Daddy’s Girl by Debbie Drechsler

Finishing Daddy’s Girl by Debbie Drechsler pushed my breath right out of me. I had been holding it without noticing. A long time ago I also read this book and wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but now, now, I really got it.

The book is a series of short comics about sexual abuse and its repercussions told from the perspective girls from about eight to 16. I reread the 1995 version in about an hour, curled into an awkward position on an awkward sofa in Vermont. I pored over Drechsler’s details, her patterned everything, her wide-eyed characters. (Tessa Brunton’s work actually reminds me a lot of Drechsler’s in this book, a connection that jumped up and slapped me during this reread). The art feels unrestrained and almost joyous in the face of the subject matter, and that is one of the things that gives this book so much power.


Think of all the women and men you know that have been trespassed against, who’ve had sex used as a weapon against them, who have had part of themselves stolen by friends, relatives and strangers. Daddy’s Girl captures, in very few pages, the banal brutality of abuse and the bald-faced ugliness of a world that creates a safe place for abusers. While it is difficult to get the graphic actions of the father character out of your mind, it is the subtle attacks on the personality of the main characters by mother/friend characters that have really stuck with me. With simple, natural dialogue, Drechsler really gets at the ability to sense and exploit weakness that emotional abusers have and allows the reader to draw conclusions about why.

If you are lucky, this book simply makes you think of every time you kept your mouth shut when you knew something terrible was going on and pushes those moments in front of your face as a warning and a call to do better. It is a difficult read. It is a survival story and we need it.

*Photo from random goodreads user

your indie cred

Making comics? Putting out zines? Good for you—everyone is waiting to see what you come up with. But as much as some of us might wish it was still the 1990s, I'm here to tell you that that kind of lovely, sloppy creation just doesn't cut it in these access-point-rich times!

Friday was my last day at the Schulz Library at the Center for Cartoon Studies. While there I worked on cataloging and arranging student work, as well as making a detailed collection list and finding aid for the library's 2000+ zine and non-student minicomic collection. There were a ton of surprises in the piles of stapled screeds, including a Jason Lutes mini, a Basil Wolverton greeting card, some early work from Eleanor Davis, a few issues of Al Hoff's Thriftscore and an issue of Waffle filled with post-punk hate that I remember picking up at the Borders on Walnut Street with my friend D.

Accessing a collection like CCS's is a great way to chart the progression of an artist's work. Seeing that progression can be very important for researchers and students. Librarians and archivists want to give people your stuff, so why not make it easy for us?

What I'm saying is:
& Pick the form of the name you want to use early and stick with it

& Put your name prominently on your work

& It's really wonderful that you've got an email address or a twitter handle, but this does not substitute for a last name

& Resist the apparently intoxicating urge to make your table of contents/masthead look like a wordsearch or drawing of a spider's nest. If you've got contributors/partners-in-crime, respect them with some clear characters.

& Date, issue number, and title are also important for placing work in a larger context. Consider yourself part of this context and put these details where we can find them.


Do these simple things and keep your work out of the dreaded "Unknown" bin. Don't worry, your indie cred won't suffer!

Some pictures of the zine and minicomics sorting done by librarian Caitlin McGurk, KM and me:

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 8

Ghoststeen was seen but never heard.

This final dispatch comes after I've already come back to New York, but I think it encapsulates the past month very well.

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 7

Inside, ok?

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 6

Across the hall, the neighbors make a lot of noise.

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 5

Breezy

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 4

Cotton blankets. Don't need em!

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 3

Common Room secrets

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge: 2

I think they have different pollen in Vermont. Either that, or I somehow picked up a new, unhappy head last evening on the way back from buying groceries.

Dispatch from the Hotel Coolidge

I've got a review of Talamaroo 1-3 by Alabaster over at inkstuds.

double good mail day

In the mail today, this time the correct size:
Photo from Tessa Brunton's site, because my pics kept coming out like I took them.

I'll need to make a few alterations to make it more boob-friendly.

##########
Re: yesterday's good mail day: I can't stop reading What I Didn't See by Karen Joy Fowler. The first story in the collection, "The Pelican Bar," winner of the 2010 World Fantasy Award for short story, broke my heart after pulling me in with excellent details and the truths of parents and children.

good mail day

Most of the fun of pre-ordering is the surprise!

Shelley Jackson cover art sells me like nothing else—look at that sad mermaid. Look at her. Sorry that the image is a better showcase of the paper it came in. For better images, go here and here.

