Best Selling Books by Matt Madden

99 Ways to Tell a Story is a series of engrossing one-page comics that tell the same story ninety-nine different ways. Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s 1947 Exercises in Style, a mainstay of creative writing courses, Madden’s project demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities available to all storytellers. Readers are taken on an enlightening tour—sometimes amusing, always surprising—through the world of the story. Writers and artists in every media will find Madden’s collection especially useful, even revelatory. Here is a chance to see the full scope of opportunities available to the storyteller, each applied to a single scenario: varying points of view, visual and verbal parodies, formal reimaginings, and radical shuffling of the basic components of the story. Madden’s amazing series of approaches will inspire storytellers to think through and around obstacles that might otherwise prevent them from getting good ideas onto the page. 99 Ways to Tell a Story provides a model that will spark productive conversations among all types of creative people: novelists, screenwriters, graphic designers, and cartoonists.

A course on comics creation offers lessons on lettering, story, structure, and panel layout, providing a solid introduction for people interested in making their own comics.

You are looking at (or: you are holding) the book Ex Libris by Matt Madden. Maybe you came looking for it, maybe you just came across it in a bookstore or at someone''s house. Maybe you are reading this in a catalogue on a screen. What kind of adventure do you think takes place in these pages? To judge by the cover design and the title, it would seem that books themselves are a subject of this book. Does this book have a comic book as its hero? If you put the book down now, you''ll never find out, but on the other hand imaginary, hypothetical versions of the story will branch off endlessly in some corner of your mind. If you do want to find out what happens, all you need to do is open the book and read the first page. But be careful: you might just get sucked in

Förlagets webbplats: "Three characters sense that their lives are connected across generations. All three become obsessed with the idea of something they call the Bridge. But what is its purpose? Where does it lead to? Does it really exist? This story originated as a 24-hour comic with the added constraint that 10 years pass from page to page."

A new course of material to accompany First Second''s widely acclaimed 2008 comics textbook. In their hotly anticipated follow-up to 2008''s comics textbook Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, School of Visual Arts cartooning professors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel bring their expertise to bear on the "second semester" of a course of study for the budding cartoonist. Covering advanced topics such as story composition, coloring, and file formatting, Mastering Comics is a vital companion to the introductory content of the first volume.

"Prisoner of Zembla" tells the tale of Alina Zek, an exiled philologist who makes a doomed last stand to save the written alphabet of her native language. The concern with the alphabet leaks beyond the story and into the very structure of the comic: the careful reader will find a hidden layer to the story, the "prison" which holds Prefessor Zek captive. "The Envoy" is the tale of four hardy seamen who accompany an eminent scientist and his young daughter on a perilous mission to uncharted Arctic waters. "La Mulata de Cordoba" is a retelling of a legend from colonial Mexico about a witch who conjures magic from a source we are all close to: the drawn line. Rounding off the issue will be another installment of Madden''s acclaimed "Exercises in Style."

An author struggles to understand an encounter on the subway that has led her to romantic despair. Six characters embark on a dangerous voyage, searching for a mysterious treasure. A cartoon character finds himself in bizarre yet uncannily familiar scenarios. Three characters obsess over the same image and sense that their lives connect across generations. Novelistic worlds in miniature. Hilarious hijinks. The occasional twist ending... The stories in Six Treasures of the Spiral: Comics Formed Under Pressure are inventive and wide-ranging, sometimes funny, occasionally sad, and always offbeat. The New York Times called Matt Madden a "stuntman-philosopher" because he creates comics in the crucible of formal constraints -- one comic is a visual palindrome, another maps on to the letters of the alphabet, several follow the rules of demanding poetic forms like the villanelle and the haiku. It may seem that strict limitation would stymie creativity; on the contrary, the massive pressure it exerts on the author''s process bonds atoms of text and image together into comic diamonds that Booklist has called "formally rigorous and narratively lucid." Madden is an educator and evangelist for experimental comics. This book contains an extensive afterword that walks through all the game-like rules he used in the stories in this collection. He offers insights into how he turned the shackles of these complex constraints into a source of inspiration and ingenuity. If you want to explore new creative challenges, you''ll leave this book eager to work on forging your narrative jewels.

Detailing the complexities of a dissolving relationship between an easy-going Franco-phile named Morgan and his world-weary pre-med girlfriend Shirin, Odds Off is framed by the three-month period between New Year''s Eve and Now Rooz, the Iranian New Year. Enter grad student Lance whose infatuation with Morgan and increasing writer''s block sets the stage for Madden''s surehanded mixture of traditional realism with formalist tricks. Never allowing his dedication to experimentation to interfere with his storytelling, Madden has created a work that is multi-layered, dense, moving and funny. Last year''s cathartic blowout, Black Candy, was hailed as modern-day classic and Odds Off is sure to create the same kind of critical fervor.

A course on comics creation offers lessons on lettering, story, structure, and panel layout, providing a solid introduction for people interested in making their own comics.

Ink Brick is a print and digital journal dedicated to work that crosses the borders between comics and poetry, and to critical writing about the hybrid form. We are tearing down the wall to throw bricks at you.

Comics about randy humans.

Comics about fatalities at magic shows.

A Fine Mess, collects various new comics and works-in-progress, including Madden''s "Exercises in Style,". A Fine Mess covers the map, showing Madden''s range from rigorous formal experimentation to novelistic human drama. The first issue is a deluxe package featuring the playful and bittersweet 16-page "Night of the Grossinator," lushly printed in two-color process. This issue also includes new shorts that find Madden experimenting with comics form and narrative.

All these comics were drawn in sketchbooks over the last 15 years or so.