Q&A with ... gabrielle bell

long overdue, another Q&A with women in indie comics ...
G A B R I E L L E B E L L



while i discovered gabrielle bell a bit later in her published career, i'm catching up for lost time. my first read, lucky (picked up by drawn and quarterly in 2006), a group of semi-autobiographical stories, holds a cherished place now in my comics collection. cecil and jordan in new york is her newest collection and it packs a punch. i adored the imagery and adventure of "my affliction" and "helpless" brought back the BEST memories of scuffles with my high school friend. (images from "helpless")

a little wikipedia background on her published work ... "From about 1998 to 2002, Bell annually self-published a 32-page comic, each of whose titles began with "Book of...", including Book of Insomnia, Book of Sleep, Book of Black, Book of Lies, and Book of Ordinary Things. Many of the stories from those comics were collected in When I'm Old and Other Stories, published by Alternative Comics in 2003."

read on about gabrielle as she shares her likes, her life and her collaborative film venture with michel gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind):

1. care to comment on how the collaboration with michel gondry evolved?

He really liked my chair comic, and wanted to make some kind of film
or play with that. The producers approached him to do a thirty minute
segment for the film Tokyo!, and that was one of the ideas he
proposed, and they liked that one.

the on-set filming experience?

It was hectic. I’d never been to Japan before, and never been on a
film set. It was all very unfamiliar. It was a constant anxiety
attack. But I’m really glad to have done it. Michel pushed me into
places I’d never have gone by myself.

will this lead to more film-book adventures?

I am really into comics. I don’t want to do movies. Then again, I
could be tempted back, I’m sure. The glamour of it all is so
alluring.

2. favorite films?
I recently saw Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, and really loved that.

books you are reading now?

Lydia Davis, Rabbit Series, John Updike, Alice Munro.

3. early influences? books, comics?

The Freak Brothers…Mad Magazine…Kurt Vonnegut.

4. so the autobiographical nature of your stories -- does that drive
most of your storytelling? how does the revealing nature of the
stories help you?

There is definitely a difference between my autobiographical stories
and my fictional ones. I take a different stance to each.
Autobiography is more like speaking directly to the audience, fiction
is more like playing a part, and not breaking the fourth wall. But I
always use my own life-at least in bits and pieces-because it’s all I
know for sure. Even if I use details of someone else’s life, I try to
draw on my own feelings. There are at least some people in the world
who can relate to me.

5. what prompted your move into self-publishing?

It was-and still might be-the thing to do for indy cartoonists
starting out. It’s easy and fun and cheap to make your own Xeroxed (or
laser printed) mini-comic, and give them out and sell them and trade
them.

how did D & Q find you?

I’d been contributing to anthologies for years, so they’d seen my work
and asked me to contribute something to their showcase anthology.

7. city or country girl?

I grew up in the country and I really miss it but I’m a city girl. I
like good coffee shops and bookstores and bars and a feeling of an
endless choice of those things.

8. where else in the world you would live?

I’m pretty stuck on Brooklyn. I ask myself that question once in
awhile and can’t seem to come up with much. Maybe Tokyo…maybe
somewhere in the South of France…both to learn the languages. Maybe
there’s some place I’ve never been to that I would be totally happy
in, like somewhere in Mexico or in Hawaii or on some remote Island
where I could do my comics in peace, but maybe I’ll never find it.

9. how did your formal education prepare you for this extraordinary career?

Thanks, but my education was pretty informal. I took several classes,
but never finished school. I am not a good academic. I regret that,
actually.

10. your favorite snack food?

I like tarts, or little pies of any kind, sweet or savory…empanadas,
or dumplings, or pierogis, anything with some sort of filling with
some sort of crust or doughy shell of some kind. Even those little
hostess pies, or pop tarts.

thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, gabrielle! looking forward to your next creations!

and now for something completely different

a friend recently asked me about which graphic novels i could recommend. after creating a long list, i thought about what started me on the love of reading comix... other than than reading the archies and mad magazine bought for me as a kid.

so in honor of the one character and creator to bring me into the world of comix art in the 80s, here's zippy! he's irreverent, funny, and speaks in non sequiturs as he observes the world around him.

fantagraphics bookstore and gallery in seattle is kicking off a bill griffith exhibit today and promoting his new book, welcome to dingburg. wish i could go.

