Category Archives: Autobio Comics

QUEEN OF SNAILS by Maureen Burdock graphic novel review

On a snail’s journey of self-discovery.

Queen of Snails: A Graphic Memoir. Maureen Burdock. Graphic Mundi. 2022. pp 228. $25.95

Maureen Burdock has a delightful way of casting a spell upon the reader. It’s a slow and gradual process, much like coming from a snail’s point of view inasmuch as it is a refreshing way to see. What better way, really, to examine a life, especially when trying to connect all the dots and many of  the dots seem out of reach or are missing. Our guide knows this much: mother/daughter relationships are complicated as it is and, in Burdock’s case, she can trace a hard case of melancholia going back generations: mother and daughter at odds; or separated; or in pain. All of this, mind you, is being drawn, slowly or quickly (we tend to draw faster than we think) and the results bring the reader in. Each page simply left me wanting to know more and more.

Caught in a maternal web.

To have your own mother seemingly working against you. The ultimate betrayal? Well, it doesn’t cut much deeper than that. Burdock tosses and turns trying to figure out her mom because it sure didn’t feel like she was exactly looking out for her. It’s clear that she was distant and that she focused so much of her energy on her fervent devotion to worshiping Jesus. Ah, can you worship Jesus to excess? Was it worship or was it a mania that told Burdock’s mother that nothing else mattered since Jesus would provide? Of course, Burdock seeks answers in a gentle and steady way much like the metaphor of a snail she employs throughout the book. Burdock’s exploration reveals that her mother’s life was far from easy as she experienced her own series of trauma and displacement connected with growing up during World War II and its aftermath.

When one’s life is made so unstable by your parents (Burdock’s father wasn’t much help either) then you go into survivor mode and cultivate a sense of independence pretty young in life. Much of this book is about Burdock finding her way, on her own. During the course of the book, Burdock documents her childhood in Germany and subsequent move with her mother to the United States, to a small town in Wisconsin, only later to return to Germany. It was hardly a match made in heaven. Burdock struggles to fit in and never quite does fit in. Her mother remains as depressed and fervently religious as ever. Burdock provides a very honest and uninhibited portrayal of her coming of age, sexual awakening, and being molested by someone close to her family, which brings to mind the autobiographical work of cartoonist Phoebe Gloeckner.

There’s a moment in the book that seems to sum things up, says so much about inter-generational pain and sheds light on Burdock’s search to know her mother. Burdock cites a UNESCO report that estimated 8 million children were homeless after WWII, many alone and wandering the streets. These “lost children” stood in the cultural imagination for “the obliteration of European civilization, lawlessness and confusion, and unrestricted sexuality.” Burdock quotes writer Alice Bailey: “Those peculiar and wild children of Europe and China to whom the name ‘wolf children’ has been given . . . have known no parental authority; they run in packs like wolves.” In this same two-page sequence, Burdock concludes that her mother has perhaps confused Jesus with Somnus, the Roman god of sleep, and the protection that comes from just closing your eyes. Thankfully, it is Burdock who has chosen to not only keep her eyes open and remain alert but to also report back her findings in this landmark work.

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Filed under Autobio Comics, Autobiography, Comics, Comics Reviews, Graphic Novel Reviews

Review: MORE SEASONS OF GARY by Matt MacFarland

More Seasons of Gary. Matt MacFarland. zines + things. 2021. 48pp. $7

Matt MacFarland displays a disarming charm in how he presents himself, his family, and his father in particular in his latest book. This is a little comics memoir in the tradition of auto-bio alt-comics: a self-portrait of the cartoonist, warts-and-all.

