden among the landscape is not only a peculiar scenery, but thought-provoking circumstances and statements posed by some of the stick people, as well as a few hidden references to Internet and popular culture.

This kind of interactivity with a comic—the choice to move the contents of a panel and discover new places and situations that were previously uncovered—could not easily be replicated in a traditional print medium. The clicking and dragging lends itself to a sense of exploration and excitement for the reader; choosing which direction to move in and whether or not to follow a line of parked cars, a tunnel into a mountain, or looking up toward the sky, gives each reader a choice and a unique reading experience. How much time spent exploring and which areas are explored first—if at all—is completely up to the reader. And if the reader happens to get lost, they can simply refresh the page to start at the beginning and explore again.

To read another brief review of “Click and Drag” featuring an extended interview with Munroe, check out this article from The Atlantic.

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Gutter Space #5: Less is More in E Horne & J Comeau’s A Softer World

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Gutter Space

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A Softer World, e horne, George Simenon, government, gutter space, Humor, j comeau, panels, photographs, romans durs, sad/harsh, sarcasm, stress, template, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, typewritten captions

Gutter Space #5 by Leslie Salas

Less is More in E Horne & J Comeau’s A Softer World

A Softer World, written by Joey Comeau and photographed/designed by Emily Horne, is a webcomic that is “sometimes … sad or harsh … in the tradition of George Simenon’s ‘romans durs’ (or ‘hard novels’).” Each of these comics follows the same three-panel template, where variations of the same or similar photographs are used to compliment the simple typewritten captions. To highlight Horne & Comeau’s style in A Softer World, let’s take a closer look at comic 998.

The captions of this comic seem simple—a kind of light-hearted humorous jab at the current state of politics in the US. The tone of the photograph and the location of the captions in terms of line of sight subconsciously create gloomier connotations for the strip. The comic comprises of what seems to be one single photograph, divided into three panels, of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial at night.

The first panel is dark and foreboding with the columns shadowed by nearby trees. It is with the second panel that we recognize the memorial for what it is—the statue of Jefferson facing the previous panel, a small arch of light above him. A partial caption directly behind his head alludes that the personification of “government” may apply to the President, and the final panel, with the columns more brightly lit and the captions moving further down the square, present a relaxed sadness.

However, there’s more to this comic. By placing your mouse over the comic, you’ll get a bonus caption in the roll over text, adding an extra element of culpability to the unidentified narrator.

Like many of the other comics of A Softer World, comic 998 resembles the poetry equivalent for comics. Each of the words in the captions is specifically chosen to elicit a response from the reader; placement of the text in each panel is carefully considered to influence how the reader scans across the photographic images. The end result is a subtle and poignant critique of some element of society.

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Episode 50: David Sedaris

25 Saturday May 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Bloomsday, David Sedaris, Episode, Recommendation

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Tags

Craft of Writing, David Sedaris, Fables, Humor, Memoir, Miami Book Fair International, Writing Podcast

Episode 50 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to the memoir writer David Sedaris,

plus Pamela Skjolsvik discusses David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day,

and Adriana Lecuona writes about Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Those Who Leave Omelas.”

Texts Discussed

Notes

David’s inscription in my copy of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

One of Ian Falconer’s illustrations from Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.

Episode 50 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.