At the start of the millennium, I hosted comic jam sessions at my friend’s comic book store. Among the activities we offered was the game 5-card Nancy, the rules of which can still be found at scottmccloud.com.
The guiding idea is explained by montage theory: if you juxtapose 2 movie shots or comic panels, the reader/viewer naturally presumes a narrative to connect them. This involves the audience in the creation of the story. Putting comic panels on index cards is a great way to play around with narrative possibilities.
For whatever reason, back then it was difficult getting ahold of suitable Ernie Bushmiller Nancy strips to work from. We ended up making a deck from Ivan Brunetti’s Nancy tryout strips that were published in an issue of the zine Rocktober (breaking one of McCloud's cardinal rules).
An important innovation we discovered as we played McCloud’s game is that once a strip concludes, the players should confer to agree on a title. It pulls the whole together.
I sent Mr.Brunetti a copy of the printed comic that included our use (abuse?) of his work. He was characteristically gracious. I recall him responding that his favorite was “the castrator’s apprentice.”
The ways comic panels change meaning in different contexts is something we’ll explore from multiple angles in my upcoming online course, Comics Inventions, enrolling now.
