My ring is comics: the art of Dan Panosian

Dan Panosian. Metropolitan barbarian. Emotional builder.

What is a comic book page?

According to some, a finite space where one or more authors make things "happen" with the aim of causing emotions.

What is the ring in a boxing match?

Quite pleonastically, we can say that it is the structure where two athletes face each other and, if you have ever seen a boxing match, we can assure you that, even there, a lot of things "happen". And, again, emotions are assured.  

Two spaces bordered by an ideal boundary, the white space in the comic strip, the strings in the ring: the background where talent is staged for the sole purpose of provoking a reaction in the audience.

Emotions, we said, Dan Panosian is a producer of emotions, able to sketch hypertrophic scenes of action over the top as delicate sequences where expressions and gestures of the characters are treated in detail. And it is no coincidence that his life, at least his professional life, is divided between boxing and comics, professional streets following in the footsteps of his father, advertising with a past as a professional wrestler.

Boxer, illustrator, advertiser, game designer, cartoonist, Dan is a Renaissance man born, in our opinion, not by chance, in Cleveland, the same city where Superman was conceived.

Dan is an extraordinary builder of emotions, a rare personality in this world, able to aggregate around him an incredible positivity, an atypical cartoonist founder of the initiative Drink and Draw Social Club, event that brings in the best pubs around the world the best cartoonists and makes them meet with fans.

On display at Romics a selection of Panosian’s works, starting from his version of Alice in Wonderland made together with Giorgio Spalletta, Alice Forever and Alice Never Again, with tables of extraordinary beauty. To follow some tables of Slots, his first work as a complete author, n which tells his Las Vegas; to close a selection of images from An Unkindness of Ravens, made in collaboration with the Italian designer Marianna Ignazzi.

Alessio Danesi