Graphitti As Comics?

By | Saturday, January 14, 2012 2 comments
Graphitti as comics? Has anyone seen this?

I saw a documentary on graphitti and graphitti artists back in high school and I was inordinately impressed with the skill some of the artists had. Where I grew up, though, we had no such cool art. In fact, the only graphitti of any sort I recall seeing in person was on a nearby underpass where the word "pharoahs" (yes, it was spelled incorrectly) was crudely scrawled out over the eight support pylons.

Now, I know there are plenty of examples of comic style illustrations in graphitti. A quick Google search will turn up images like these...

But these aren't really comics, are they? There's no story, certainly, but nothing to that even suggests sequential art. They're still images, and they speak more to the symbology represented by the characters than telling a story.

And then you've got projects like this...

... which is very cool and impressive AND tell a story of sorts but, again, it's not comics.

Now, admittedly, I've never really lived in an area where graphitti was really raised to an art form and most of what I do see is painted over very quickly anyway. So my question goes out to the folks who live in closer proximity to good graphitti: have you seen examples of graphitti being used as the medium for a comic story or sequential art? Where there are a series of still pictures conveying a deliberate sequence? (Wow. Sounds a little like I'm channelling Scott McCloud there. Not intentional, I assure you.) Are there good examples out there for comics created as graphitti?
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2 comments:

TRoyal said...

As a graffiti person, I don't know if you'll see much in the way of sequential art, but maybe the use of an image or a few images like the ones you posted to exemplify how awesome the artist is, or the visual equivalent of name dropping. Take a look at the effect Vaughn Bode's work had on NYC artists in the 70s and 80s.

DeBT said...

I posted a few Anime graffitis I noticed in newspaper photos on my blog. Not quite on the same level, but still.
http://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2011/06/anime-grafitti.html