...READING IS FUN... pick up a book & enjoy

it's that time again. the new york times rolls out the top 10 best books of the year and the 100 notables. i always check the list, scanning for what i read and what i loved, then noting what's next on my list. see the top ten list here. my fav of the lot? (actually the only one i read on the list!) then we came to the end by joshua ferris: "Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle."

i'm thrilled to see that on the 100 list adrian tomine's graphic novel, shortcomings, made the cut. i read the serialized version from his optic nerve collection over the past 5 years.

i just love junot diaz's kick-ass review (from Publishers Weekly):

Tomine's lacerating falling-out-of-love story is an irresistible gem of a graphic novel. Shortcomings is set primarily in an almost otherworldly San Francisco Bay Area; its antihero, Ben Tanaka, is not your average comic book protagonist: he's crabby, negative, self-absorbed, über-critical, slack-a-riffic and for someone who is strenuously race-blind, has a pernicious hankering for whitegirls. His girlfriend Miko (alas and tragically) is an Asian-American community activist of the moderate variety. Ben is the sort of cat who walks into a Korean wedding and says, Man, look at all these Asians, while Miko programs Asian-American independent films and both are equally skilled in the underhanded art of fighting without fighting. As you might imagine, their relationship is in full decay. In Tomine's apt hands, Tanaka's heartbreaking descent into awareness is reading as good as you'll find anywhere. What a relief to find such unprecious intelligent dynamic young people of color wrestling with real issues that they can neither escape nor hope completely to understand. Tomine's no dummy: he keeps the issues secondary to his characters' messy humanity and gains incredible thematic resonance from this subordination. Tomine's dialogue is hilarious (he makes Seth Rogan seem a little forced), his secondary characters knockouts (Ben's Korean-American only friend Alice steals every scene she's in, and the Korean wedding they attend together as pretend-partners is a study in the even blending of tragedy and farce), and his dramatic instincts second-to-none. Besides orchestrating a gripping kick-ass story with people who feel like you've had the pleasure/misfortune of rooming with, Tomine does something far more valuable: almost incidentally and without visible effort (for such is the strength of a true artist) he explodes the tottering myth that love is blind and from its million phony fragments assembles a compelling meditation on the role of race in the romantic economy, dramatizing with evil clarity how we are both utterly blind and cannily hyperaware of the immense invisible power race exerts in shaping what we call desire. And that moment at the end when the whiteboy squares up against Ben, kung-fu style: I couldn't decide whether to fold over in laughter or to hug Ben or both. Tomine accomplishes in one panel of this graphic novel what so many writers have failed to do in entire books. In crisp spare lines, he captures in all its excruciating, disappointing absurdity a single moment and makes from it our world.

coffee & chocolate & junot diaz

it's cold and rainy. i'm trying to wean off my caffeine intake lately. i usually drink one eli special a day (banana mocha or cappuccino, locally roasted beans) but after reading about some espresso places in the city, i am jonesing for something new: cafe grumpy. check out their 2 locations in chelsea & greenpoint. besides the very cool name, i like their business goals:


above, grumpkin the pumpkin.

Quality fresh coffee and tea without the attitude.
Coffee beans with roast dates not expiration dates.
Stop by for espresso that will make you happy.

another perk caught my eye in their recent newsletter... chocolate!

Taza Chocolates-- "Stone ground, organic, old style, single origin (Juan del Rosario farm, Dominican Republic)... plus, great packaging makes them the perfect gift."

which brings me to my other current fascination: junot diaz. he's a contemporary dominican-american writer, who moved to new jersey with his family at age 6. he waxes poetic on the rutgers experience and towns in jersey like paterson and wildwood, one of the many reasons i love his work. his writing is a mix of spanish, english, obscure cultural references, jersey quirks, comics, immigration and alienation. he wrote his first book of short stories, drown, published in 1996. but i'd go straight for his second fiction work, the brief wondrous life of oscar wao, just published last month. i'm mesmerized on every page. (i had read an excerpt this summer in the new yorker.) this book shoots right up to my top 3.

i read an interview with junot on bookslut. read & get hooked. here's one question that stuck with me:

Q: Oscar's life on College Ave seems so real, I guess more so for me also since it's around where I grew up. Have you spent much time at Rutgers?

