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• Comics and minority culture at the KAM

There’s a colorful new exhibit at the Krannert Art Museum right now called “Out of Sequence,” spotlighting minority comic book artists and graphic novelists. A wild variety of topics ­— gay marriage, the Supreme Court, the Normandy invasion — are addressed in sassy panels, poems and action-packed images. I’m not a comic book connoisseur, but I have to say that it was well worth my trek through the rain to attend the exhibit’s opening last Thursday.

Curators Damian Duffy and John Jennings of Eye Trauma Comix were on-hand to introduce several of the artists.

Mark Staff Brandl, aka EuroShark, a former University of Illinois student now living in Zurich, Switzerland, gave a brief talk explaining his bright yellow panels called “Carried Away,” followed by a Q & A session. To the question, “What’s the difference between graphic novels and comics?”, Brandl replied that he didn’t really make a distinction but that images and words were “codependent and independent” in each — “like a marriage.”

Brandl also showed off a rack full of colorful cardboard comic book covers, individually hand-painted, including some celebrating this very exhibit.

I chatted with artist Andrei Molotiu, who said he had decided in the past six or seven years to move on to comics as a more experimental form of art, one purely about shapes changing and transforming. Then he pointed me over to the corner, where his intricate ink drawings were mounted. His work reminded me of looking through a microscope at very squishy plant cells.

I won’t spoil the fun by reprinting the jokes in witty series such as “Romance in Red” by Eric Millikin or “Black Guy for the White Guy” by Keith Knight. Some of the more grotesque images, such as “Supreme Court 3000,” leave nothing about the artist’s political views to the imagination; others rely on the storyline to make a point about life as a minority. My personal favorite is called “Stars, Crosses & Stripes” by Christian Hill, which managed to blend personal history, an American flag and really fun imagery into one piece.

Some of the art is also projected on a screen in the middle of the gallery, as well, for anyone who wants to sit and chill.