Dave Morice's 
                    POetry Comics ONLINE

UP NOW!
MORE LIGHGHT FOR ARAMMMMMM
by Joyce Holland

    From 1979 to 1981, the first 17 Issues of POETRY COMICS traveled from around and about Iowa City, IA throughout the poetry world and beyond until one day "The Village Voice" printed a 6-page article about the magazine announcing them as the newest artform.  The article caught the interest of Simon & Schuster and in 1982 the company brought out the first of three anthologies.  The complete anthologies : Poetry Comics: A Cartooniverse of Poems (Simon & Schuster 1982), More Poetry Comics: Abuse the Muse (Chicago Review Press 1988), Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology (Teachers & Writers 2000) are available on www.amazon.com  Look up Dave Morice on Amazon.com to find these classics and other new works by this prolific author/artist/performer/poet/mental master. 
    Poetry comics have been on a serious rise over the last five or so years. Not adaptations or short interjections of poems – genuine poems-as-comics, graphic narratives, visual poems, whatever you want to call them. It’s a growing field, with a number of very talented individuals involved, most of them working with webcomics. Matt Madden, illustrator, teacher, and co-author of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, has been experimenting with cartoon versions of poetry forms like sestinas and pantoums — applying the rules of structure to sequential art. Austin Kleon has authored a book called Newspaper Blackout a collection of newspaper pages blacked out except for a few specific words and images – the results hum with the same weirdness of cut-up and found poems while still working as collage and sequential art. Respected industry veteran Rick Veitch, the undisputed authority on dream comics, has collaborated on a series of poetry comics with writer Peter Money. Bianca Stone’s work is particularly effective: swatches of ethereal language working with stylish illustrations to create an overall reading experience unlike many others. Graphic poet and artist Paul K. Tunis is an exceptional artist who likes poetry, and has depth and extreme versatility. Rich Lederer has been around long enough to still have copies of the early POETRY COMICS, but now he has a burgeoning list of books at his own site: http://www.verbivore.com.
    If one is searching for a real authority on poetry comics, though, one need look no farther than Dave Morice. As a poet, teacher, performance artist, writer, and illustrator, Morice has striven to create art out of life while giving others the power to do so. He teaches writing and cartooning, participating in the Iowa Arts in the Schools program  and has evens even written a few books on the subject including Poetry Comics, More Poetry Comics, and How to Make Poetry Comics.  Dave is a generous teacher, prolific producer at whatever art form he tackles, and still carries a sense of wonderment of the many things he has not tried his hand at yet.    
POETRY COMICS ONLINE 
is now a magazine of poems which have been personally selected and
“cartoonized” by the editor and original inventor of the artform, Dave Morice. The history of what
would become the first seventeen issues appearing in print from 1978 to 1981 are chronicled above. These historic covers along with PDFs of more recent Issues from 2011-2012 are now posted on the Poetry Comics Archive page of this website.
Now, 30 years later, the magazine returns to the poetry world and makes a home for itself on the worldwide web. New technologies and the Internet allow Poetry Comics Online to reach a worldwide audience of nearly 500 readers a day, when the original Poetry Comics were produced in batched of 150 and hand-delivered or mailed to select people in the United States only. Many thanks to Joye Chizek, Webmaster and Mary Jo Dane, Assistant Editor for making it happen! For more information e-mail
drabc1946@gmail.com or visit Dave Morice on Wikipedia.  
                                                                                                                    Dave Morice  
Website Builder