The creative process was designed as follows: a cartoonist would begin the story with three black-and-white comic-book panels, starring an innocent stick figure named "Sticky." This cartoonist passes his or her three panels on to the next cartoonist, who continues the story in any manner he or she wants with three more panels. The next cartoonist receives only the previous cartoonists's part of the story, and so on. Although the "story" oscillates without beginning or end, it can be said to start with the panels done by Drew Friedman, and end with the ones done by Richard McGuire: Some contributors featured cameos by their own well-established characters. It is also of interest that background or guest characters seldom last more than three contributions in a row.
Publication history
The idea was first conceived of in May 1990, as a project for Raw magazine. To expedite the project, two strands were started simultaneously, one in New York City by project co-editor R. Sikoryak, the second in London by Savage Pencil. Nevertheless, the project kept growing until it was forcibly brought to an end five years after its inception. In order to bridge the two strands, R. Sikoryak's original opening panels were cut, although he later drew the oddly-shaped "splash panel" that now begins the narrative. Spiegelman himself drew the three panels that link Strand 1 to Strand 2, while Richard McGuire was brought in to link Strand 2 back to Strand 1.
Contributors
The following is a list of contributors in the order their work appears in The Narrative Corpse:
R. Sikoryak > Mark Beyer > Gilbert Hernandez > Mary Fleener > M. K. Brown > David Mazzucchelli > Mort Walker > S. Clay Wilson > Chester Brown > Debbie Dreschler > Mark Landman > Jay Lynch > Gary Leib > Willem > Carol Lay > Jason Lutes > Max Andersson > J. Pirinen > Peter Bagge > G. Wasco > Spain > Carol Swain > Richard McGuire > Drew Friedman > David Sandlin > Ever Meulen > Mariscal > Joost Swarte > Pascal Doury > Georgeanne Deen > Chris Ware > Charles Burns > Lorenzo Mattotti > Justin Green > Julie Doucet > Kaz > Gary Panter > Daniel Clowes > Jonathon Rosen > Krystine Kryttre > Jaime Hernandez > Scott Gillis > Jim Woodring > Paul Corio > Will Eisner > Carol Tyler > Max Cabanes > Gilbert Shelton > Scott McCloud > Typex > José Muñoz > Matt Groening > Joe Sacco > Art Spiegelman > Savage Pencil > Jaques Loustal > Robert Crumb > Aline Kominsky-Crumb > Kamagurka & Herr Seele > Thomas Ott > Bruno Richard > Kim Deitch > Ben Katchor > Lynda Barry > Mark Zingarelli > Richard Sala > Bill Griffith > Jayr Pulga
