Text - Rhodes University

simply by its silence and inexplicability. To assume that an element will work in a comic
simply because it is a comic convention is hopeful, but a desperate hope that is here
disproved. This particular frame also demonstrates, by its lack, the skill needed to
smoothly combine words and pictures in a purely visual medium.
Returning to Dog's work, it seems that his more surreal stories like A Boy Called Julia
owe much to literature, especially in terms of narrative style.
A Boy Called Julia: Part 1 contains a single instance of direct communication, even to
the extent of timing an appropriate speaking pause [fig 20]. The drawings show a specific
face because it is a portrait of the narrator and also a portrait of the artist. This passage
highlights the artificiality and chaos of the rest of the comic, which is represented as
reality in the story. This is another deconstructive device; it could be used to make the
comic more real, but instead it is used to make the comic more surreal.
Bitterkomix 3 (Pulp vir Papkoppies) and 4 (Verkoop Jou Siel vir Security) contain work
by several outside contributors, and much more formal experimentation. Do a Dance for
Daddy, Die Mens and Siembamba are all illustrated texts. These lead into purely visual
exercises, storyless stories which are a more systematic exploration of the mechanisms of
comics: Verdwaalde Harte, Rewerie, Alcohol, Myself and my Heroes, and, in more
extended form, Die Hero van die Bitch. Botes and Dog each produce a longer comic that
combine this experimentation with a narrative: Klapmuts Polisie Slaan Toe, by Botes, and
A Discreet Selection from the Proverbs of Hell, by Dog.
Do a Dance for Daddy is an illustrated poem, and a collaboration between Joe Dog and
Claudette Schreuders. Meaning is generated by the almost arbitrary connections between
the words and the pictures. The two texts, verbal and visual, comment on each other by
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