Gary Sullivan's DIY comic, Elsewhere, explores biography as an artistic construct. A poet, cartoonist and blogger, he started drawing and writing the Elsewhere comic series in 2005. Like what I imagined comic books could be, they are portraits of places and abstract feelings more than stories with plots. Not as sappy as Adrian Tomine but almost as emotionally resonant, the first one explores a trip to Japan as a series of vignettes and black and white illustrations. Plus, I like his hustler's spirit: he's selling his comics on his blog, free of shipping charges. Authors, like rappers, need to take notes because publishing companies only like you if you are making them money. And though it's harder to print up copies of your novel like it is to burn a CD, its still better than getting wrapped-up in a shitty deal. Who knew we could learn so much from drug dealers?
Thus, Gary Sullivan's comic is an excellent way to transform narration into something beyond beginnings, middles and ends. Plot, as the below example illustrates, does not exist. The riddle below demonstrates this point.
From the following account of the plot, identify this classic American Depression film:
"An unwilling immigrant to a New Land of Opportunity, a dissatisfied young foreign woman kills an older woman whose face she never sees. After she recruits three equally dissatisfied strangers, they go on to kill again..."
Answer: The Wizard of Oz.
More important are the narrative qualities and details that construct a story. And Sullivan's comics do a great job at exemplifying that difference in low-budget arts is still necessary.
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