Pros/cons, ups/downs, love/hate: Life in France after almost a year.

charente nov 2012
I’m not a Francophile. I like France, but I’ve never fantasized about living here. I don’t idolize French food, or the language, or fashion. I decided a few years ago (with Matt, of course) that it would be a good idea to try to live in France, because the comics industry is so strong here, because we have professional connections, because Matt speaks very good French, and because I really need to finally learn to do so too. There are other reasons we wanted to move, but they’re less specific to France: we want our kids to know multiple languages and to have an international perspective. We feel that living abroad, anywhere, is a really good idea for artists. We were trapped in an ongoing stress-fest life in Brooklyn, where we did (a lot) more comics-related work than on actual comics, and we needed to go somewhere cheaper and simpler (this factor does not really point one to France, of course). (More on our decision-making process here.)

So the last few days of August 2012 saw me and Matt and our two kids get on a plane with way too many suitcases and arrive in Angoulême, France.

People say to me, “oh, that just sounds so fan-TAS-tic” in this dreamy voice…you can tell that my story plays into their more-or-less developed fantasy of escape to a romantic other life, where things are simpler and slower and a hell of a lot prettier.  I have this conversation with friends and family over and over: Is it great? Are you happy? When are you coming back? Does socialism work??  Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on June 10, 2013

Girls’ Comics: new-old work on the site

girlscomics1b-splitrock

I’ve been slowly working at updating old versions of the pages on this site, and adding some new material. I hope to bring you some regular postings of old comics within a few months. Meanwhile, I’ve put together this narrative of a really productive accidental drawing/print/painting series I did in the 90s. This image, especially, is one I’ve used any number of times for various purposes, and if I dug deeply enough, I might even find that it’s some kind of a precursor to Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars.

More to come.

Published by Jessica, on June 6, 2013

visual scripting: using InDesign to write scripts native to comics

This is the first of a series of posts I hope to make on methods of writing comics. I’ve gone through a long (and ongoing) process of development of my own process, and finally have arrived at a method I think is very worth sharing. I don’t plan to talk all that much about what goes into the actual story, just how to use tools and formats to get whatever ideas you have onto paper (or screen). A further note: if you are really interested in all this kind of stuff, I mean enough to get all the way through this post, you should definitely have my two textboks on comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics. They are the kind of thing you’d enjoy. 

from page 1, tome 2 Trish Trash

Introduction

Alison Bechdel is an not only a cartoonist, she’s an inventor. Between the Bechdel Test and the Bechdel Method, she’s more than earned her place in the comics pantheon, and her Guggenheim Fellowship.

what’s the Bechdel Method?

Back in 2009 or so, I was talking to Alison Bechdel about her writing process, and she told me about a new technique she’d developed that has since turned out to be absolutely transformational for my comics. And no, it wasn’t the part about photographing herself posing for every single one of her characters. It was the idea of using graphic design software to create a mutable, flexible script with the initial stages of visual storytelling built in. See the first couple of minutes of this video of Alison Bechdel walking you through her technique for glimpse of it. (As an aside: I’m proud to say I was able to simplify her life slightly by suggesting Adobe InDesign as opposed to Illustrator as a basic tool!) I wrote up Alison’s technique in detail in Mastering Comics. Since then, I’ve made a few refinements, and I’ve come up with a name for it, visual scripting.  Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on February 11, 2013

Where to find me at the Angoulême 2013 festival

The Festival International de la Bande Dessinée (FIBD) is breathing hard down our necks—the whole town is being transformed day by day into the banner-strewn tent city I remember from my previous visits. Matt and I have been put to work by many different comics-related institutions in town, and we’ve got a full plate. Here’s what we have planned.

a bulle under construction in Angouleme

Building a bulle (tent) in the parking lot next to my son’s daycare. Oh, the bucket-trucks and mega-forklifts we have seen!

Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on January 23, 2013

¿Qué es una “novela gráfica”? (i.e. ‘What is a ‘graphic novel’?”)

