Beginning with the experiments of Saul Steinberg, through some of the more psychedelic creations of R. Crumb, and more recently, cartoonists created comics whose panels contain little to no representational imagery, and which tell no stories. Reduced to the panel grid, brushstrokes, and sometimes colors, abstract comics highlight the formal mechanisms that underlie all comics. The first collection devoted to this genre, Abstract Comics: The Anthology, is edited by Andrei Molotiu, an art historian and contemporary abstract-comic creator. It gathers the best abstract comics so far, including early experiments by Gary Panter, Moebius, Patrick McDonnell, and Lewis Trondheim, and pieces by little-known pioneers such as Benoit Joly, Bill Boichel and Jeff Zenick, as well as by recent practitioners such as Ibn al Rabin, Billy Mavreas, Mark Staff Brandl, and many others. Abstract Comics also features first attempts, commissioned specifically for this anthology, by well-known cartoonists such as James Kochalka, Ivan Brunetti, J.R. Williams and Warren Craghead..
