Oubapo America

August 3, 2002 12:31 AM

Oubapo America is a project to identify and explore constraints in Comics. It is the American cousin of the French Oubapo project which shares the same goals. Example: "Draw a comic that is 26 panels long where each panel features in some way the corresponding letter of the alphabet". If this sounds familiar, you may be thinking of Oulipo.
posted by vacapinta (6 comments total)

OuBaPo is one of the most exciting developments in comics in recent years. It was started by Thierry Groensteen (one of the foremost comics scholars in the world - if you can read French, check out his Systeme de la Bande Dessinee), and Jean-Christophe Menu (one of the founders of the excellent and influential French comics collective l'Association). They've created two books so far: OpUs 1, which includes Groensteen's essay on comics under constraints, and OpUs 3, which is made up from strips created by OuBaPo members for the French newspaper Liberation a couple of summers ago. We're still waiting for OpUs 2. The US version was started by Matt Madden, Jason Little and Tom Hart, and it's a fantastic resource for cartoonists who want to explore the amazing results you can get by putting the work under constraints.

First time poster, long time reader...
posted by ninthart at 5:09 AM on August 3, 2002

A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs....
posted by LuxFX at 12:12 PM on August 3, 2002

Is that Gorey you're referencing there LuxFX?
posted by ninthart at 1:59 PM on August 3, 2002

The Oubapo/America site makes me long for a more graphical interface. Thumbnails links to the comics would help a lot.

This one from their alphabet challenge made me laugh:
The Stutterer's Alfalfabet

It's a clash of medieval hallucinations and gossipy caricature.
posted by gametone at 3:58 PM on August 3, 2002

Nice! The Silent Running constraint is a bit reminiscent of David Lynch's Angriest Dog in the World cartoons (bit more background here).
posted by chrispy at 4:28 PM on August 3, 2002

ninthart: you got it -- I just can't think of illustrated alphabets without thinking about Gorey.

For those poor souls that have missed out, there's a decent online version of The Gashlycrumb Tinies here
posted by LuxFX at 7:10 AM on August 4, 2002