JD: Oh, I'm a Rutgers grad. I'm a Rutgers boy. I went to Rutgers from 1988 to 1992, a long time ago, but that was before colleges turned into corporations. It was madness. They hadn't figured out yet to lock us down, and I swear to God that things were as crazy as they are now, but I was like, "Kids, man, you have no fucking idea how over-patrolled you guys are." They didn't even notice us, dude. College was like some empty space. I was always obsessed with Rutgers, and I'm kind of like the Dominican version of Sonny Werblin, you know? Any chance I get, I fucking talk about Rutgers. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, I will not lie. From the neighborhood I came from, I was literally intellectually starving. I was an incredibly bright kid outside of Perth Amboy, and going to Rutgers was sort of like someone who never had vitamin C their whole life. They're dying from fucking intellectual scurvy and rickets, and somebody gives them a fucking orange. It changed my life. There was a lot of me wondering what can I pillage from my memory just so I can give Oscar a stage to work on? As much as you ask how much this was real, I feel like I was the set designer in a way. My real life designed the set, but the fiction wrote the script and hired the actors.

summer runaway-- pete jordan

as the days of summer dwindle & if you find yourself hungry for a last getaway, read on for a hilarious summer memory by pete jordan...

Op-Ed Contributor
On Vacation, All by Myself

By PETE JORDAN (Illustration by Hope Gangloff)

Published in The New York Times: August 25, 2007

NOT knowing what I’d eat — or if I’d be eating at all — I decided to play it safe and dumped two dozen red multivitamins in a sandwich baggie. I stuffed the baggie into the pocket of my corduroys.

Then I pulled on my coat, grabbed a rolled-up sleeping bag and the brown paper bag that contained my clothes, and left the note on the kitchen table.

As I slipped out the front door of my family’s small San Francisco apartment, I shouted “See ya later!” to my brother Joe — the only person at home. From the living room, he called back, “Where ya going?”

“Out,” I said, then closed the door behind me.

I was 15 years old, and it was August. The note on the table read: “I’m taking a vacation. I’ll call when I get there. Be back in about three weeks.”

At the crummy summer camp I’d attended when I was younger, every hour of the day was scheduled, which I didn’t find very relaxing, and on family vacations — where a consensus was needed to do anything — I always had to tag along after my four older siblings. I rarely got to do what I wanted.

So I caught the streetcar to downtown and boarded a Greyhound bus.

I rode five hours, out from under San Francisco’s persistent fog cover, to Lake Tahoe — which had what I considered to be the two key ingredients of an ideal holiday locale: fogless weather and miniature golf. Upon arrival, I folded my coat under my arm and called home, collect. My mom sounded worried.

“Are you coming back?”

“Of course I am,” I said.

“You’re not running away?”

“Running away?” I was insulted. Living in Haight-Ashbury — a magnet for runaways — I’d met plenty of teens who’d fled home to live on our streets and sleep in our parks. This sojourn usually lasted only until a squad car pulled up to the corner where my friends and I were hanging out. The cops would pluck the runaway from the crowd, stick him in the car and ship him back to his suburb/state of origin. It was exactly that environment that I needed a break from.

“I just wanted to get away for a while,” I told my mom.

“Well,” she replied, “just keep in touch then.”

After buying and applying some sunblock, I hiked straight to the miniature golf course. As far as I knew, it was the closest one to San Francisco.

It was also the course where, a couple of years earlier, my brother Joe — irritated by his inability to direct the ball between the circling blades of the windmill — had launched his golf club into the air. It whirled above the course like a helicopter before disappearing into the pines beyond. Then he announced that our game was over. Being under his supervision, I had to leave with him, my round unfinished.

This time, I played all 19 holes of the mini-links straight through. By then, the crowd was thinning out, so I bought another round and took my time. If I missed a putt, I took it again and again and again until I got it exactly right.

That evening, in a neighborhood on the California side of the border, only a few blocks from the Nevada casinos, I found a house with tall weeds in the pathway leading to the front door. It appeared to be a summer home for someone who wasn’t then summering.

Since I was summering, I hopped the six-foot wooden fence that surrounded the yard. The secluded back porch made for a perfect getaway accommodation. I rolled out my sleeping bag and went to sleep.

The next few days were fantastic. I lounged beside the lake. I climbed a Heavenly Valley ski run. I wandered through the casinos. But mostly, I spent my time — and money — miniature golfing.

On my fifth day of freedom, on my way to another morning of sunshine on the links, I stopped into a supermarket for breakfast — strawberry yogurt and a Jack La Lanne nutrition bar. To stretch the remaining $5 of my golfing/eating budget, I slipped the La Lanne bar into my pants pocket, then paid the 22 cents for the yogurt.

Outside the market, two security goons grabbed me — one got ahold of my neck, the other twisted my left arm behind my back. I squirmed and wrenched in their grasp, doing everything I could to prevent the yogurt — which I’d paid good money for — from falling and splattering all over the ground. My resolve was firm. They couldn’t get me down.

