Tangled Tales
Ever felt your inner world isn't moving in simple straight lines? That’s the premise of pioneering interactive comic Tangled Tales.
Six people enter a building, each with a job to do, their own workplace and technology. Yet things are subtly changing, shimmering, melting and tangling. Wires are crossed, equipment fails, complaints are received. Roles become uncertain, identities blur, realities fracture. Can any of them escape the chaos to reach a positive revelation?
Graham Johnstone’s Tangled Tales is a series of six times six panel comics able to be read in thousands of permutations. To be exact 46,656 or 6 to the power of 6.
Drawn in an elegant blend of cartoon, diagram, and abstraction, visual elements recur in hypnotic variations, giving every permutation a compelling logic, drawing the reader into the heart of these troubles. Underneath its unique form, Tangled Tales is a heartfelt evocation of inner struggle, offset by ironic humour and clever visuals.
Originally hand-made by the artist in tiny editions, this pioneering work is finally available in ebook form with the full original interactivity.
‘Tangled Tales is a beguiling sequence of poetic strips and perhaps the earliest example I have encountered of its type: the rigorous permutational structure… yields dreamy, seemingly chance-based results’.
- Matt Madden, author of 99 Ways to Tell a Story, and member of Oubapo, Workshop for Potential Comics.