Performance art comics?
Metronome is described as "a 64-page graphic novel by Véronique Tanaka: a ‘silent,’ erotically-charged visual poem, an experimental non-linear story using a palette of iconic ligne clair images. Symbolism, visual puns and trompe l’oeil conspire in a visual mantra that could be described as ‘existential manga’ if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a very human and elegantly-structured tale providing a solid foundation to the cutting-edge storytelling."
The graphic novel will be published next year by NBM, but it’s available to view as a 17-minute animated (actually, still-shots) movie on this site if you fork over the equivalent of about four bucks. I confess I didn’t last more than a minute and a half, two minutes tops. Not only did I see no storytelling, but it seemed to have all the earmarks of a pretentious performance art piece worthy of the likes of a young Yoko Ono.
If Grapefruit were a graphic novel-imagined-as-an-animated movie, it might look something like this. Only without the grapefruit, and with a lava lamp, a fly, a piano, and a metronome, among other things.
Hoping to capitalize on the latest superhero movies, we now present to you… Banana Rider!
In one of the smarter moves I’ve seen at this con, the people behind the AnimeNext convention have set aside a conference room at the Javitz center with shelves filled with manga that you can check out and read quietly in the room, in a nice quiet oasis from the hub-bub on the main floors. Absolutely brilliant, and the latest exhibit in why manga is kicking the tailfeathers of American comics.
Announced last night at the Marvel panel, Barry Kitson and Stefano Casselli have been signed to exclusive contracts with the House of M.
For as long as there has been a comics’ press, people have been wondering why there aren’t more women reading comics. And often those people wondering are, themselves, women: Maggie Thompson (who in 1960 co-published Harbinger, one of the first comics-themed fanzines back), 