It’s interesting to note that this story is told in segments, four panels per page, comic strip-sytle. MacFarland uses the comic strip format in order to contain the narrative. What I mean is that this isn’t a collection of previously serialized work. I see part of it on Matt’s Instagram but not as being posted in a deliberate way like a webcomic. He takes a more casual approach which I really dig. In fact, a lot of what he’s posting right now are pages from his Scenes from a Marriage series which is hilarious. Matt has found a method to keep things fresh and concise by using the comic strip format to tell his story. He’s also taking advantage of the fact that we’re so used to reading page after page of comic strips that have been collected to tell a bigger story. Matt’s new book features his father, told in a series of comic strip moments. This format echoes Art Spiegelman’s own recollections of his father albeit on a small compact scale. Matt has narrowed down the stage to the most essential: fleeting moments, heavy with meaning, tied together by the seasons. What emerges is a portrait of the artist’s father, a complicated guy, both difficult and lovable.

By keeping to this comic strip format, MacFarland provides us little windows into his father’s soul, one self-contained little story per page. MacFarland has a lean and crisp way of drawing and storytelling. This series of four-panel comic strips grows on you as one detail is revealed and builds upon the next. We begin with the fall. The first two strips set the tone depicting Matt’s father, Gary, as a less than sensitive guy, with an offbeat sense of humor. The opener shows Gary as a young boy obsessed with creating monster masks. The one after that has Gary describing a horror movie he especially liked to 6-year-old Matt. After Matt screams that he wants to see it, Gary shows him a particularly disturbing scene from it on tape that leaves little Matt in tears.

Truth be told, Gary is hardly a bad guy and Matt doesn’t pick him apart. He’s not digging for dirt but for understanding about his father–and his own life. As we progress, we come to find out that Gary is an alcoholic but that is only part of his story and it doesn’t derail the narrative as one might expect. Mixing up the chronology of events also helps in letting details emerge in a less than obvious way. In a natural course of presenting anecdotes, the reader gets to see Gary interact with an array of people and circumstances. MacFarland manages to navigate a series of challenging periods: the divorce of his parents; the start of his own family; and the death of his father. I especially like a moment Matt has crafted where he’s hiding in a bedroom crying over the news of his father’s death while also calculating in his mind when the dinner guest will finally leave. Of course, when he returns to the kitchen, she’s still seated at the dinner table. That’s classic Matt MacFarland, with a dash of dry and dark humor.

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Movie Review: ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’

Phoebe-Gloeckner-The Diary-of-a-Teenage-Girl

Just like “Ophelia,” in John Millais’s 1852 painting, submerging in the waters, so too 15-year-old Minnie Goetze floats and then descends the depths of her bathtub. We see her nude body sinking down the blue-green of her own misery only to resurface as a finely-drawn portrait by the same Minnie Goetze. Welcome to “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” based upon the book of the same title by cartoonist and writer Phoebe Gloeckner. This is Gloeckner’s fictionalized account of her sexual awakening, circa 1976, at the age of 15 at the hands of a 35-year-old man, the boyfriend of her mother. By all counts, this is a story of rape and incest. Through poetic license, the raw source material is transcended and another transformative story rises from the brackish waters from which it came. And it is up to audiences if they will accept such a journey.

Bel Powley channeling Millais's 1852 painting, "Ophelia"

Bel Powley channeling Millais’s 1852 painting, “Ophelia”

Phoebe Gloeckner took her reality of rape and incest and shaped it into fiction. And then writer-director Marielle Heller took that fiction and adapted it for her film. With a safe distance from the actual events and persons, an uninhibited and honest story is possible. It turns out that 15-year-old Minnie Goetze appears to be empowered by the sexual relationship with 35-year-old Monroe. It’s San Francisco in 1976, experimentation with sex and drugs is in the forefront. Minnie, ill-equipped to navigate through the loopy zeitgeist, finds herself lost and on a classic downward spiral: she has a threesome, drops acid and performs oral sex in a bar bathroom while pretending to be a prostitute. All this happens without any judgment placed upon her.

