iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This quartet, in contrast, is just straightforwardly excellent. I love this song

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I love these incoherent thoughts about morality. Ur right Matt the homeless man doesn't deserve ur attitude

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

They're calling it the least appealing vinted listing of all time

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Oh, I also found another Ionicus comic page in Spitting Image: The Giant Komic Book from 1988, when Ionicus was in his mid-seventies. The book also has a Tintin parody by Rian Hughes (Tumtum) & a Judge Dredd parody by Brett Ewins (Judge Deaf).

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The 1951 annual does have an interesting strip by Michael ffolkes with a very Adolf Born-esque line. Seems he did cartoons for Punch and Playboy. I wonder how Punch cartoonists ended up doing work for Eagle

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

He did a story for the 1955 annual but my scan of the 1951 doesn't have a strip by him. Also pictured here is the 1956 strip, which I found in the 1977 book The Best of Eagle. For some reason all download links to the 1956 annual gave me the 1955 one

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I think people were initially taking Cleves' side because of the tone of her first accusations, and how poorly thought out D&Qs response was. That being said: the accusations were pretty plainly spurious from the beginning lol (did not predict the extent of it tho)

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Really bizarre how some people don't understand the concept of different mediums being.. different

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I swear it's actually good, ot's just being done a grave disservice. Here's a scan of the very first page, which does a good job demonstrating all the lettering problems. (Besides the point but it's likewise annoying it's labeled as pg13 because they didn't use roman numerals for the foreword)

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Currently making my way through this book very slowly because the lettering is so terrible it hurts. It's as if they did a mock-up draft and just.. published it.

This is really low quality (don't have access to my copy atm) but hopefully it gives you a better idea of how poorly the text is fitted within the speech bubbles and caption boxes. The font size changes seemingly randomly throughout the book

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

No. 29 Dig It vol. 1: Really enjoyed how distinct this is on a tonal level compared to Haikyuu!!. In love with Yoshidamaru's '80s-manga-cum-Manhwa line and this cast of characters. Hori is my fave currently. Think I'll keep following this one even after I'm all caught up

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Always find it interesting when cartoonists do the Frank King gimmick without the temporal element – so the gutters are just there to draw the eye. Some more examples other than the below (by Javier Mariscal) from Suehiro Maruo, Raúl Fernández, Guido Crepax, Chantal Montellier & Sergio Toppi

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Wait apparently it's meant to be half an hour? What the fuck man

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Think this one from Spain (something of a frog isekai, IIRC) is roughly contemporaneous... might be interesting to write about all of them.

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

(Lathe of Heaven might be slightly too long to be novella territory but you should read it anyway)

Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit, trns. Daniel Hahn. He did a book about process of translating it called Catching Fire which is excellent

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I've not read any Spirit either, was mostly thinking about his eschewing of background in The Building but it's a lot less stark than I remember tbh. (Sorry for the late reply btw)

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

No. 28 Dogtangle: Adored the breakneck pace (those title drops!) & Huffman's sheer cartooning power. Chock-full of great gags & the colour/style switch-ups were super effective & thematically resonant. All congeals into a wild ride about gentrification & the bottomless sociopathy of the uber-rich.

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

No. 27 Modus Comics Collection 3: Relay: Came for the Tyler Landry, stayed for the Tyler Landry. His story is really superbly evocative & totally outshines everyone else's contributions. Rest of the comics were shockingly banal & poorly constructed, with the exception of Southgate & Price's stories.

Awesome drawing by Tyler Landry here. Also v cool how the title reads the same upside-down

Something so pleasing about how Landry uses half-tones. Also adore how he draws hair. He's got such a great line

Lovely little plane drawing. Wonderful speech bubbles also. Very Connor Willumsen

Those last two panels! The force conveyed by the rumpled catpet, the changing background tone, & tasteful emanata: 🤌

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

No. 26 Agony: Did in fact cheer me up. A complete and utter delight. Beyer's cartooning is continually inventive and hilarious, as is his writing. I can barely count on both hands the comics that have made me audibly laugh — this is one of them.

One of the rare cases of NYRC just keeping the original cover, which I appreciate

Adore the way the interior of the fish is drawn here. The way "got" is emphasied in the speech bubble also very evocative

Beyer is excellent at drawing sombre people. Love how deep the spears have penetrated the crew members

Interesting how this page and numerous overs break the 180° rule. In this case it doesn't disorientate but adds an almost theatrical flourish. The strange trianglular panels Beyer does (which I love) resemble stage curtains here.

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

No. 25 Hidden Islands: Generally suspicious of comics you might see described as "unpretentious" but this won me over. Arthur excels in the short form, some lovely endings in here. The middle three stories, "Silent Fields" especially, were all great, but I found "Night" pretty tedious & predictable.

