December 31, 2010 Non-Sequitur

I really like the strip by Wiley Miller named "Non-Sequitur." He is just so wry and satirical. Non-Sequitur has been around since the early 1990s. He's got a few sets of continuing characters, and runs both strip and panel formats. Naturally, I have some of the ones I really liked in my collection.

Here's an example of a strip from earlier this year:


In collecting examples of some of the panel format, which I almost always enjoy, it was easy to note something really clever that it turns out Wiley pioneered: drawing a panel that could run both vertically and horizontally. You can see it immediately. Damned clever, and a cute little secret you would never really know without seeing the original. Here's one I just picked up:



I have examples of this going back years, but three things occurred to me, yesterday.

(1) Holy Crap. He superimposes two compositions that you cannot see simultaneously (like the duck-and-bunny optical illusion) on the same canvas. That's impressive.

(2) I never - EVER - thought about cropping one of these originals to see what the two different versions might look like. What a maroon!

(3) I just have to ask Wiley about what it is like to do this.

Here is the vertical version:


Here is the horizontal version:


And what did Wiley say about how he does this?

Well, what you're asking me to explain is like asking a bird how it flies. The creative process defies logical explanation as it is an abstract, and attempting to do so just screws up your brain, making it more difficult for that creativity to flow. It simply can't be forced by the static grid of logic. The best I can is tell you that I use perspective in my work, as opposed to the flat, eye-level dimension that nearly all other cartoonists use. This allows me to fill out the space in a natural, three dimensional manner, making it simple to separate the piece into the two different formats.

Awww, dammit. I always forget this part about most creative people: "I just do it."

Right brain... left brain... it just gives my brain a headache. I forget this because I am pretty sure my left and right brains are all scrambled. When I think about my scholarly work, I approach it like art, and I usually see entire solutions in my head, first, and then dig out the details that have the idea make sense (the best I can tell you is the old saying: sculpting is easy, just take away the parts that do not belong). In my early years of giving seminars to professional audiences, the criticism I got (and still get, but I am better) was that they could not understand what I was saying - "he's speaking in poetry again" according to a colleague of mine in the CUNY system. And when I do art, I am overly analytical, deliberate, and intentional.

Happy New Year.