Comic Sans
Hi friends,
What were your favorite comic strips growing up?
Fellow elder millennials, remember the funny pages?
Black and white on weekdays, full color on Sundays. I used to cut out the strips, with scissors and glue, and scrapbook weeks’ worth of Garfield, Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, like an analog Tumblr.
Being a teenager in the 90’s and seeing graphic novels flourish changed my brain chemistry. One of my favorite alchemists from that era is Adrian Tomine, a 4th-generation Japanese-American comic artist from Fresno, CA (shoutout to my Filipino fam there!) and now a lifelong Brooklyner (like moi) whose Optic Nerve mini-comic zine series (written when he was 17-19 years old) ignited the genre.
… and exactly 20 years later:
This weekend I attended Adrian’s keynote at The Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Festival. He talked about the graphic novel memoir he made during the pandemic, at age 44. I love that he was very meticulous with the Moleskine notebook format and material, with the front inscription, graph paper, bookmark, and extra blank pages in the back.
During the Q&A, a fan said “Your aura is about introverted people dealing with bitterness.”
I asked him to sign my book with “Write your own memoir” and he chuckled softly and said “I would never make you do anything” and sketched his sketch instead.
“I have always made comics when something bad happens to me.”
How I ended up at MoCCA was entirely serendipitous.
Last week I met my friend Felicia for a quick rendezvous at Milk Bar cafe and was showing her a moodboard of visual references and styles (all from Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home) that I was collecting in my search for an illustrator of my graphic novel memoir.
As if summoned from thin air, a stranger materialized before us, asking “Did somebody say graphic novel memoir??”
They turned out to be a graphic novel illustrator, recently published, with Ronan and the Sea of Endless Stars, a heartbreaking memoir of a father making meaning from a baby born into a rare disease with a high mortality rate before the age of 3.
“The MoCCA arts festival is this weekend,” she said. “You should go — lots of artists will be there.”
Thank you, Lara Antal, for this strong signal from the universe. At the festival I saw your book, highlighted as a “Staff Pick” at the Abrams Comic Arts booth, and picked it up and read it all same day. Breathtaking. 🤍
Reading
To-Watch List
Shortcomings (2023), “a movie about Asian Americans being shitty,” directed by Randall Park, based on the Adrian Tomine graphic novel, starring Sherry Cola, Justin H. Min, Ally Maki and (randomly?) Tavi Gevinson.
Dope Stuff for Your Desk
I wasn’t expecting to love JT’s Tiny Desk concert from 3 days ago, but the Tennessee Kids musicians in his crew are so talented and deserve all the love and attention! Smooth like buttah. 🧈
Queueing up in the long line for the Adrian book signing, I got another nudge from a stranger that this story wants to be told, needs to be told. 🔮
Thank you, Jan in new Jersey. 🙏🏽
Spread love,
