Category Archives: comic

13 Ways of Looking at the Waters 1: The Men, the Women, and the Miasma

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It works excellently as an introduction to the entire project; it’s the only one that ties directly back to the book in terms of locating it in Whiteheart, Michigan. The others read more traditionally like fairy tales than this. I think it’s also the shortest of the 13 stories in this book.

Long time readers will note that I employed a completely different style of art than I used for the 4 previous volumes. When I originally envisioned this project, I expected to draw a lot more symbols that specifically sprung from the pages of The Waters; in the long run, the style choices I made precluded that type of detail, but I did feel pretty strongly that this page, at least, needed to feature a LOT of celery.

BONNIE JO CAMPBELL COMICS VOLUME 5 SNEAK PEEK!

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It was August of 2022 when Bonnie Jo Campbell commissioned the View from Whiteheart, Michigan map and sent me the manuscript for The Waters for reference, and November of that year when I sent her the final version, which means I’ve been working on this comic book for approximately 2⅓ years.

All the others took like 2–4 months.

I’ve still got some tweaks here and there plus the 4 color pages for the covers, but today I finally finished the last page of the body of the work. And good timing, too. In 12 days I have to lay out The Pencil Eaters Volume 2 so it can get to the printers in time for the release party May 13.

But until then, I’ll focus on getting this book to the printer and uploading the pages as they’re finalized.

it’s very different from any of the other books. It’s shaped like a comic book but it reads like a hand written and illuminated fairy tale manuscript, for reasons that I think will be obvious to anyone who’s read it. It’s a very inspirational book, and it inspired me in refreshing and magical ways. I expect the people who liked the other ones will like this one, plus it can be enjoyed on its own without any reference to the source material.

This is an unfinished detail from the inside front cover/table of contents: “The Spirit of the Waters.”

Nevertheless She Resisted

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This image pretty much expresses the state of the union, to my mind. It’s been a while since I drew a political cartoon. Almost precisely 8 years. It takes a lot out of you. And I did this the old fashioned way, no help from Photoshop.

This Saturday, April 5th, well over 1,000 protests are expected all across America. Either you know why or you’re part of the problem. I’m glad to live in a city where 75% of the people get it.

I made this sign 2-sided because we’re not going to let the bastards grind us down.

Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics Volume 4!!!

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Something’s different here.

It’s here at last! Volume 4 of Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics is now available from Michigan State University Press.

What’s that you say? This doesn’t look like an indie comic? Indeed, Michigan Salvage, edited by Lisa DuRose, Ross K Tangedal, and Andy Older is a academic collection, the first part of which contains scholarly writing about Campbell’s work, the second part of which includes pedagogical essays, and in between the 2, obviously, is a new BJC comic by yours truly, which, of course, straddles the scholarly/pedagogical divide.

In addition to the 15-page comparison of Q Road and Once upon a River, this volume also contains my 5-page comic lesson plan for teaching literary criticism to young people (every chapter has a corresponding lesson plan), as well as a chapter in the teaching section (“Fiction Friction: Teaching Bonnie Jo Campbell to Second Language Writing Students” by Doug Sheldon) that discusses using my previous comics to teach Campbell’s work.

Due to the…professional…nature of the book, I wasn’t able to share this work before publication (I actually did the bulk of it in 2020, during the first 2 months of lockdown) and I gather I still may not share too much of it here, but true fans will certainly want to purchase this lovely volume for their home collections. (It’s academic publishing, so I receive no compensation other than a contributor’s copy, but this was the most labor intensive comic yet; it took 250 hours.)

I made a lot of different decisions with this comic, which isn’t like the others; it’s more of a compare and contrast essay between the 2 novels rather than a simple retelling of short stories. It’s really text-heavy. But I’m pretty happy with it. There was a minor mix-up in the printing process that made the pages…less effective, but I’ve already received an apology and a promise that it will be rectified in the next printing.

And now…well, I really can’t say much about it, but I guess I can reveal that I have the final text for Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, forthcoming from WW Norton in 2024, right here on my very own computer. Like I really may not say much about it, but I think I can say this: it is going to blow people away. It’s going to be included on reading lists and win prizes and inspire articles and discussions. It’s going to make a huge splash. It’s going to have legs. It’s so good. And when it’s released in January of next year, Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics volume 5 will be there, scurrying after it.

Fans of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics will definitely want to buy this book. And if you don’t own the first 3 volumes of the comic, they can be purchased ($6 for 1, $10 for 2, $12 for all 3) from monica.ilene.friedman AT gmail DOT com.

Knowledge is Dark Power

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I can see how you might jump to conclusions but It’s not my fault you skipped your SAT prep class to hop fences.

“Why don’t you draw comics anymore?” people often ask me.

