Andrew White

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A Universal History of Iniquity, Jose Luis Borges

Fictions, Jose Luis Borges

Artificies, Jose Luis Borges

The Aleph, Jose Luis Borges

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner

Cometbus 58, Aaron Cometbus

Comix School 6, Kevin Huizenga

Comix School 7, Kevin Huizenga

Angel of a Rope, Adam Buttrick

Now 1, ed. Eric Reynolds - Some really smart and interesting sequencing choices here. I’m always torn at editorial choices in anthologies than draw attention to themselves or are clever, but it works well here in my opinion. Underlines connections between the stories that already exist.

The Labyrinth, Saul Steinberg

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Kept putting off the October entry so now I’m combining it with November.

Over the past several weeks I’ve become increasingly less interested in sharing my work online. At least for now. I hope I can say that without dismissing the people who have read my work in the past, all of whom I appreciate very much. I just feel more comfortable right now burrowing away, staying quiet, listening and reading -- working hard and trying to emerge with something interesting. It’s important for me to keep reading perspectives different from my own, which is something I value a great deal about social media, so I definitely won’t disengage completely. But trying to pull back.

I’m going to finally build myself a real website in the next month. A nice, simple corner of the Internet where I can live in peace and quiet when I want.

I did have a few really nice phone calls with comics friends this month. What a revolutionary idea! Call your friends on the phone! It’s generally much better that sending them funny jokes on Twitter!

I wish I had more patience and self-control. This applies to many areas of my life, but it certainly applies to comics.

I need to read more. I’ve been struggling with the idea that this is a valuable use of my creative time -- which of course it is, and especially so when time I would spend reading is instead devoted to staring at my phone or playing videogames. Again, wishing for more self-control here. It does help to have books that I enjoy; I got through the Borges and Kushner quickly once I had my hands on them.

I spend several weeks in these two months on a few stories that I’m happy with. I’m working very dense, trying to cut out all the fat, telling stories in 10 tight pages instead of 40.

In late November I started a daily practice of drawing, notetaking, and making short comics -- after skipping 30 Days of Comics for the first time since I began doing it in 2012, just because I couldn’t think of a good constraint! I don’t plan to keep at this forever, but I’ll stick with it throughout December and hope it will lead me to some interesting places. Having a daily task is a good way to keep myself doing these activities. I’ll report back with my progress.

I also went to Paris in November, was gutted to just miss David Hockney at the Pompidou but caught a Gaugin exhibition with a strong focus on his printmaking. It led me to think about applying printmaking to comics in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen done before, so I’m going to give that a try next. Kevin Huizenga on Seth’s stamp diaries will give you some sense of what I’m going for. Of course I bought some comics while I was there as well; most interestingly, I found used copies of two Ego Comme X anthologies and one Frigobox. The Ego Comme X were worth it for 60+ pages of uncollected Fabrice Neaud (including Emile, arguably best viewed as a coda to Journal) and were otherwise remarkable for how astoundingly better Neaud is than everyone else in the books outside of Aristophane. This places Neaud’s anger and arrogance in parts of Journal in a different light; he’s...not unjustified to feel like he’s better than everyone else. At least in terms of his comics, when compared to his Ego peers, he clearly is.

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Telex from Cuba, Rachel Kushner

2001, Blaise Larmee

Pope Hats 5, Ethan Rilly

By Monday I’ll Be Floating in the Hudson with the Other Garbage, Laura Lannes

Diana’s Electric Tongue, Carolyn Nowak

I’m Not Here, GG

Sex Fantasy, Sophia Foster Dimino

Anti-Gone, Connor Willumsen

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I went to SPX this month. I enjoyed it. I tabled with Madeleine Witt and two generations of Cragheads, all of whom were equally enthusiastic about comics in their own ways. I had some great conversations and I really appreciate everyone who came by to chat. But I was exhausted by the end of the weekend. Completely depleted.

This isn’t about getting older, I don’t think, because 1) I’m not that old and 2) I feel just as energetic as ever (if not more so) in other areas of my life, including my creative life. But conventions have become more and more draining for me even though I do very few of them. For the next convention I attend, I plan to actively work towards making it a positive and enjoyable experience, to come out of it feeling rejuvenated rather than depleted. This might mean not tabling, it might mean forcing myself to leave early, it might mean deciding that these events aren’t for me in general - we’ll see.

I have my two final projects of the year completely done, ready to go to print. I feel excited. These are categorically my two strongest pieces of work to date, I’m pretty sure.

I recently cut down a 30+ page comic to four pages and am considering a similar cut with a strip that’s around 60 pages now. This feels good; if I go too long without doing this sort of thing, I start to feel complacent. Of course, it’s also not the best to feel like I’ve only done four pages of comics in the past month.

I’ve also started mentoring three cartoonists this month. They’re all fascinating, talented people: a high schooler looking to move beyond 1-2 page comics, a student in a university program with a heavy emphasis on fine art and conceptual rigor, and a cartoonist who has already seen some success but who is looking to begin their first book-length project. I’m very flattered that they think I can help them and very motivated to do right by them. I‘m probably not going to talk a ton about the details of these interactions, which are between me and these three people, but it’s been very rewarding already. I’d encourage anyone to try doing this, even on a temporary or one-off basis. Think about how much you would have benefited from this when you were starting out.

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I didn’t read any books or comics this month. I’m annoyed and discouraged! This hasn’t happened in a while and hopefully this trend will not repeat itself in the near future! 

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I was bedridden for a few weeks early this month. I got a hold of a Gamecube and started playing through Wind Waker as a way to stay busy when I couldn’t do much else, but as I recovered I kept playing. I probably won’t be able to stop until I’ve finished the game.

When I get knocked out of my routine, I sometimes use that as an excuse for not being productive. I let myself get lazy because I know re-establishing good habits can be hard and because it can be good to take breaks. I know that as I get older, situations where I can’t sit down at my drawing board for days or weeks at a time will most likely become more common. So I’m trying with mixed success to develop techniques now to deal with those situations -- ways to draw for 20 minutes at a time, or in a hotel room, or on a plane, that make sense for my creative process.

For instance, I spent several months early this year doing a drawing a day in a small sketchbook. Then I edited those drawings down into a comic. The comic isn’t very good, I think.

Does this mean the approach was flawed or does it mean I need to work this way a few more times before I’m happy with the results?

This month, as I found myself again away from the drawing board, I tried to focus on writing. Two long comics are starting to form in my head and I’m aiming to plan them out more than I have in the past. For one of them, I’m replicating the materials and creative approach of a previous project - i.e. what many cartoonists do all the time - and seeing if I can create a very different kind of comic using that same approach.

In September I’ll have a bit more free time and I hope to fill it with lots of drawing. Sammy Harkham talked in a recent interview about how two hours, or even an hour, can be a huge amount of time when you’re ‘in the zone’ on your current project. This really resonated with me. Maybe at the end of the day we’re all trying to construct creative lives where we can be in that zone as regularly as possible.