“O.K., all right,” I finally said after 30 seconds of grappling. “Ya got me.” They eased up. My yogurt was still intact.

In the supermarket’s security office, Neck Grabber frisked me. He found the nutrition bar. He also pulled from my pocket the baggie of 20-odd multivitamins and held up his prized catch for Arm Twister to appreciate.

“Multivitamins,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “C’mon, where’s the rest of it? Where’s the broccoli?”

“The what?”

“You know — the Juanita, the Acapulco gold.”

Neck Grabber seemed to be convinced that I was running drugs from San Francisco to Tahoe.
“If I was dealing dope,” I told him, “don’t you think I could at least afford to buy a Jack La Lanne bar?”

Ignoring this logic, Neck Grabber kept grilling me about my “operation,” using as much out-of-date street slang as he could. The eventual arrival of the police was a welcome relief.

“Shoplifter,” Arm Twister informed them.

“And runaway,” Neck Grabber chimed in.

“I’m not a runaway,” I protested to the cops. “Just on vacation.”

“Yeah?” one of the cops asked. “Where’re your parents?”

“Back in San Francisco,” I said. This answer failed to bolster my case.

Stuck in a cell in county lockup for 24 hours, I ate my yogurt, using the lid as a spoon, and thought about what a success the trip had been — well, up until my apprehension. Little did I realize at the time how much this venture foreshadowed the kind of restless traveling (Greyhound/minimal baggage/half-baked plans) that, as an adult, I would spend more than a decade doing.

My parents were called, of course. They didn’t have a car, so they, too, had to get on a bus. When I stepped out of my cell, my dad’s face showed a devastating look of disappointment. I’d seen it other times, like when he picked me up from our neighborhood police station after I’d been brought in for some harmless misdemeanor, but I’d never before seen it coupled with quite that look of exasperation. He was surely thinking, “If you’re going to screw up, can’t you at least screw up a lot closer to home?”

“I didn’t run away,” I asserted before my folks ever said a word. “I just wanted to get away for a little bit.”

This claim — coming as it did while my dad was signing the paperwork to release me from police custody — fell flat.

On the bus ride back, the three of us sat in silence. My mom read her library book; my dad, various local newspapers. I stared out the window at the sun-drenched sights as we descended from the Sierra Nevada, down through the foothills, across the Central Valley and through the East Bay suburbs.

As we crossed the Bay Bridge on our way into San Francisco, I could see the afternoon fog spilling over Twin Peaks, smothering the city. I put my coat back on for the first time in five days. My summer vacation was over.


Pete Jordan is the author of “Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States.”

P E T E ' N ' H A R V E Y , T H A N K Y O U ! !

UPDATE! for those of you interested... dishwasher pete just appeared on letterman. check out the video, it's hysterical! it follows the past appearance by pete's impersonator, jess.

lately i've been struggling to find meaning in my daily grind. i love my job -- grantwriting and promoting community-based programs -- but i'm tired in a metaphysical way i never felt before. so i've been looking to others as i often do for inspiration & guidance. in the 90s while living in northern cali, when i needed comfort i escaped into the world of zines and comics. stuff like cometbus, beer frame, dirty plotte & deep girl kept me sane in the insane world around me. back then i heard alot about a dishwasher zine and the american splendor series but i never got hooked. wish i had. pete jordan aka dishwasher pete and harvey pekar of american splendor are american cultural treasures and they stand for the souls who don't quite fit the mainstream mold.

dishwasher pete washed dishes for twelve years ('89 to '01) with a goal of "busting suds" in every state. he catalogued his adventures in zines (see #1 above) throughout the years, gaining friends, fans and a shot at fame. recruited to be on the letterman show, he decided he hated the press/publicity machine, so he sent his friend jess instead to impersonate him... but this friday he returns to letterman to promote his autobiography, dishwasher-- one man's quest to wash dishes in all fifty states. i read his book in a weekend, mesmerized by his "dish dog" tales & it did lift me out of my doldrums. pete lives life on the outskirts, without apologies (he now is a bike mechanic and writer in amsterdam).

my partner started reading all the american splendor books after we saw the 2003 movie based on harvey's life and starring a terrific paul giamatti. harvey captures everyday real life in cleveland as a government file clerk, its routines, quirks and disappointments through anxiety ridden stories, anecdotes, and childhood memories. he knew robert crumb in the 60s before san francisco made him a cult legend. harvey started writing & self-publishing in '76 (see #1 at right) & recruited crumb to illustrate his daily travails. over the years, harvey recruited many illustrators to visually enhance his work-- stories ranging from car troubles, obsessions, pessimistic views of his life, money woes, wacky colleagues at the job, family struggles, and his reoccuring stints on the letterman show (where he shot back at dave, calling him a GE "shill" after dave called harvey a "dork" & made fun of his comics).

dishwasher pete and harvey... thanks for breaking from the norm, embracing that which is different & true. your spirit keeps me from losing hope.

