Daddy’s Girl by Debbie Drechsler that inspired me to write her

You ever “star” something on Gmail? Apparently I did about three years ago, otherwise I don’t know if I ever would have found this email exchange again:

Subject: from a fellow resident of Sonoma County

2/20/10

Hi Debbie, or Ms. Drechsler?

I’m Katari Sporrong and I was born in Santa Rosa, but grew up in Sonoma. I literally just finished reading your book, Daddy’s Girl. I’m gonna be thinking about that book for a while, processing it and reliving moments of it.
So I’m almost 21 and I don’t live in Sonoma anymore. Right now, I’m going to school in London, but I mostly go to school in Vermont. I’m a junior at Bennington College, but when I get back I’ll be a senior.
I find it a little funny that I have to go all the way to England to find a book by someone from my county in a library.
The reason why I’m writing you is because I’m an aspiring comic artist/graphic novelist/story and picture maker and maybe I could use a few pointers on how to make myself Make. I have ideas, but when I actually have the time to act on them, I tend to only make baby steps. I want to make huge projects, but I know I should probably just make short and sweet things to get myself going, but then I go and read three books instead.
Do you have any suggestions as to how I can jump start my making? Any general tips for the next generation of hopeful makers?

Hope this email find[s] you and California well,

best,
katari sporrong

Looking back, this shows so plainly my maker’s block, my fears and shame of being so scared.

And she wrote back just two days later:

2/22/10

Hi Katari,

Thanks for writing! It is indeed funny that you had to go to London to find my book!

For me, the way to get the big projects done is to break them down into smaller pieces, aka baby steps, so you’re on the right track. If you make a baby step each time you have the time, without thinking too hard about the “big picture”, you should be able to get a small or huge project done more quickly than you can imagine! I find that thinking “huge” can be really overwhelming and cause me to give up before I start so I just find ways to trick myself into believing that I’m not REALLY working on a huge project. I find that I’m amazingly easy to trick, so it works pretty well. When those three books are calling you, it can help to set some sort of doable deadline before allowing yourself to read them, i.e. “must write first draft of comic before I even open new book” or “must write for 1 hour before dashing off for latte and book time”.

Good luck getting yourself going with the comics and with your studies in London and Bennington!

Best, Debbie

And it really was fantastic advice. That summer I started by making the short sweet little things, slowly progressing into larger projects.

Staring into any project as a whole can feel impossible. I’ve had many opportunities to experience this.

Though Debbie’s advice is directed at our struggles with comics, I find the act of convincing ourselves that baby steps will move us dramatically forward is essential to get anything done in this world.

The tricky part is having the patience and the willpower to let things move forward at the rate they can.

7 Miles A Second
David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger,
Marguerite Van Cook
Fantagraphics Books 2012

7 Miles A Second
David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, Marguerite Van Cook
Fantagraphics Books 2012

I ordered this book in June. It arrived two weeks ago and I already I’ve scuffed it up from my toting it around and constantly re-flipping through it’s large, color-soaked pages.

It’s hard to review this book objectively, or from a point of view of a reader with no familiarity with Wojnarowicz. I’ve been close to obsessing over his memoir, Close to the Knives, for almost two years. I bought and read his biography, Fire in the Belly by Cynthia Carr last summer and even had the amazing opportunity last fall to work with Carr in creating a presentation for lectures she gave in Los Angeles and San Francisco promoting the book. Somehow, I know a few people who knew him, but I haven’t pressed them for stories (yet).

I was expecting 7 Miles A Second to be, in short, a different package on a familiar product. I was very wrong.

While some of the text was familiar, I was impressed most by what wasn’t.
The stories that I knew already, like Wojnarowicz sleeping on roofs and in boiler rooms, once stealing knives with his friend and nearly robbing a homeless man who they mistook for a rich guy in a suit: these became so much more potent with James Romberger’s art and the wrenching colors of Marguerite Van Cook.

The art reflects but does not attempt to copy Wojnarowicz ‘work, with circular cuts of imagery in Wojnarowicz’s symbolic language and saturated but never quite pleasing colors. Events, I assume from his childhood, appear in grey toned elements, undiscussed in the text, either in small boxes or blending into the page spread.

In my opinion, the book is broken into two definitive sections. The first is a cobbling of stories from Wojnarowicz’s years on the streets of New York, the second being his final years before his death.

page 18, part of the nightmare/dream

Part 1 moves quickly; dreams and reality clash and combine into a messy but terrifyingly clear portrait of those years. The portrayal is unromantic and becomes progressively more hopeless. I finished part one with a feeling like I’d not only seen his dreams but had somehow been a part of them.

Part 2 begins in a relief of him having survived, only the reader must quickly accept that this is not going to end well.

In the first 3 page story (pages 40 through 42), Wojnarowicz seems drawn inward, readying himself for the end. From here on we see how hard it was to get there, the rage he had to release and repress to get to that mournful surrender on page 42, beaten by his disease as he was physically as a child.

From page 43 on, we see the rage, the inexpressible desires, the pains of loss, the relentlessness of time pressing forward to his end.

Part 2 is unsettling in a wholly opposite manner than part 1. Where part 1 brings the reader into this nightmare life, part 2 won’t let the reader pause any more than Wojnarowicz was able to pause. It all happens at once and not fast enough.

Love and death, rage pain calm storms light and much more darkness than ever before. Part 2 will not be pinned down. It is relentless until it ends.

It’s hard to believe this book is less than 70 pages long. It’s as powerful visually as it is in words, which is a challenge noting the strength of Wojnarowicz’s text.

I am left with the colors. Alien and all too natural. Van Cook did an incredible job.
Excuse me, I need to read this book again immediately.

Read it yourself.

Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

So clearly I’m a bit late in the game on this, but I just finished Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross from 1996. Given that it’s Alex Ross, the art is beautiful and immediately elevates the comic to a god-like level, a perfect pairing with the story which is clear in comparing superheroes to gods.

I was warned by my boyfriend before reading that the main reasons he was sharing it with me were: 1. the art is awesome, 2. I hadn’t really read any Superman and I needed to in order to do more than assume, not because it was a great story.

And yes, the story is somewhat convoluted, not aided by the overload of background hero/villains that I had little to no knowledge of. It also quickly becomes clear that the story is a direct and pointed response to the comics of its day.

I’d like to think that I know a fair amount of comic book history, but with reading Kingdom Come, I’ve had to admit that my history is more limited than I thought. I know more about the Comics Code, Underground Comics and alternative or subversive comics than I do about superhero comics; I also know more about how comics like V for Vendetta, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns affected the growing indie comics community than I do how it affected the heavy hitting Marvel and DC universes.

How did I never think about how Comix may have affected Comics? Why do I think of alternative comics as being so utterly separate?
I think these are questions to be dealt with at a later time, but these are questions that have come to me since reading Kingdom Come (and the TV Tropes page on the Dark Age of Comics).

Am I really supposed to know who all these characters are?

When I read it, I was frustrated by the absurd costumes of the women, by the dozens of characters I didn’t recognize and I was generally overwhelmed by all the character dynamics I was and am unfamiliar with.

So superheroine’s had increasingly implausible and overly sexualized outfits in the ’90s? That’s a known thing? I guess Waid and Ross were just showing the characters as they were at the time, but in this comic that deconstructs the views on what makes a hero, why there is no discussion of the over-sexed nature of comics at the time? Kingdom Come talks about the senselessness of violence, questions idealizing murderous “heroes” just because they have super powers, so I don’t think it would have overstepped its bounds by discussing the hyper-sexuality of the era.

As an almost exclusively non-superhero comic fan, I have very little exposure to the dynamics of the DCU. I love Batman, enjoy a good Spiderman now and then, have always had an interest in X-Men though I’m perpetually overwhelmed by the massive cast of mutants, but mostly I read material commonly labeled as “graphic novels.” Because of my tastes, I don’t know relatively basic things about mainstream comics. How does the Justice League get along? Who is in the Justice League? Hell, who is in the Avengers? Does it change depending on the run, the show, the story line?

My biggest problem with Kingdom Come is that it reminds me of how hard it is to get into the worlds of Marvel and DC. There’s so much homework involved to get much out of the majority of stories.

On the other hand, I appreciate that it’s rekindled my interest in comic history and gives me an intelligent starting place for learning about the Dark Age of Comics.

But what about Superman? What do I think of him now that I’ve read a story where he’s the central character? My only previous exposures to Superman were Frank Miller’s Superman in the just not very good Dark Knight Strikes Again and a bizarre Superman and Aquaman crossover I once picked up for 30 cents and a laugh. I’m still not that impressed with Superman, but I’m a little more open to other renditions of him. Also, I’m now less annoyed at how much I liked the Superman ride at Six Flags anymore, mostly because that’s just a really fun rollercoaster.

The Dumps page 1, ink, 2012
Rough edit

It’s been a while since I’ve updated.

Lately, I’ve been working on projects that develop more slowly. I’ve begun work on a comic related to David Wojnarowicz but the shape it will take is as yet unclear.

While that is in development, I’m going to be a part of a show curated by my dear friend India Kieser: Pitch & Rail presents “PLEASE HOLD”

Pitch & Rail is proud to announce their first exhibition of contemporary and new work by young artists, “PLEASE HOLD: The twilight zone between 18 and 25″. Curated by India K, the show will feature work by the following talented artists:

Rebeca Baudille, Colin Brown, Kristi Carroll, Jessica Ginsberg, Mike Goldin, Martin JE Golemme, Dee Hamid, Brian Hochberger, Rebecca Iasillo, Grace Miceli, Farhad Mirza, Katari Sporrong, Amelia Vottero, Seneca Weintraut, Stanley B. Wong and David Worthington

with a performance by:
Ethan Woods

Examining the phase of life between adolescence and adulthood, the show aims to showcase artists going through this exact time of their lives and the subsequent work they produce. All artists in the show are under 26 and either pursuing art full time or attempting to make work and a living at once. This difficult process and delicate balancing act is on display through the work in this exhibit; yet the caliber at which these artists make their work does not bow down to their restrictions. Rather, they as talented individuals are able to bend restrictions and constraints to their will.

We invite you to join us and others at the exhibit to see the work and support the artists, Pitch & Rail, and the arts in general.

The opening is on Saturday January 26 from 6-10pm at 206 5th Ave, Floor 5, New York, NY

Love to see you there.

Stay tuned for more about my ongoing projects and a review of the new edition of “7 Miles a Second.”

But I haven’t heard from everyone I know in New York below the blackout line. And both of my jobs are in Lower Manhattan, one below 12th Street the other below City Hall near the World Trade Center. With trains out, my new route to work will be a bus to the Brooklyn Bridge and a 30 minute walk across the bridge to my office. Today I could’ve made that trek, but with a soar throat and minimal energy as it is, I decided not to risk my health today.

I used to roll my eyes at the packed trains, the people shoving, the endless delays that left me with only two minutes to still be sort of on time to work; now, with the studio I work at two days a week out of power, I’m worried about the state of my employment.

I see pictures of the destruction not far from me. Looking over the city from my roof, things don’t seem that much different.

I’m afraid of how long this city will take to get back to normal. I fear for the families who rely on this city for sustenance, who need gas for their job, who can’t miss another day and not risk their homes, who have no power, water, means of getting food. The people bundled in their homes unsure of their next move, praying for the city to be restored.

I am probably too empathetic for my own good.