love note 09: the messy and vulnerable in comics
Hey there! Did you miss me? I sincerely apologize for missing a few weeks. In my head, I was thinking, "okay this is switching to a monthly newsletter" but I didn’t say anything! I spent some time planning and now have a roadmap to be able to keep this biweekly, so hopefully I won't be disappearing again.
(Who knew how much brain space moving can take even months before the actual move?! I’ve been having trouble focusing on anything except scouring real estate sites. Still, as the temperatures rise here in Phoenix, I am EAGER for that 39 hour road trip that will get me to beautiful Vermont.)
Like I said, my focus has not been around the last few weeks so I don’t have any new work to share but I thought I would share an old comic that is in line with today’s topic. This is from 2019 when I still didn’t really have the confidence with comics so it was text heavy but I think that allowed me a lot more freedom to experiment.
love note 09: the messy and vulnerable in comics
I have this internal struggle everytime I sit down to make something of feeling it needs to look “polished and perfect” while knowing I love work where you can see the hand at work and the emotions behind it, where the lines have so much life and aren’t necessarily perfect. I’m sure it has something to do with feeling the need to prove some sort of technical skill in a way that is not at all productive. There’s this constant flux of trying to improve skills to be able to better convey stories and ideas and then trying to strip it down to allow the subconscious to work and return to the pure artistry and freedom of childhood. (My 8 year old niece is one of the inspiring artists I know.)
There was a moment of absolute awe when I saw this comic on Instagram last summer:
Jon-Michael Frank. Read the full comic here.
There would be something lost if it weren’t in this style. It would feel like an attempt to tame, manage, and contain the uncontrollable and there is, in my opinion, great courage in putting out work that is both this vulnerable and totally bucks what the art and comics world deem to be “pretty,” like, hey here are all my chaotic emotions, I’m sort of trying to make sense of them but I’m also just trying to get them on the page in all their glorious messiness.
Chanel Miller’s comics also always make me pause. The amount of emotion and story she infuses into short comics is immense and the writing is always both raw yet perfectly condensed to see a full arc, even if the emotion or idea at hand doesn’t get resolved. (Because, really, when in life is anything ever truly resolved?)
Excerpt from a Chanel Miller comic. Read it in full here
When I was in film school, it was always hammered into us that “the personal is the universal” but it can feel so self-indulgent sometimes as an artist to make work that is deeply personal. At least for me. It can feel like whining, or egotistical, or totally ignorant not to include others in the narrative. Yet I find myself returning to these types of work over and over again, both because they resonate with me much more frequently and out of awe of the artists’ courage at putting out this kind of work. For the past few years, I’ve been seeking more vulnerability in all parts of my life. Less shoving feelings down and presenting a polished face, hiding parts of myself that don’t fit a certain narrative, more openness even when the feelings aren't rational.
Jaakko Pallasvuo, or @avocado_ibuprofen on Instagram. Read the full comic here
Maybe I’m just writing this to give myself permission to make work about myself again even when my experiences feel so insignificant. The thing is I’ve always striced to make art that seemed plucked from the subconscious, that was unself-conscious, something like the LSD-infused chantings and performances and art of Ken Kesey’s group that Tom Wolfe wrote about in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but you know, without having to rely on LSD. It seems to come easier to me when I’m pulling from life.
Like I mentioned before, these things are hardly ever resolved. And I will continue to look up to the bravery of the artists who put it all out there in their messy, beautiful, vulnerable art.
Julia Gootzeit, @ohmyghoulia
readings
poetry nook
Conversion by Megan Fernandes
sam says you can't name your book good boys without a dog
but sam doesn't know that i am the dog
i am the ultimate mutt and i am telling him this story
at the bar called college hill tavern which looks like a front
for some operation where all the bar stools appear as if
they were staged in under ten minutes and
the girl with the fake lashes knows
i like a double gin and i am telling sam
that i am a dog who was converted
when i was seventeen and my mother found an essay
about how i was in love with a girl
and there was a portishead reference
in case you need me to date it
and this was way before the liberation of the young and the white
twins on youtube who come out to their dad
and everybody cries and transforms.
when i see those kids all i think is that they never had parents
who were immigrants and who sent you to a lady
and told you that you had to solve it all
in one session because this therapy was expensive.
it wasn't so traumatic. rather funny. and i remember the couch
there were multiple couches and i had to choose a spot and i sat
on the couch farthest from her and this wasn't the first nice lady
who looked at me like i was a dog
and sam, when i said it is called good boys
what i meant was that i was a good boy
and loved good boys
and good men and still love them
but you see, i was seventeen and alone
and nobody gave me anything except one book by dickinson
and she was so neat, so precise, so human
and i wasn't. i just wasn't.
i was just a dog. i wasn't even that good.
find me floundering on instagram or on my website and pls forward anyone who might enjoy this type of newsletter so i can get one step closer to abandoning social media.
x,
k