Text - Rhodes University

Sididis's Tripping uses comic conventions with facility, due to his familiarity with comics.
The page layout rather than the flow of words leads the eye. He even uses arrows to
direct the reader. Whereas I relied on unfinished sentences to convey continuity, Sididis's
pictures do so [fig 5]. It appears to be an unsuccessful story, in that he is trying to convey
a drug-induced state of mind; his drawings are literal, not psychedelic. In a way this
works, because the action to action transitions between frames describe a mood, and what
is perceived to be narrative is revealed as description. This is unusual, but appropriate
to an altered perception of reality, where a mood becomes an action and visions become
things.
NoT Thoi She.
Was ReqHy
Seei~ ).
Figure 5 Sididis Tripping pI
There is evidence in Tripping of a problem common to most of Sididis's cornics. The
page is crowded, with no obvious reason for being so. Although much attention and effort
is put into the plan of the layout, it is executed lazily so that much of its clarity and
therefore force is lost.
A comparison to Bitterkornix's Tommy Saga is useful. Tripping is surprisingly flat for an
illustration of such a loaded sensory experience, while The Tommy Saga crawls with
allusions and juxtapositions. Not to say that this is the only way to draw a psychedelic
experience - Petr Sorfa's Amorphous Picknick [figs 20,21] story seems to convey a similar
36