One of the most impressionable quotes in Damien MacDonald’s Anatomy Of Comics comes from Italian film master (and secret comic nerd) Frederico Fellini. “The world of comics can generously lend cinema its scenarios, characters, stories,” he proclaims, but cinema can’t borrow “the ineffable and secret power of suggestion” that comics contain: “the transfixed immobility of a pinned butterfly”. Probably the most lyrical ode to the medium ever.
Many a great book has been written about comics, lip service to which MacDonald pays in his own – from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to Jerry Dauber’s American Comics. But few penned as ambitiously as this, compiled with help from France’s 9e Art Références collection and Spain’s “la Caixa” Foundation in connection to a nationally touring exhibit. Rather than produce a linear timeline of sequential art’s development in Europe and the States during the 19th-20th century, MacDonald splits his subject into anatomical themes, according to mind, body, senses and soul, with the aid of creator and critic perspectives and interspersed captioned art plates. The latter series could be enjoyed on its own, qualifying the chunky tome as visually splendid coffee table material.
Aficionados will recognise the work of Frank Miller, Jack Kirby, Mœbius, Mike Mignola, Hergé, Charles Burns and more, but older masters like Hal Foster and Albert Robida are revelatory. An essential resource for comic readers.
Anatomy Of Comics, Damien MacDonald (Flammarion)
Price: £24.95. Info: here
words HANNAH COLLINS