David Lasky has been making comics here in Seattle for decades. He's been the heart of the Seattle cartooning community through its many iterations: he always shows up, he's always quick with a supportive word, he's always eager to teach a class. And he's developed a deep institutional memory for Northwestern cartooning.

I don't mean to paint Lasky here as some kind of backward-facing comics version of Seattle historian Mossback. The best thing about David Lasky is that he's always intensely curious about the capability of comics: all the infinite ways you can convey information through a page of cartooning.

At this year's Short Run, Lasky debuted the ninth volume of his annual Manifesto Items series of books, which collects his short, generally page-long comics work. The works in the latest issue of Manifesto Items were created as part of his teaching curriculum and at the DUNE cartooning meet-ups over the last year. In other words, they were created in the spirit of experimentation. But the presentation of the book isn't half-assed, or photocopied together on the night before the show. This is a lavish, full-color presentation with all kinds of visual special effects.

"I feel that short comics can be every bit as good and as challenging as long ones," Lasky writes on the first page of Manifesto Items. And it's true: you might not find too much to love in a novelist's experiment in hyper-short fiction, but a deeply considered and elegantly constructed single page of comics can feel like a complete project.

One page of Manifesto Items tells a complete story about the changing of the seasons in six non-representational panels depicting abstract black outlines backed with bold oranges and blues. "Breathe in the coolness," one dusky blue panel reads, with a word balloon pointing off panel that says "AH!" Another panel which seems to show clouds at sunset urges the reader to "Smell the leaves as you walk." In less than 30 words, it's a tone poem that puts you directly into the experience of walking around Seattle on a crisp fall day just as it prepares to tip into a dreary winter.

Another page demonstrates how dots on a comics page could stand in for two fleas having a conversation, the eyes of a smiley face, or the focal points of a fleshed-out character who "could be the star of a best-selling graphic novel."

Lasky's at his best here as he teaches about the limitations and possibility of the comics mediums. He points out rarely used panel transitions. He composes a short essay on how panel shape is just as important to the rest of the story as character or plot of dialogue. He demonstrates how to tell a story using a simple nine-panel grid and a purply blue set of watercolors. His questing mind is breaking down comics to their most elemental bits and seeing how they work.

Lasky's agenda is pretty full these days. He's working on a long history of the Georgetown Steam Plant. But I hope he'll consider doing a slightly more process-oriented version of Scott McCloud's indispensable Understanding Comics, teaching these kinds of very specific lessons about what a standard comics page can and cannot do. Very few cartoonists are capable of Lasky's tendency to work at a very high level while still keeping an eye on the most basic components of how comics work. Lasky spends a lot of time teaching novices how to make comics, but the truth is that the whole industry could use a refresher course in the wonder of comics. No one is more suited to be our guide in that particular adventure than Lasky.