So I'm in the middle of my senior year of college and working on my honors thesis. I'm combining my major and minor and doing a graphic novel. It's not the Frank Miller type graphic novel, but more "Persepolis". Marjane Satrapi is a literary goddess of mine. I'm also writing an intro/paper on it and my argument is that the graphic novel is outgrowing the term "genre." I mean, we have amazing graphic novels about everything from super heroes to small personal stories about growing up in the Midwest. How can that be one genre? I normally don't get hung up on labels, however I think lumping things together like that implicitly labels them as simple--something you can throw away in an all-purpose category.
Anyway, I met with my thesis director today, and it was a big help. He keeps me in check and motivated. I've been living in this work by myself for a long time, so it gets to the point where I forget I'll ever share it with anyone. When I get that it then make me look at what I've done and hate it to the point of torching it. However, have no fear, I won't be starting any fires. I'm feeling very invigorated.
Here are a few pages from my project. It's a collection of short stories about my childhood. these pages are from the story that depicts the time in preschool when a boy exposed himself to me. On the ride back, my mom asked me what I did that day and I'm told my word for word response was "a boy showed me his peanuts." So, here you go. All of my personal stories I chose to write up and illustrate, are the ones that I share over coffee with friends. They're the ones (whether they're big and dramatic or small and funny) that I tell people so they know me. So here you go, whoever you are out there--here's a little piece of me. If it brings up a memory for you, I encourage you to share. The top page is the first, so start there.
