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.

365 days of julie doucet

julie doucet is back! well, sorta. she renounced her indie queen of comix status years ago but has been working on illustration projects, poems and other art installations.

next month drawn and quarterly will release 365 Days: A Diary by Julie Doucet. thank god. a year round fix of ms. doucet. not quite another edition of dirty plotte (you need to know your french canadian slang to deconstruct that title) but close enough. here's more on julie doucet, the artist. and finally, see a sneak preview of her diary drawings. i can't wait for its release. in the meantime, i'll reminisce about the adoring fan letters i wrote to her in the 90s, forever unanswered.

...ariel bordeaux finds happiness... a comix Q & A

i'm a comix junkie. it started with the archies and then i discovered zines, underground comix and "the girls"... meaning ariel bordeaux & julie doucet (i'm not the first one to think they are sisters)! i read ariel's acclaimed mini-comix series deep girl in the 90s while living in san francisco. we had a brief but thrilling pen pal friendship when she lived on the west coast. (i have one of her original signed drawings!) then we drifted. me back to jersey. and well, ariel, on to seattle. but i kept track of her. drawn & quarterly published her novella no love lost in 1997. then i wondered what next for ariel? but one summer during law school i went to the mocca comix show at the puck building in nyc and voila, there she was, with husband rick altergott, promoting their new collaborative work, the raisin pie series! i gobbled up every issue, but wanted more of ariel's stories and art. what was she doing with her time? i needed solace & comfort, her artwork provided that... so i kinda gave up, happy to see raisin pie and occasional work, such as henparty, a zine for mocca 06, and a story for stuck in the middle, a comix anthology about junior high school hell.

in her latest zine, henparty, ariel talks about her life from 95 to 06, getting back to her roots and her secret to happiness. i was intrigued. so i wrote her a few fan emails, hoping for the best. and she answered. i couldn't be happier.

here's an inside look at ariel's quest for happiness (and panels from her new work-in-progress):

SG: what books, comix are you reading now?

AB: I have so little time to read anything, but I recently subscribed to the NY Times Sunday edition so I could read Megan Kelso's fabulous story, "Watergate Sue" which ran over the summer. Now there's a DanClowes story running, which is of course shaping up to be another fine story.

SG: influences on your art?

AB: Currently my son, Eddie, is the most profound influence on my life and art. Everything that came before Eddie seems too trifling and insignificant to mention ... but, oh, I guess the most powerful "influence" has been my need to share all those icky, sticky issues of insecurity and low self-worth. All the comics of a personal nature that I read in my adolescence helped me figure out that I could achieve this sharing through comics. The whole Twisted Sisters generation of women artists was and still is really exciting to me.

SG: did you think deep girl would achieve such success?

AB: Back when I was an apple cheeked little art school grad with my first mini-comic, I was pure fan-girl nerd all the way. When I got to hand copies to a couple of my big heroes, Pete Bagge and Dan Clowes, in person I was so excited I just about DIED, right there on the spot. And THEN, when they invited me to join them with all the other local artists after the signing ... well, I knew I was on my way! Big city, here I come! Soon, I knew, I would be walking the funky, fungus-infected red carpet to the doors of Fantagraphics! Ah, yes ...

SG: how has your child changed your perspective on creating art and storytelling?

AB: Well, it's funny. Before having my son I had this idea that to have a child meant I'd basically have to quit making art for a number of years, and I was really pretty anxious about that, since I still kind of feel like I have yet to actually begin making comics for real. I did start to think a little differently about it right around or shortly before getting pregnant, I had kind of figured out why I had started to feel like I was stagnating. In a nutshell, I wasn't being really truly honest with myself anymore. I was denying a lot of my needs in life, and that just carried over in my work. So I was on a positive trajectory to turning things around already, and then when Eddie popped out (well, after the first blurry month or two) it just created, like, a big bang in my brain. It's not so much that I didn't "have ideas" before ... it's more like I was seeking a way to bring the immediate experience of life into my work. I'm now a little closer to writing about life as it happens, rather than trying to analyze the past so much. I think because babies are such perfect little Buddhas it helps me with my own mindfulness.

