By Peter JacksonThe Daily Northwestern

One comic had aliens. One comic was a palindrome. But all told the same story.

New York cartoonist Matt Madden drew one comic strip and then depicted it 99 different ways.

His presentation Wednesday, at the Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington Ave., was one of the first events of this year’s Third Coast International Audio Festival.

The festival is an annual meeting of audio producers and professionals that meets in the Chicago area. This year’s gathering, which runs through Friday, will feature National Public Radio host Ira Glass and other radio industry participants.

In one hour, Madden breezed through 60 PowerPoint slides from his 2005 book “99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style.”

Madden’s book mimics a 1947 novel by French novelist Raymond Queneau, which retold a single, simple story in 99 different literary styles, ranging from sonnets to telegrams.

Madden cooked up his own “non-story” and used a diverse range of artistic styles instead.

“It occurred to me that the basic concept of the book could apply to comics,” he told the crowd of about 40. “There’s all this stuff with the visuals. And then there’s the alchemy of comics.”

In Madden’s template comic strip, an off-panel interruption causes a man to forget why he was rummaging through the fridge. The first series of retellings focuses on altering point-of-view.

The scenario is redrawn from inside the refrigerator, from the off-panel character’s perspective and through the eyes of a far-off voyeur.

He displayed a Japanese manga panel, written right-to-left in Kanji characters and featuring a “characteristic up-the-skirt angle.”

Then he got into trippier terrain, showing a panel dripping in psychedelic style.

“It’s one of the few where it actually makes sense that he doesn’t remember why he’s in the fridge,” Madden said to laughter from the crowd.

Reach Peter Jackson at [email protected].