At the newly re-launched Project New Media Literacies blog at MIT, two short (and work-in-progress) videos featuring several comic book artists appeared yesterday. Although I've never been an avid comic book reader, I enjoyed hearing these artists' thoughts.

In the first video (Flash version), Mickey Duzyj and Nick Bertozzi speak on the narrative structure of comics. With films like Sin City and 300 bringing qualities of graphic novels to the big screen, I found it interesting to see the reverse with books like David Mamet's On Directing Film and Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting helping to shape storytelling in comics. Plus, I loved the exercise of cutting up a comic strip, rearranging its panels, and then filling in the blanks to make sense of the new order.

The second video (Flash version) features Dean Haspiel describing Nick's comic designed as a fold-out map, reminding me of the role an interface can play in storytelling. See my post here on the Google Maps-based story, "The 21 Steps."