Matthew Forsythe

Do you know who Matthew Forsythe is? You do?! YAY! Isn't he great!? You love his wordless comic Ojingogo? I do toooo!

You don't know who he is and you like comics? Well, then you have been doing yourself a huge disservice.

Please read the following post if you fall into either established category above:

When I picked up Matthew's book Ojingogo some years back now I loved it immediately. It approaches story telling and the usual notions of story telling through pictures in a very fresh and unusual way. In fact I am pretty sure that in terms of the way that the story was structured I had never seen anything like it. While there is no just one 'rule' in terms of layout per spread they are all seemingly easy on the eye in order to make way for a refreshingly complex story. I love the book because you actually need to use your noggin for a change and don't have the whole story spelled out for you piece by piece. How nice! So yes, Ojingogo, very cool, go check it out at your local comics books shop!

He has also just released a follow up for this book by the name of Jinchalo. I have not seen it yet and just put in a request at Lucky's Comics for it. Excited!!!

The book I really wanted to talk about though was his also newer book "Comics Class" which I bought around Christmas time (and was actually recommended to me by Gabe the super cool owner of Lucky's- Thanks buddy) It's quite hilarious while addressing some very real problems that teachers of comics and visual story telling (and students) may encounter in a class on the subject. As it says on the back of the book's cover, it's "Kind of based on a real class! ...But mostly untrue!" Ha ha. Forsythe of course also passes on some wisdom, including one of the most important things to consider when it comes to comics, picture books of any kind and illustration in general. The relationship between text and image. The concept of "Dialectial opposition between panels' ... or-Image and text don't say the same thing..." As Forsythe puts it. Super quick, fun and clever read and hey, it's only 5$! How can you go wrong?

On a last note, I recently saw that he has also illustrated a Children's Picture book called' My name is Elizabeth!' Yikes! Two books by someone totally amazing that I haven't even checked out yet. Better get on that Cinar!