Drawn Onward back

Well, isn't this a great little piece of comicbook genius?

I'm not wafting that accolade in front of you arbitrarily, either.

For me it would have been enough had it been but a very clever exercise in storytelling structure - though I can think of few others who would have conceived of it in the first place - but in Matt Madden's hands it has blossomed into an extremely poignant life-lesson in not fucking around with other people's feelings lest they fuck around with yours in revenge.

The thrill of the chase is a courtship conceit so many worry about: that the person pursuing you is after one thing and one thing only so once you put out they'll be gone - right out that door! It doesn't have to be full-blown sex, it can be a kiss or the mere acknowledgement that you fancy them too. Conquest achieved! Next!

But this delves even deeper than that and you'll want to read it forwards, backwards then forwards again. Maybe then approach it from the middle and read outwards, comparing the pages like I did, and from each end heading inwards as well.

It revolves around a pivotal moment right where the staples scream "symmetry"! Before and after those central staples lie mirror images with ever such clever departures. I've studied it for hours and will be using it in every future comics class that I teach.

I never doubted it for five seconds: Matt Madden's 99 WAYS TO TELL A STORY is one of the most witty explorations of comicbook storytelling and along with Jessica Abel (LA PERDIDA and LIFE SUCKS), Madden produced two of the best books on creating comics, DRAWING WORDS AND WRITING PICTURES then MASTERING COMICS.

But to break beyond mere exercise into something which will affect you profoundly - to use that very structural innovation to comment so astutely and so poignantly on the way we may treat each other so carelessly or callously - is when you comprehend that you have a comicbook creator in front of you who is a thinker akin to Eddie Campbell or Scott McCloud.

Even the endpapers will have you grinning.

No clues in the images here!