Comics in Colombia are on the march, friends, make no mistake. Under the youthful and very energetic direction of Daniel Jiménez Quiroz, editor of the anthology Revista Larva (with the assistance of a large group of friends and collaborators, of course), Colombia now has a very internationally-oriented annual comics festival called Entreviñetas (“between the panels”). Entreviñetas has hosted, among many others, Matt in 2011. Matt’s had several comics published in South America this year as a result, and now, schools and libraries across Colombia are apparently graced with this very informative poster:

¿Qué es una "novela grafica"? —What is a"graphic novel"? poster in spanish detail view Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on January 21, 2013

Trish Trash on view at FIBD

For the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée (FIBD), the giant comics festival descending on the small town I live in on January 31—more on that to come in a post in a day or two—the Maison des Auteurs is putting on an exhibition of work by all the artists who have been resident in this past year—that’s 44 people, people. So I’ve got just a few pieces in this show, and it’ll be the first time finished Trish Trash pages are seen by the world. Well, strictly speaking, the color will be tweaked a bit and they’ll be in French…but more or less. I’ll also have the original drawing for a book cover I drew this fall for an upcoming Susan Choi novel, My Education. Check out that fantastic poster by Lucas Varela! I’ve gotta get me one of those.

Trish Trash volume 1 page 6 color preview Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on January 17, 2013

Out of the frying pan

Ask not for whom the little yellow la Poste truck comes...it comes for me. by jessica abel ©2012

 

Hot on the heels of six years of reading hundreds of American comics every year for the Best American Comics, I’ve agreed to do the same (much smaller volume, but IN FRENCH) as a member of the Grand Jury of the Compétition Officielle of the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, to be held here Jan 31 – Feb 3 2013.

I’ve developed a Pavlovian fear of mailmen.

Published by Jessica, on December 13, 2012

Studio time

I moved into my own studio in September. It’s big, two rooms, one for a large computer desk, the other with a small round table and a huge drawing table. Top floor, angled roof, two dormer windows (known here as “chiens-assis”, “seated dogs”). It’s roomy, well-equipped, comfortable.

And a little bit lonely.

I’ve never had a studio that wasn’t in my apartment. I haven’t had a studio by myself in fifteen years. I’m happy to have all this space, and to be able to play any audio I want, whenever I want. I’m happy that my move here has allowed me to reorder my priorities so that I’m not spending all my time on administrative stuff that requires lots of office help. But I miss the hustle and bustle of the old studio, and I miss my interns. Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on November 12, 2012

Boomfest: comics in St. Petersburg

Back in the summer, I was quite unexpectedly invited to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a comics festival called Boomfest. I hadn’t heard of it, but several friends had gone, including cartoonists Joe Sacco and T. Edward Bak and José Alaniz, an academic with expertise in Eastern European and Russian comics. I don’t usually write up much of a report on events I attend, but I wanted to with this one, because Russia is just so very off our–meaning North American comics’–radar. It’s a small scene, but growing, and worth our attention.  Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on November 6, 2012

On arriving in France (thought, mostly, at 320 kilometers per hour*)

[ I took the high-speed TGV train last week from Angoulême, France, where I live as of about a month ago, to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, to go to a comics festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was the first chance I'd had to really sit and compose my thoughts about leaving my old life in Brooklyn and starting a new one in small-town France. More actual concrete details about the situation to be found below all this poetic folderol, if you're interested.] 

WHO

If possible, don’t bring small children.

I stand on the TGV platform and carefully check my ticket time, train number, car number, the chart depicting the train showing that I’m standing at point H and my car (06) will be at point K, pre-walk like a real, if overly-cautious, angoumoisine (yes that’s what they’re called). Flashbacks to getting on the TGV at Charles de Gaulle a month ago (almost exactly—2 days short) with 2 small children, 3 overstuffed luggage carts and no charts to be found showing where our car would be, running, literally, down the platform to our train car, then running back for the other cart (only 2 adults available), chucking bags, computers (oh lord), small children into a crowded vestibule, other travelers helping, getting in the way. Porters crabbing at us for having so much crap. We’re MOVING I wanted to tell them. You think this is a lot of crap? Take a look at my Brooklyn basement. Take a look at the shipping warehouse with my 77 boxes waiting for a boat. (I would like to go to Le Havre and wave hello to them when they arrive on October 15.) What am I going to do when this train arrives at Charles de Gaulle and I visit the site of this trauma? Will I have a small (petite) heart attack?

Continue reading →

Published by Jessica, on October 11, 2012