You wouldn't guess that this is a composite of two drawings from the comics within, which is all I ask for. So often the collaged elements in covers are super obviously upscaled

Really good, disturbing page. Makes you feel like your gaze is lingering too long. Arthur is great at drawing subtle but readable expressions

Arthur is great at this mode of dramatic narration and at writing children, both of which he does to great effect throughout "Waiting Treasure", one of my three favourite stories in the collection. His use of smudgy pencil shading throughout (as seen in the last panel) is also lovely

The style Arthur employs for the story "Silent Fields" (my personal favourite) and "Night" (my least favourite) is pretty interesting. I'd compare it to an even more pared down modern Beto Hernandez (those side profiles!), but there's an almost Ben Jones-y amateurishness to it as well. It works really well here, but didn't do "Night" any favours

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Ok seems to be back for now. A lot of people have had their accounts restored, only for them to be suspended again immediately afterwards. Not holding my breath but 🤞

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

No. 24 The Armed Garden; David B.: Terrific stuff. All three stories were great but "The Drum who Fell in Love" was my fave. Love how readily B. gets me to buy into the overtly nonsensical and fantastical. Better than Epileptic but not sure anything he's made will top Incidents in the Night for me.

Not sure anyone in comics is better at drawing a congregation of people than David B. is. Also love the shade of red here

Love the subtle sepia watercolour throughout the book, and I say that as a watercolour hater. The third panel here is a great example of B.'s use of fantastical scale and perspective. The crusaders literally surround Zizka while moderate Hussites and Ultraquists loom large behind him. The first two panels also a good example of B.'s dry humour. Its sprinkled just enough throughout to provide levity but not take away from the seriousness of the events

B. one of the rare cartoonists who knew how to make floating caption boxes (as seen in the first panel here) really work. I think it's because they're brief, lopsided and that they don't contrast heavily with the drawing they're on top of.

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Ironically, the comments of a tweet from someone complaining about the issue were flooded by actual bots. Genuinely how do you fuck up this badly. Bots on the site were rare to encounter before Musk took over, now they're absolutely everywhere

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

No. 23 Birds, Bees and Storks; Gerard Hoffnung: Perfect, delightfully cartooned little book. Loads of great visual gags and Hoffnung's line is sumptuous. Wonder if the format of this inspired Jordan Crane's Last Lonely Saturday.

The disappearance of line when he goes fully red is an inspired choice. See also the omittance of the part of the chair he is spewing in the direction of

These pages have a lovely (André) Franquin-esque quality to them. Beautiful scraggly drawings

Hornung gets so much comedic mileage out of every line

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

No. 22 Poem Strip; Dino Buzzati: Not sure how to feel about this one. Lots of brilliant pages and sequences, but I felt like I was trudging through just as many. At its best when it's a comic, not illustrated verse. Should reread one day when I'm not sick and traveling

I much prefer the cover of the original edition but I'm not sure it warrants that large a trim size.

Great page. Buzzati had a knack for getting image and word to interact in interesting ways but he so often demarcated them unnecessarily

This page feels very Garō. Almost Sasaki Maki-ish. Sort of gives you whiplash as it's so different stylistically different from everything else

Excellent page. Such evocative imagery. This books conception of the specialness of life is a little trite, but it pretty much rang true for me

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Came back from London with lots and lots of cool comics. Shoutout Notting Hill Comic Exchange and Gosh!

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Show me your comics taste in four different comics

Madriz #13; cover by Santiago de Cueto

This is a particular good early issue of Madriz, and arts-council-founded experimental comics magazine from '80s Madrid. Open any issue of Madriz and you'll find yourself equal parts astonished at and inspired by the sheer variety of approaches to the form on display. The magazine's 33 issue run in its entirety constitutes my absolute favourite comics anthology.

Lutte des Corps et Chutr des Classes; Thomas Gosselin & François Henninger

This book, to me, represents post-'90s French comics at their very best. Intelligent, propulsive, funny as hell, and excellently cartooned. Someone really ought to translate it...

Relatives; Antoine Orand

I'm a sucker for abstract formalist comics, and this is my favourite example of that. Balls rolling around and warping the bounds of what comics are capable of excite me more than any comic featuring superheroes.

Big Kids; Michael DeForge

North America has been producing the world's best alternative comics for the better part of two decades now, and DeForge's generation (Huizenga, Willumsen, Dash Shaw etc etc) has been especially brilliant.

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

There's not a tonne of winger-y tape due to where he plays under Emery but you occasionally see him making great use of positions Trossard and Martinelli often find themselves in but aren't very efficient from

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Extract from Kim Thompson's "Another Relentlessly Elitist Editorial" in The Comics Journal #55, April 1980

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

'The Cave' by Damian Carúlla from El Víbora no. 72, late 1985. Translation in the alt-text

Dawn breaks, the sun rises.
The cave remains cold, damp...

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

'The Invisible Man Tempts Fate' by Vallés from El Víbora 72, 1985

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robin @squarehead333.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

No. 21 Sweet Time & other stories; Weng Pixin: Mostly bad, sometimes alright. Disappointing visually for the most part. Found the writing trite, adolescent... Probably won't be reading more of her work.

Pixin can paint, as you can see from that first panel, but there's so much poorly executed stuff in this volume. This story "Home Diaries" is one of multiple diaristic shorts, and by far the best of the lot (not saying very much)

I like the use of what looks like wallpaper and tape for the gutters.

The outsider-art looking stories were punishing to read

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