A little nutty

I’ve been busy at SAW! This week I did a “process” call which was humbling. Sometimes I feel like my “mentor” role is more as cautionary tale than anything else. I guess it takes all kinds. And I’m this kind. I discussed my discoveries navigating painting vs. coloring. Did some watercolor, which I honestly haven’t really used in comics since before my son was born.

Oh here is something silly:

(My eraser is trying to kill me)

The SAW Year Long Program discussed “the market” this week…. And that’s something about which I have plenty of fraught opinions. As someone who’s never met an agent who made any sense to me, always about ten years away from completing a two-book contract, and would rather get dental surgery then prepare a book proposal, I didn’t think I was the best person to get into it. But I DID like talking about being an editor at POPULA and how nobody believes in my inner Anna Wintour! Or whoever it is these days who knows about things. Does anyone know about things, though?

(Ita Mehrotra)

So everybody loves a graphic novel but--and this is perhaps sacrilege--I love anthologies more! You get such a sense of the zeigeist, of a scene, of the context. Each piece bounces off the others and gains so much in the process. I discovered comics through anthologies: TWISTED SISTERS II blew my mind open and taught me about the absolute movement that women made in underground comics. Then even just things like the SPX anthology, I remember seeing those as like a 20-year-old who wasn't a cartoonist yet and getting so inspired by all of this work by my soon-to-be peers. I had gone to art school looking to meet vibrant weirdos and it HAD NOT happened. This was what I was talkin' about.

My first comic that I ever made I made for the TRUE PORN anthology was before I knew any cartoonists or anything about anything. I heard that the editor, Robyn Chapman, was going to be at a James Kochalka Superstar show (!) and so I went to introduce myself and I met, like, two of my future BFFs, the organizers of my future cartoonist clique in NYC, my future editor, I made out with James's friend. A great night!

So contribute to anthologies because they are pure fun and community. And community--as Megan Kelso, one of the BFFs I met that night, told me--is one of the biggest (only? haha) rewards of making comics. 

There are foofoo anthologies. Those are fun to be asked to contribute to. But you know what--so much of those invitations are based on cultivating that community. Being friends. Also making good work, yeah, but many anthologies are a lot about "style" and vibes--which makes sense to an extent, as they're showing what's happening.

(Nate Powell)

You'd never know it to look at me, but I often know what's cool before it gets cool. (I just deleted "always" and replaced it with "often.") But I know what's good. The only thing is that nobody believes me. So maybe I'm not what you'd call a "tastemaker." I am, however, a taste knower-in-advance! 

So what if you're good but not stylish? Rejection makes a lot of people think they're not "good" enough but usually it's really just not the editor's style. This is a legitimate, I guess. Cartoonist-husband Trevor and I have each had our times being cool and not-cool, making the same work. In 2017 or 18 or something we got jobs co-editing the comics section of a very briefly staffed online publication, POPULA. The idea behind POPULA was that it was decentralized journalism and we wanted to hear from real people all around the world on topics both macro and micro. We wanted to showcase comics from artists all over the world, harnessing the power of art to broaden our viewpoints. You didn't HAVE to be unsung to be in POPULA but even if you were that wasn't disqualifying.

(Lydi Conklin)

This is very un-Libran of me right now to call out another bunch of cartoonists but whatever, we are all allowed our opinions, OK? At the same time, THE NIB was a huge hub of online comics, one of the only places in a quickly dwindling environment for publishing, especially after a relatively bountiful run for that kind of thing. And THE NIB was fine, there were a lot of great comics on there! But to my eye, some of them felt like stats with pictures? Like if you couldn't read an article with some stats in it maybe you could read this mix of doodles and stats. (Sorry! I'm not saying I'm a genius and do everything perfect!) I wanted to read really meaty deep personal viewpoints. So at POPULA we would sometimes get pitches for journalistic comics from cartoonists kind of pulling from a NIB model and we'd encourage them to get more personal. That’s what we liked!

(Mogorosi Motshumi)

Honestly nowadays I don't fault anyone for protecting their own meaty deep personal viewpoints. The internet is NOT a place for subtle discussion. MEGAPHONES! ONLY! TODAY! 

The first comic we published, actually, was by Ron Rege and about this specifically! He called it. About how making art gets harder in a world where making just basic statements about how things should be is incendiary. We're starting from a place further back. Ron called it!

(Ron Regé, Jr.)

In one of my calls a month or so ago someone had gotten a pdf of the new "Field Notes" SAW anthology and shared it onscreen, and I honestly got shivers! It was so beautiful. Just a gorgeous cornucopia of voices, truth, beauty, realness. I am so into that. Because I know what's good! Please keep making your work and putting it out there however you can. If you're making real work and don't get into some anthology or hear back from some agent I implore you to know--it's not you, it's them.

(Jonathan Dyck calling it back in 2019!)