I managed to sneak off from my incessant improv antics at Lakes International Comic Art Festival yesterday for long enough to see Karrie Fransman discussing her work, and experimental comics in general, with Mary Talbot, in the sober setting of the Kendal Town Hall council chamber (complete with working gavel and a not-at-all sinister portrait of the Queen!).

Fransman’s best known for her graphic novels “The House That Groaned” and “Death of an Artist”, the latter of which I’ve discussed elsewhere. She made a very good point that the approach she took to that book – of narrating via multiple fictional voices – is relatively common in literature, but completely unexplored in comics. And there’s a lot of this unexplored territory out there, excitingly.

She also talked us through a number of her other, smaller experiments in form, including

• a blank “self portrait” in which her multiple creative selves are depicted in the ornate frame, battling for control
• a tilt-to-view ipad app (predating comixology, sequential & electricomics)
• a sequential art jewellery box telling a story of love, loss and taxidermy!