Text - Rhodes University

Contact between Bitterkomix and Komiksoc produced some changes in Komiksoc after
Kersjnibiknjik, notably an attempt at more conventional comics, with speech balloons and
sound effects. Tighter, cleaner work for its own sake was already an issue with Komiksoc
artists after the first publication. The shock occasioned by the unfamiliarity of work, after
the intervention of the printing process, was inducement to improve legibility. A printed
page differs in texture from a handworked one - the medium of communication is subtly
changed. Artists have to deal with issues of professionalism, as well as the expectations
of an audience already conditioned to certain comic conventions used in regular comics.
Komiksoc's comics are whimsical and fantastical. Bitterkomix are realistic in the sense
that constant references are made to politics and literature and art and cultural traditions,
which are real-world items. Komiksoc's jokes are fanziney in-jokes [Total Disintegration
of A fig 1; The Killing of Bunion fig 37]. Asides are either 'pure' jokes, cartoony and
almost Disneyish, or so personal that the humour is incomprehensible to any but the
artist.
Komiksoc really only gained confidence with Kersjnibiknjik. Previous publications had a
few outstanding stories, but none of Kersnibiknjik's unity and control.
For many of the contributors Zombie Birdhouse was their first attempt at comics and
they had little awareness of the possibilities open to them. Hence my Odlid, with strict
continous narrative from frame to frame, and Tripping by Sididis (Philip Heimann),
where pictures merely illustrate. In Odlid the pictures do add to the text, providing an
eerie surreal atmosphere to a very simple storyline, and supplying details that are not
mentioned in the story. Odlid is a first-time experiment in comics that does not quite look
like a comic. I used brush and ink rather than the cleaner pen and ink, the result being
that the drawings are far from a conventional comic style. Odlid's dreams are of
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