SG: which of your projects, zines & publications are you most proud of and why?

AB: Well ... pride is a tricky word. I can't really look back at anything with a sense of, "Yeah, that's it. I really got it there". I have a sort of affection for some of the stuff I've done, I guess a blend of pity and compassion for whatever unlabeled mental illness it is that I splash all over the page. Recently I did a story for an anthology called "Stuck in the Middle" about my junior high school experience. Some of the stuff in Deep Girl I can look at without wincing too too horribly ... I'm happy that I did Hen Party and Rooster, although certainly there are embarrassing things about both.

thanks ariel! can't wait for the next graphic novel & more of your stories. keep the SG posted, ok?

...graphic novel persepolis hits the big screen...

i loved persepolis, marjane satrapi's autobiographical memoir of her childhood in iran. now i can enjoy it on the big screen... today's nyt discusses her emotional step from book to screen.

check out the trailer! (it's in french. marjane moved to paris 12 years ago, in a sort of self-imposed exile.)

lucy loves french milk and other stories from paris

in anticipation of our trip to paris, i'm gobbling up travel memoirs (such as adam gopnik's paris to the moon) to reorient myself in the city of lights. as a grad student, i lived in paris for a year and a half (but that was many moons ago) so my french is rusty but memories of parisian living stay close to my heart. (eiffel tower photo by my friend marcos.)

i recently discovered a wonderfully personal and endearing comic journal by lucy knisley about her month long stay in paris with her mom in january 2007. french milk (so named because lucy adores the whole milk she drinks in paris) reveals the struggles and dreams of lucy as she approaches her 22nd birthday while discovering the endless treasures of paris. her journal is a delightful mix of her drawings, stories and photographs of that month and her step into adulthood.

lucy recently took a break from her studies at the center for cartoon studies in vermont to answer her fan mail & share some thoughts with me.

SG: how's life in vermont at the center? what do you miss about home (chicago)?

LK: We've just completed a 100-character design project, for drawing class with Steve Bissette and James Kochalka. We had to make 100 recognizably different characters in a week. It was a great project. Vermont is too crazy of a change from Chicago and New York to really be comfortable yet, but I'm hoping it'll settle after I get used to the skunks and the lack of thai food.

SG: what are your influences, past and present?

LK: I started out reading "Archie" comics and "Calvin and Hobbes" when I was little, so those were probably my most formative influences. When I discovered "Maus," that had a pretty profound impact. Right now, though, I'd say my top gods of inspiration are Hope Larson, Marjane Satrapi, David B., Craig Thompson and Lynda Barry.

SG: how did you get french milk published?

LK: My mother and step-father started a small publishing company a few years ago. So when I came home from Paris with all this material, I originally thought, "I'll take it to Kinkos and make a minicomic from this," but when I counted out the 180 pages, I realized that this wasn't something I could fold and staple. It was surprising, because I'd only taken a month to produce it. So I asked my mom if she thought it was a viable option for self publishing, and she said she was behind it all the way. She even helped me edit it, and laid it all out for me to send to the printer! I sold a good amount of them before I took them to MoCCA (the museum of comic and cartoon art annual festival). I'm lucky enough to be friends with two total comic book rock stars; Hope Larson (a fellow alumni of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and Brian Lee O'Malley. They let me take up a little corner of their table to sell a few of my books, and French Milk sold surprisingly well. One of the people who picked up a copy was an editor at Simon and Schuster, who liked it, and showed it to her fellow editors, and then they offered me a deal!

SG: would you go back to paris?

LK: I'd love to go back to Paris, and god knows my mother is dying to completely uproot and move there. She's taking french classes now, and thinking of buying a poodle, to prepare for the move. I'm content with imagining that I'll be able to visit her there. I don't think I'd want to go back to Paris until I had a lover who would come with me. It's so beautiful and wonderful, that it's a little painful to be unable to share it with someone in that way. It was wonderful to share it with my mother, but we were both going through such changes that we were sort of consumed with our own little worlds, and trapped in our heads.