Well, here’s a comic I made, for all the good it will do you. Does this answer your question?

It started, I suppose, with my morbid but not the least bit irrational fear of having a metal bit drilling into my skull while I am conscious to experience it, which morphed into a generalized and perhaps slightly irrational phobia of dentistry in general, which I have been working to overcome for the last couple years. And then there’s the component where my lawyer friend told me that if you don‘t have a “No Trespassing” sign up, then it isn’t illegal for people to trespass on your property. Even if you have a wall of giant teeth surrounding it. Without the sign, you could be liable for the trespasser’s injuries. With the sign, you’re protected.

That lady, naturally, started out as McKayla Maroney being unimpressed, but then morphed into Morticia Addams being unimpressed, for obvious reasons.

I have like 6 posts that I should have put up on this blog: a super cool bulletin board and a bunch of greeting cards.

Space Junk

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They’re not sending their best. Did you see that Spirit guy flailing around in the sand?

You can thank The Man for this one. I drew the image and refined the text but the comic was his idea (although I don’t think he’s the only one to notice that we do seem to be littering the red planet with robots). I did watch Perseverance land today, but unlike a lot of people, I wasn’t crying.

I always have this disconnect when I want to draw aliens. Because I want them to look alien, you know? But the problem is that you have to give them some human features or people don’t recognize them as being aliens. I realize I discussed this issue 5 years ago, in another one of The Man’s comics.

I also realize that it’s extremely unlikely that life on the Red Planet would be green. I imagine they would be red for camouflage, in which case you wouldn’t be able to see them at all.

Anyway, I really didn’t have anything better to do than to draw this comic. Enjoy.

His Lips Are Moving

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If you can’t see it, it isn’t happening

I wasn’t planning on drawing today, but a bunch of people have been saying I should write political cartoons again, and this one just came to me this morning, and the whole thing will be meaningless in 24 hours, and the Rabbit said I should, so I dashed it off in record time.

I do want to get better at drawing caricatures, and this guy is too easy to lampoon, but looking at his cruel face and that mean little butthole of a mouth is unpleasant. He’s a bad man. These are bad times. Just saying no to lying fascists is only step one of the solution.

You Are the Pilot of Your Journey

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I will concede that a person could *own* too many books (in relation to the size of the space in which they have to store books) but I fail to understand how anyone could possibly *know* too many books. In my opinion, most people don’t know enough books.

Some time ago (April, 2019, according to the date on the original file), Professor Gwen Tarbox asked me to comic-ize this Facebook status written by Professor Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. I previously comic-ized another of Professor Wesley’s Facebook statuses—I don’t think she can help writing poetry, even on Facebook—and I readily agreed. And then I made the file size too big (I think) and the drawings too complicated and it was taking hours and hours and I was working from these really old and not necessarily focused photographs and I just sort of…gave up?

My life was really complicated around that time and it’s only just sort of settling (obviously, few of us are really settled in this pandemic, but I guess we’re adjusting to the new normal) and Patricia Jabbeh Wesley recently published a new book of poetry, Praise Song for My Children. I haven’t read it yet, but I did acquire a copy (persuaded my public library system to buy it) and it’s the next thing I’m going to read. (I’ll link to my review and to Amazon after I read it for people who want to know more/buy their own.) Anyway, having the book in my hands (combined with the fact of pandemic) reminded me that there was this half-finished comic. And it still took like 3 more hours to finish. It’s way too much detail for a comic, and I don’t think most readers will even be able to zoom in (but trust me…too much detail for the format) but I guess that makes it exceptionally beautiful.

I do want to publish more comics. Probably not in this style. I’d like to develop a more cartoony one that takes less time.

If I was in the Patricia Jabbeh Wesley business (the way I’ve been in the Bonnie Jo Campbell business) there could be no end to these. There’s a lot of material. This wouldn’t even be one of the posts I would have chosen myself, although it’s got some good stuff in it. This guy thinks that shaving your eyebrows makes you beautiful? Not to mention the part where she’s been married for decades and has adult children…what makes random dudes think that women care about their opinion of their appearance?

I must also add that my eyebrows are just as bushy as Professor Wesley’s. Possibly moreso. However, I am also married and my husband has never spoken of my eyebrows to me. I assume he likes them.

Maybe this is playful banter and I miss some of the subtext but this guy doesn’t actually sound like a friend to me. Professor Wesley’s retort reminds me of the lady telling Winston Churchill that if he were her husband she’d serve him poison and Churchill replying, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.” And then, hilariously, his comeback is that she’s too smart and knows too much? How is that an insult? I’m guessing she is proud of the number of books she’s read and the level of education she’s achieved (I met her in grad school: she was finishing up her PhD when I was working on my master’s). I don’t know anyone who cries when you call them smart. The only thing people like that cry about in regard to their educational level is their student debt.

