Sunday, August 27, 2023
Made Out of "Mac"
Monday, September 5, 2022
A game of 5-card Nancy from Y2K Denver

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.
Monday, August 29, 2022
"Draw Two Panels" spinoff: The Deckless Wonder
Here's an experiment that's been languishing in my files. I've written already of my work with Isaac Cates on his Draw Two Panels game. It inspired me to test an idea for this spinoff:
I drew two cards that pose a simple question: is our heroine dressing or undressing? Where the cards are placed in the four-panel sequence would direct the answer.
After completing the first strip, I toss a coin twice, choosing one of the original cards and one of the new cards. Then I make a new strip, placing the cards wherever they can be made to make sense.
I'm struggling to recall the exact rules. In each new round, I toss a coin to choose one old and one new card. There should always be four cards available for each new round, from which two are chosen.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
I have a new book out!
Friday, November 22, 2019
The Road to Golgonooza, part 1
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
"Highlights from the Life of Raymond Roussel" part 2
Thursday, August 23, 2018
the first six "Highlights from the Life of Raymond Roussel"
Check https://brooklynrail.org/contributor/t-motley for further episodes.
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Oulipo Canada Dry
You'll have to let me know if I pulled it off. For comparison, here again is an actual constrained comic from 2010, an N+7. Every major word and image was replaced by the seventh word of the same type (noun, verb, adverb, adjective) following it in a dictionary.













