Who Says Nothing is for Free?

this saturday, may 5th, get something for free... comic books! and not just the kid ones, some alternative publishers released free comics as well. just go to the link below, put in your zip code and you'll find the nearest store. in the hoboken area (where independent bookstores are sadly missing), check out traders of babylon at 259 first street -- a small selection but worth the trip.

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

for more up to date comics news, here is a wonderful site, FLOG!: The Fantagraphics Blog

julie doucet--the queen of underground comics

i loved comics as a kid (the archies, little lulu, etc.) but "re-discovering" underground comics (especially those drawn by women) in the early 90s helped me get through a bad time in my life, inspired me and most of all, brought me laughter and a sense of community. i picked up my first julie doucet work --"leve ta jambe mon poisson est mort!"-- probably because i was drawn to french (she's canadian) and was instantly hooked. completely. couldn't get enough. i frantically searched for any stuff i could find (rare copies, signed copies), faithfully loyal to each issue of dirty plotte, and to her, writing fan letters and believing that she understood my inner thoughts. her work is, to say the least, intense, detailed, painful and filled with anxieties of womanhood. over the years, she abandoned comics and focused more on her artwork... i missed her comics terribly and wondered what the switch meant to us and her. julie doucet certainly busted wide open the door for future women cartoonists in a different way than her peers and predecessors (phoebe gloeckner, ariel bordeaux--deep girl, aline kominsky-crumb, carol tyler and many others). so what next? having abandoned my comics obsession briefly to pursue regular life and then re-igniting it because of my partner, i recently stumbled across her reason for slipping away from her role as underground queen bee... and now i feel at peace. my heroine to the end...

"I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end. I never made enough money from comics to be able to take a break and do something else. Now I just can't stand comics... I wish my work would be recognized by a larger crowd of people as more art than be stuck with the cartoonist label for the rest of my life. That's what's killing me about a lot of those comics guys. Dan Clowes is mostly a writer, a great artist, and has tried different things, But a lot of those guys, their drawing style never changes—the content neither—and it seems it never will. I just don't understand that, how you can spend 50 years of your artist life doing the same thing over and over again."

Reference: "A Good Life: The Julie Doucet Interview" by Dan Nadel, published in The Drama, issue No 7 (2006).

forget the mega-bookstores... buy some books at your local bookstore

sunday -- a perfect spring day to wander the city streets and browse in my local bookstores. if heaven exists (which i think not), my version would look like three lives & company...

the moment you step into the cozy little corner store in the west village on a quiet block, you feel at home. the space is small (the anti-megastore to be exact), selection of books superb... and not overwhelming. narrow shelves of memoirs, nyc history, travel, politics, poetry, art with only a few or even just one copy awaiting the lucky searcher. i often order books there from helpful and informed staff. every time i walk in the store to browse, buy or bring someone (see cousin marc entering the store at right), i feel as if i walked into the home of good friends.

three lives hosts monthly in-store readings, which take place in the back section of the store. a small chair and mini table, that's it! an intimate setting, casual, just like your living room. months ago, i heard nell freudenberger (see photo above) read from her novel, the dissident. we all sat together, so close, nell looking at me as i nodded to the familiar words she spoke. after the reading, several of us stayed to talk to the author. in such a comfortable setting, we chatted like long lost friends and shared the names of books we were currently obsessed with... take that, barnes and noble! but i can't lie, i do (rarely) attend b & n readings (james mcgreevey, marjane satrapi) because i must see them. however, not a purchase for me! i save my pennies for three lives. i hope you will too... support your local bookstores, it's essential!

We love comix!

See the review below of an alternative view of Africa... the Ivory Coast. Comics allow a medium that is highly effective in allowing one to both envision the characters and see the author's viewpoint as well. Graphic novels and comics allow the reader to travel with the author as she experiences the circumstances of her life. No other medium allows such a candid and intimate viewpoint. AYA is highly readable and "subversive" in its ability to bring real life working class Adjiban to the reader. Visual images and personal stories break down the stereotypes readers have of Western Africa while engaging the reader. A superior work from a young woman's point of view.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6423886.html