The Narrative Corpse
The Narrative Corpse (edited by Art Spiegelman) was a graphic chain-story by 69 artists based on Le Cadavre Exquis (see Exquisite corpse), a popular game played by André Breton and his Surrealist friends to break free from the constraints of rational thought. The Graphic novel had a limited run in 1995 of 9500 copies and was the winner of the 1996 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Best Graphic Novel.
The creative process
The idea was first conceived of, in May 1990, as a project for Raw. An artist would begin the story with three black and white comic-book panels, starring an innocent stick-figure named "Sticky." This artist passes his three panels on to the next artist who continued the story in any manner he wanted with three more panels. The next artist received only this artists' part of the story, and so on.
To expedite the project, two strands were started simultaneously, one in New York by R. Sikoryak, the second in London by Savage Pencil. Nevertheless, the project kept growing (outliving RAW itself, which ceased publication in 1991) until it was brought to an end five years after its inception.
Although the "story" oscillates without beginning or end, it can be said to start with the panels done by Friedman, and end with the ones done by McGuire. It is also of interest that a background or guest character seldom goes more than 3 contributions in a row. Some contributors have walk-ons by their own characters (Mort Walker's Sarge or Eisner's Spirit, for example.)
Artist list
| Max Andersson | Peter Bagge | Lynda Barry |
| Mark Beyer | Chester Brown | M. K. Brown |
| Charles Burns | Max Cabanes | Daniel Clowes |
| Paul Corio | R. Crumb | Georgeanne Deen |
| Kim Deitch | Julie Doucet | Pascal Doury |
| Debbie Drechsler | Will Eisner | Mary Fleener |
| Drew Friedman | Scott Gillis | Justin Green |
| Bill Griffith | Matt Groening | Gilbert Hernandez |
| Jaime Hernandez | Kamagurka and Herr Seele | Ben Katchor |
| Kaz | Aline Kominsky-Crumb | Krystyne Kryttre |
| Mark Landman | Carol Lay | Gary Leib |
| Jacques Loustal | Jason Lutes | Jay Lynch |
| Mariscal | Lorenzo Mattotti | David Mazzucchelli |
| Scott McCloud | Richard McGuire | Ever Meulen |
| José Muñoz | Thomas Ott | Gary Panter |
| J. Pirinen | Jayr Pulga | Bruno Richard |
| Jonathon Rosen | Joe Sacco | Richard Sala |
| David Sandlin | Savage Pencil | Gilbert Shelton |
| R. Sikoryak | Spain | Art Spiegelman |
| Carol Swain | Joost Swarte | Carol Tyler |
| Typex | Mort Walker | Chris Ware |
| G. Wasco | Willem | S. Clay Wilson |
| Jim Woodring | Mark Zingarelli |
External links
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