The T-shirt design by Max.
Continuing from the last post, here is the T-shirt I was talking about then: Feed On Comics! the one I bought at ICAF (the International Comic Arts Festival) at Bethesda in Maryland in 1999 designed by Max, or at least here is a scan of the major part of the illustration. The T-shirt itself is falling apart and no longer wearable but I treasure the design and retain it as a rag, a collectable rag to be viewed and not used. I don’t have many but I do collect comics related T-shirts and I intend displaying a few of them on this blog. The comics are more my thing and I admit to having a bit of a habit about them. I have a few. I regularly read them and re-read them and I’m always on the look-out for new material. You could say I have a voracious appetite for the art of comics. I consume them but don’t actually eat them like Max’s skeleton in the illustration above. It’s more metaphoric, like a form of absorption…a taking in of the visual material and the content therein.
Also, although I collect comics I’m a user not an investor. I don’t have a mint copy of anything. In fact I have nothing near a mint copy of any comic that I have bought and still have in my possession. I collect and read for pleasure, both the visual pleasure of the art and text and the pleasing nature of the intellectual and storytelling content. Coffee cup rings and wine stains abound. I even fold the covers back sometimes so that I can hold and read the comic with one hand like the manga readers on Tokyo trains who are capable of holding and page turning the comic with one hand whilst hanging onto the overhead strap with the other. And dare I say it (with apologies to the librarians who trained me in caring for books), I even indulge in marginalia, even in ink sometimes. I do respect library copies but these are my books. My marginal notes sometimes include miniature drawings and sketches that are attempted copies of aspects of the artwork in the panels like a tracing of the shape or the texture or a simulation of the design. Oh dear! There I’ve said it, but now you know where I stand.
