An introduction to the Uncomics podcast: What and why are uncomics?
What are “uncomics,” and why can’t we just talk about plain old comics? Host Allan Haverholm introduces the podcast series.
Comics is a fuzzy term to begin with. Ask a hundred people what comics are, and you will probably get as many different answers. Depending on individual reading habits and preference, people are most likely to focus on surface characteristics like genre or drawing style. Similarly, comics studies are overwhelmingly concerned with the literary and occasionally psychological content of comics, rather than their relation to the wider visual arts.
Nonetheless, 21st Century artists mine the unexplored intersection between comics and the fine arts, in ways that aren’t entirely compatible with our understanding of either. Uncomics, then, covers the fertile field of phenomena most often discarded as “those aren’t comics”, and inspects them in light of contemporary art to see what both forms can gain from the exchange.
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Credits
The Uncomics podcast is edited and produced by Allan Haverholm. Music by Allan Grønvall Pedersen. All content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.
If you like the podcast, consider supporting it with a small, recurring donation via Liberapay 
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- Mark Rothko, No. 61 (Rust and Blue) (1953). Source: Wikiart
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- Robert Rauschenberg, Interview (1960). Photo: The Rauschenberg Foundation
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- Nam June Paik, Li Tai Po (1988). Source: Wikiart
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- Roy Lichtenstein (after Irv Novik), WHAAM (1963). Photo: Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
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- Sol Lewitt, All combinations of arcs from corners and sides (1973). Source: Wikiart
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- Joseph Cornell, untitled (Medici prince) (1952). Source: Wikiart
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- Sarah Sze, Centrifuge (2017). Photo: Sarah Sze Studio
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- A. Jorn and G Debord, spread from Fin de Copenhague (1957). Source: Maldoror Press
References
- Allan Haverholm, When the last story is Told (2015)
- Haverholm, Uncomics — reconsidering the comics form through the prism of its experimental periphery (MA thesis, 2018)
- The uncomics anthology (ed. Haverholm, 2022)
- Scott McCloud, Understanding comics (1993)
- Thierry Groensteen, The system of comics (transl. Bart Beaty & Nick Nguyen, 2009)
- Darryl Ayo, as quoted on Tumblr
- The abstract comics anthology (ed. Andrei Molotiu, 2009)
- Guy Debord, Theory of the dérive (1958)
- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A thousand plateaus (1987)
- Donna Haraway, Staying with the trouble (2016)
- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1987)
- Barbara M Stafford, Visual analogy: consciousness as the art of connecting (1999)
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