Okay, just go and read Phoebe Gloeckner's "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"

Okay, just go and read Phoebe Gloeckner’s “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”

This is a complicated film. It is, after all, adapted from a complicated, and quite extraordinary, prose and comics hybrid. It can not be encouraged enough that, if the movie grabs your interest, then you must read the book. In a one-of-kind fictionalized memoir, Phoebe Gloeckner expresses her story in a way that you need to read to believe. In the end, her goal was to create a greater truth. The movie follows closely but, my its very nature, tells a story with a different tone and view. Gloeckner addresses these shifts from her work to the film in this insightful interview with the A.V. Club right here.

Phoebe-Gloeckner-comics

Bel Powley portrays Minnie with a wide-eyed broad innocence. In somewhat a similar sense, so does Kristen Wig as Minnie’s mother, Charlotte. And, in his own way, so does Alexander Skarsgård as Monroe, Minnie’s predatory Lothario. It’s the self-conscious attempt to evoke the act of reading Gloeckner’s unique work that can be problematic. Gloeckner’s narrative is prose followed by an illustration followed by comics and more prose and so on. The crux of the problem of translating Gloeckner’s vision into film is that it really is virtually impossible: you are really walking into a land mine when you mix comics, film, and address rape and incest. Parts of the film seem to read as too cartoony when, paradoxically, the same scene in Gloeckner’s comics does not read so much as “cartoony” as simply entering a different world, reading something within a different world. The film, even if it doesn’t intend to, seems to take its subject too lightly.

Phoebe-Gloeckner-movie

Not to sound too much like Marshall McLuhan, but when you read comics, you are reading and, when you see something evoking the feeling of reading comics, which happens often in this film, you are reading the content and the medium, and that can be very distracting. It can also be a wonderful combination of distraction and entertainment like the multi-layered tribute to the grand curmudgeon Harvey Pekar in “American Splendor.” If you have a lighter subject, you can get away with much more. But with the double whammy subjects of rape and incest, it raises the stakes so high as to be a virtually insurmountable challenge. With all that said, this is a very unique film. All I can is that I’m happy to find that this 15-year-old character is in the very capable hands of 23-year-old Bel Powley.

“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is a film that will definitely challenge you. But, keep in mind, to best appreciate what this film is doing, read Phoebe Gloeckner’s book. A new revised edition, published by North Atlantic Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, has just been released. You can find it at Amazon right here.

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Filed under Autobio Comics, Autobiography, Comics, Movie Reviews, movies, Phoebe Gloeckner

Review: RICHY VEGAS COMICS #8 and #9 by Richard Alexander

From "Richy Vegas Comics #9"

From “Richy Vegas Comics #9”

“Richy Vegas Comics,” by Richard Alexander, are what you would consider very personal and decidedly out of the mainstream. It reminds me a little of the work of Daniel Johnston. Based upon reading numbers 8 and 9 of this ongoing comic, I get the picture of what he’s doing and I can offer up some comments. For those who follow my reviews, you know that, at times, I’ll expand upon the review and make some general observations. I also want to discuss here personal comics in general.

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Filed under Alternative Comics, Autobio Comics, Comics, Comics Reviews, Independent Comics, Richard Alexander, Richy Vegas Comics, Self-Published

Review: HOW I MADE THE WORLD #1 by Liz Plourde and Randy Michaels

How-I-Made-The-World-comics-Plourde-Michaels

“How I Made The World” is a Xeric Award-winning comic that follows the misadventures of Liz, a college student and aspiring writer. From her vantage point, just about everything in her life is epic. And so we begin in this first issue with not just a midterm art project deadline on the horizon. No, this is fodder for our first big story, “The Monster.”

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HOW WE CONNECT: A Review of ‘Welcome To Nursing HELLo’ by Joel Craig

Welcome-To-Nursing-Hello-Joel-Craig

How do we connect? We do it, or try to do it, in a variety a ways. It’s not always easy but it’s far better than its opposite, to disconnect. I aspire to connect with you. I make this preface because I am genuinely inspired by my latest subject for review, Joel Craig’s graphic memoir, WELCOME TO NURSING HELLo.