Anyway, comic.

Yonis in Academia

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yonis in academia_edited-1

As Dolly Parton once said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

The original plan was to write this comic before I tackled Women and Other Animals. The progression went: SSML put out the call for submissions, I joked that I considered myself the world’s foremost expert on Bonnie Jo Campbell, Bonnie Jo encouraged me to submit a abstract for the conference, after which I got accepted, after which she asked me to create this comic book. So the symposium was always waiting at the other end, and this story was always dancing in the background, but it took forever to get the script down; I couldn’t seem to focus on it until I’d gone through the stories. It’s still my introduction to the comic.

Another reason I wanted to draw this comic was because yonis were the only part of the human anatomy I didn’t draw in the course of illustrating the complete short fiction of Bonnie Jo Campbell.

I dug out the original “Yoni” essay, and, unlike a lot of my older work, this one seems to have aged pretty well. It’s a tight piece, although I’m much more conscious of trans-exclusionary language these days, so there are definitely parts that I would have tackled differently, and some of the things I wrote about my body 20 years ago are no longer the case since I turned 40. However, it was fun to research and write, and still fun to read.

I’m not sure if I was a redhead at the time of this story, but my hair does look great. Also, I realized after I laid out panel 1 that I didn’t have a laptop at the time. I didn’t have my first laptop until more than a year after this story happened, and it wasn’t a sleek little MacBook, it was an enormous, clunky ThinkPad. I drew something closer to the ThinkPad anyway, so we can all remember how ridiculously large computers used to be. Because the desktop CRT wouldn’t have fit in this comic.

The illustrated euphemisms in panel 1, clockwise from top left: honey pot, a pearl on the steps of the temple of Venus, phoenix nest, little man in a a boat, and of course, whenever possible, I do like to include my filthy little pussy in comics. Her name is Lupin. The little man in the boat is Peter Dinklage, because the world needs more Peter Dinklage. Obviously. “Phoenix nest” is sort of archaic and out of favor. When I Googled it, I didn’t get pictures of genitals or fiery bird nests. I got mostly pictures of people in fur suits.

The images in panel 2 came out of my files. When I gave this presentation, I blew them up and mounted them for visual aids. There was a big poster at one time, but I just found these little ones. It’s so great that I’m a packrat so I could recreate these original images as well as the hard copy I read that day. I tried to locate the video of the reading, but I’ve never had a copy and I don’t remember who shot it, so that was a bust. Not even a still photo. But the people who were there in the audience that day definitely remember.

Bringing Home the Bones

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waoa 16 bringing home the bones _edited-2

The family the exhumes together…blooms together? Zooms together? Resumes together?

That’s a wrap on Women & Other Animals. The great sense of accomplishment I feel is only mitigated by the fact that I still have to draw 4 more supplemental pages to finish this comic book before I convert the pages to black and white, remove the boilerplate text, and send it off to the printer. Along with all the proofread text from the blog. After which I have to prepare 15-20 minutes of remarks on the subject of “I turned every single short story in all of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s short fiction collections into comics” for this presentation I’m giving to the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.

Whew.

For “Bringing Home the Bones,” I decided to use Susanna Campbell, Bonnie Jo’s mother, as the model for Charlotte, except I made Charlotte frown in every picture, which Susanna does not do. The more I thought about it, the more right it seemed. First of all, this whole project started with Susanna, with a comic I wrote about Bonnie Jo and Susanna, called “Understanding,” about how sometimes even your mother doesn’t understand you. And second, of course, there is a lot of Susanna in these books. Most people’s mothers influence their lives a lot, but Susanna, I think, influences the work a lot.

And then, only after I worked through all that and finished the page did I realize that I’ve come full circle. This comic actually ends with the line that Charlotte knows the hope of “being understood by her daughters at last.” Maybe your mother doesn’t understand you, but you can understand your mother, and you’ll feel better about the rough edges if you do. I don’t know why that is, but I feel like it’s often the case.

Good thing I’d already worked out how to draw people doing things in the dark when I drew “Storm Warning” or panel 5 might have defeated me tonight and I’d be a day behind schedule again. That ice cream maker in panel 4 is pretty sweet. We had a hand crank ice cream maker when I was a kid but it was plastic and made in the ’80s.

Beyond that, this is just another great story. I could compare many elements of it to Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” You’ve got the mom still living the old way, and the daughter who stayed, and the daughter who left and embraced the new and can’t understand the value of the things to which the mother clings. But in “Bringing Home the Bones,” the daughter does come to understand, a little, and in return the mother gives her something back, that piece of herself she had withheld. Not the actual memory, I don’t think, but some emotional availability that she felt compelled to keep hidden away since her parents’ deaths.