SG: and your next project?

LK: I'm working on a children's book. Very colorful and polished (very different from French Milk). It's about a little girl exploring an attic (which is and was my favorite thing to do). After this finishes up, I'm considering a number of possibilities, but the one that's winning out is a book of recollections from my teen years, when I was switching high schools (four times in three years).

thanks lucy! can't wait for your next book.

check out more of lucy's art, photos & tunes on her website, stop paying attention.

A Late Freeze by Danica Novgorodoff

i'm always on the prowl for new comics created by women... and recently i discovered the work of danica novgorodoff, whose mini comic, a late freeze, was the 2006 winner of the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics. she was also a 2007 eisner award nominee. danica's day job is designing graphic novels at first second books and she was an assistant to the photographer sally mann. she paints, draws (which remind me of renee french) and takes stunning photographs of her travels in ecuador and mexico (tangerines at left).

a late freeze is "a tale of love, snow, and trouble with the authorities." it's a tender, bizarre love story between a bear and a robot, who struggle to keep their love alive in a decaying world (images of fields razed for parking lots, cracker barrels and chain stores along with a robot driving an ox-drawn covered wagon like in the oregon trail). with few words and deeply rich, colorful images to tell the story, a late freeze surprises you with compelling imagery and plot twists.

danica told me that she started this project as artwork for her friends' band... and created it while living in kentucky. when in ecuador she "heard a story about a local man who lived in the mountains with a bear. the bear was very jealous and wouldn’t let the man come down into town to visit his wife and kids." her themes were also inspired by the landscapes and landmarks of the midwest. she describes the political tone as "the persecution of the little guy by the Man and the struggle for freedom" mixed with her feelings about the environment and the aftermath of bush's re-election.

i can't wait for danica's next project... her first to-be-published book (watercolor), a full-length graphic novel set in kentucky, involving a tornado, a firefighter named ursa, and a mexican immigrant named rafi who works on horse farms. new themes includes: missing home, the great beauty and disappointment of living in america, saints, fear, family, horses, and tornadoes. wow!

read much more about danica here, trust me, you won't be disappointed!

Hoping The Brilliant Boondocks Returns

I am reading A Right to Be Hostile by Aaron McGruder, the creator of the Boondocks. He is one of the most searing writers of his generation, bar none. The comic strip depicts Huey Freeman and his younger brother Riley, two black children who have been moved out of Chicago by their grandfather to live with him in the predominantly white suburb of Woodcrest. It is supposedly Maryland.

The title word "boondocks" alludes to the isolation from primarily African-American urban life that the characters feel, and permits McGruder some philosophical distance. Huey is a politically perceptive devotee of black radical ideas of the past few decades (as explained in the May 4, 1999, strip, Huey is in fact named after Black Panther Huey P. Newton) and is harshly critical of many aspects of modern black culture. For example, he is at least as hard on Vivica Fox and Cuba Gooding, Jr. at times as he is on the Bush administration. Riley, on the other hand, is enamored of gangsta rap culture and the "thug"/bling-bling lifestyle. Their grandfather is a firm disciplinarian who is offended by both their values and ideas.

The comic strip is simultaneously hilarious, thought provoking and challenges the reader with stereotypes and never lets anyone off the hook. I cannot put the compilation down often reading strips out loud to my partner.

I also read Birth of a Nation by McGruder and two other authors (Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker) which is a play on the 2000 election and takes place in East St. Louis. After the disenfranchisement of the voters there the city secedes from the union.

The Boondocks has suspended any new publications, however and this is tremendously sad. He adds a wisdom, grit and intelligence to comics not seen in generations as well as adding to the popular culture something truly unique. However, there are several compilations one can enjoy. If you never read the Boondocks you are doing yourself a disservice by not running to obtain any of the compilations or other books. McGruder was said to be sick of the strip. Well, I am sick of not having it. Here is hoping he comes back or writes again - anything. I have never viewed the series, cartoons are just not my cup of tea.