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Filed under Autobio Comics, Autobiography, Comics, Comics Reviews, Gay, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, LGBT, mini-comics, Zines

INTERVIEW: GABRIELLE BELL

Gabrielle Bell is one of the most consistently interesting cartoonists out there with a distinctive style and wit. Here is a brief interview with the creator of “Lucky.”

HENRY CHAMBERLAIN: I’m so pleased to be able to go and read your comics on your site, gabriellebell.com. I don’t regularly gravitate to webcomics. I know I can rely on yours to have an authentic voice and be thoughtfully constructed. I think that has something to do with the fact that you began with having your work in printed form. Do you think that’s true? Do you think you add another layer to your work since you’re not conditioned to think in terms of digital shortcuts?
GABRIELLE BELL: Thank you. I don’t know if that is true about printed comics or not. I do love comics best in print, hands down. But I also like the instantaneous connection with the reader the internet provides. I like not having to wait for and negotiate with publishers, printers, book sellers, editors, etc. It’s given me the chance to earn the reputation of that thoughtful construction and authentic voice. But I am glad to have my comics packaged in a book! I think any cartoonist ultimately wants that, web or no.
HC: Can you walk us through your process? Maybe you could take a recent post and describe how it came to be or describe your working methods.
GB: The hardest part is writing. It takes me ages and I am tortured by self-doubt. Then I use a lightbox to turn my scratchy, messy thumbnails into drawings, then I do that again. Then I fill in all the black splotches. Then I scan it and manipulate it a lot on photoshop. Then color it, then I read it over, then I throw it on the internet.
HC: You have conquered autobio comics, in a way, I think, by never being obvious and always keeping a certain level of mystery. People are left to wonder what is true and what is not and finally let all that go and enjoy the storytelling. Is this something you set out to do, if I’m right? At least I think I’m pretty right. If falls in line with the best writing.
GB: Thank you, that is nice to hear. I hope I can continue to live up to it! I didn’t set out to do that. I have a compulsion to do diary comics, it’s like some nervous tic. I try to stop sometimes, and then I start again. There’s something psychologically gratifying about it. But I don’t want to offend people with my self-indulgence, so I’ve tried to make it work so that other people could get something out of it too. And that is the pain of it.
HC: What’s a good Charlie Rose type question to ask you? Comics, ah yes, were you always attracted to comics? What is it about comics that suits your needs as an artist?
GB: I think most artists are attracted to comics. I’m always hearing of writers and artists giving a shout-out to some comics. I just finished “Just Kids,” by Patti Smith, and she talks about sitting in her room in the Chelsea Hotel for days reading Little Lulu comics. There’s something very special about comics that are still not really recognized, in spite of this “graphic novel” phenomenon. As for me, it suits me because my two favorite things are writing and drawing.
HC: Please tell us about your more recent mini comics. What can you tell us about your “Diary” mini comics and the latest one, “July Diary”?
GB: “July Diary” is a collection of 31 comics I did last year in July, when I did a page a day that month. There’s also some scrawley sketchy outtakes. I’m told it is my funniest work.  The “Diary” mini comics are collections from my blog, “Lucky.”
HC: Feel free to give us a pitch for your new book, “The Voyeurs.”
GB: “The Voyeurs” is a collections of the “Diary” minis, plus a lot more stuff, and all in color. I am told it is a handsome volume.
HC: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
GB: I’m going to be going on tour, doing lots of slideshows, with some great cartoonists, which should be very entertaining. There’s an events page on my website. Please come out and see me perform my comics if I come to your town.
“The Voyeurs” is published by Uncivilized Books. Please visit Uncivilized Books. And, of course, please visit gabriellebell.com.
 
 

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Filed under Art, Autobio Comics, Comics, Gabrielle Bell, Interviews, Lucky, New York City