An Interview with Matt Madden

Abstract

An Interview with Matt Madden Frederick Luis Aldama Educator, curator, editor, translator—all-around polymath—Matt Madden is also one of the most formally innovative and inspiring of our contemporary comics storytellers. From his first comics, such as Black Candy (1998) and Odds Off (2001), his best-selling and multi-translated 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (2005) and his haiku comics to his latest Bridge (2021) and Ex Libris (2021), Madden brings an unparalleled precision of style and innovation to the comic storytelling arts. With every carefully inked line and panel configuration, he crafts stories that push the envelope on erstwhile thresholds of form and content. He awes his readers with his elevation of visual storytelling forms. He transports us into exquisite labyrinths of existential conundrums: truth and illusion, suffering and transcendence. Just as vanguardistas such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and more recently Giannini Braschi and Carmen María Machado are writer's writers, so too might we consider Madden a cartoonist's cartoonist, using the visual-verbal storytelling arts to create marvels of innovation and inspiration. His work challenges global comics creatives to up their game. We see in Madden's comics how his use of varied generative constraints leads to the crafting of stories that make new readers' perception, thought, and feeling about the known and enigmatic—the quotidian and transcendent. With Madden I think readily of Borges's "The Aleph." Here Borges famously set himself the challenge of solving through fictional means the finite (human) encountering the infinite: how a human might perceive in a gestaltic instant everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously. Madden sets himself similarly seemingly impossible challenges that he not only solves through his dexterous visual-verbal storytelling expertise but does so in ways that lead to solutions to storytelling problems and the discovery of new storytelling techniques and forms. In addition to Madden's works already mentioned, he's also coauthor with [End Page 49] Jessica Abel of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (2008) and Mastering Comics (2012). From 2008 to 2013 he was series editor with Jessica Abel of The Best American Comics. His illustration work has appeared in WIRED, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. Madden's translations of comics include Aristophanes's The Zabîme Sisters (2010), Edmond Baudoin's Piero (2018), and Blutch's Mitchum (2020). Not surprisingly, Madden's work has caught the attention of many around the world. He's the US correspondent of the French Oubapo, a comics movement in France linked to the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) group. Exhibitions of his work have appeared in the United States, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Italy. Madden has been invited to teach courses and workshops around the world, including in France, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, and Finland. In 2012 Matt Madden was recognized by one of France's highest honors, the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters). frederick luis aldama: You wear your prodigious talent as a visual and verbal storyteller with great modesty, Matt. matt madden: Like most cartoonists, I don't make a fuss about myself. As much as comics has made huge gains in the culture at large, on a basic level cartoonists still don't feel valorized. We don't have the reception nor the swagger of, say, a rock musician who plays at a local pub. People don't think, oh, they've got tattoos, long hair, and wear lots of rings so he must be a cartoonist. There are exceptions. I think of fellow cartoonist and friend Paul Pope. He's someone who understands the dual role of glamour and romance in pop star imagery: on the one hand, yes, all is vanity, but on the other, having a cool persona can enhance the reception of your work, especially if it is actually good—no one dismisses Lou Reed's genius because he dressed exclusively in black, acted like a jerk to rock journalists, and made a corny scooter ad in the nineties! fla: Did you always know you'd become a...