Old toothbrushes and elbow grease

I have been discovering crannies and nooks unknown to me. Spring cleaning is going on, a few months late by the calendar, a few months early by the weather. In my home, things are being mended and scrutinized, discarded and displayed. I am spending time alone with my (our) things, and being the sentimental type, this means spending time with my memories and attitudes. I prefer working on the present—the past is pitfalls and prattfalls—so, ways of being are being refined and defined and this is surprisingly rewarding. And, just like the freshened result of cleaning out the dryer's internal filter, you'd never know from the outside.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

It is planting season. I am too chilled to venture on to the roof, so my little plants and unpopped seeds are having an inside day:

In addition to my Gaia-like nurturing of food and beauty, I've been bringing home shopping bags of fruit and vegetables that, with their bright colors and healthy odors, amplify both my righteousness and sexual appeal tenfold.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Best of all, I heard that Maureen F. McHugh will be coming out with a new collection of short stories from Small Beer Press in October 2011. It is called After the Apocalypse and you will preorder it now.

I am reading Half the Day is Night by her right now and enjoying its underwater murkiness, if not the other trappings of the book's world. More on that later.

arts from mocca 2011

I am just starting to plow through my MoCCA pile. In celebration of that, here are pics of the two arty art arts that I got at the fest.

Big:

Mountains I by Mark Burrier. I will frame this as soon as I get some framin' money.

Small:

A portrait from the G train. Are you the artist of this? Please contact me!

haps

Sorry to ruin a Spring day, everybody, but I am hoping for rain. I want the grey clouds that are now bunching over Downtown Brooklyn to turn black and heavy and blow over this way. Which, of course, means that I've started my roof garden and that the hose is a situation. A frustrating, wet, non-working situation. A trip to the hardware store could probably fix that, but when will that happen?

I have fallen into a book recently sent to me by a small press. The world is recent past and I want to be there. I hope to write about it somewhere else soon. It is a love story and a sibling story--surprise!

The third thing, the third thing is that I owe you a letter. I really do. I promise to sit down this weekend and write you one.

Twitter has recently been absorbing thoughts like the above, but I wanted to pin them here this time. I am still unsure about Twitter--how it shapes my thoughts. As a delivery system, it's great, but when I post an essay like this one or this one, it is hard to say why they are important in just a few lines. However, with retweeting, the audience for such a pick is limitless--perhaps that makes up for it? I don't know.

At The Rumpus, I have a very short piece on the subject of Near and Far. Mine is on the second page, sitting right above some lovely art.

In terms of writing in general, these last few months have been different, better. I may not have the greatest ideas but the work has been coming easier and the results are more satisfying than they have been in a long time. In terms of grief writing, I have been experimenting with different forms and been surprised at what is coming out. This makes me hopeful for my upcoming zine project, which will be done, I think, by August. You seem a bit dubious; so do I.

In other writing news, it feels like the only place I can be compassionate is on the page. I hope this passes.

3 from the subway

A woman is reading a book about yoga on the subway. She looks very earnest with her Integral Yoga plastic sack, stuffed to the brim with various expensive accoutrements. She is wearing high heels and her straightened hair has the heightened shine of battle. Between stops a twitchy man hops over to her. He is eager to tell her that he does yoga too. He is eager to tell her about getting over things, so, so many wrongs—hearts and dollar signs fly out of his mouth—and then just like that, just a few stops, he is gone out the doors.

She then comes to sit next to me in a two-seat section. She smells faintly of shit.

***

Skinny arms, ill-fitting clothes, too-big hands and feet, the whole thing. This boy is perfectly poised to break my heart in a moment. He is eleven or twelve and sitting by himself by the window on a medium-crowded train. I can’t look at him without seeing him right on the edge; he’ll either pull himself into the world or get smashed by it. He is looking out into the tunnels mostly, and in his own world totally. When we pull into a station, he looks at the two daffodils in his hands, two different kinds. First he looks at one and then he looks at the other. He has nothing else with him. I almost cry my way up the stairs. This is my problem.

***

It must be daddy’s day to watch her and behind his sunglasses and be-spangled outfit he is very uncomfortable with the task. Even with so many muscles, it is hard to look tough with a baby. It is hard to bend, over and over to pick up a toy that is not casually dropped. It is hard to be something that you are not. She is so cute, and he, well. I don’t think he has realized the reservoir of goodwill he could garner if he just removed his sunglasses.

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MoCCA 2011

I spent the first day of MoCCA 2011 far away from the Armory, hanging with Philly friends of various ages and descriptions. On Sunday, I arrived with A and P and we hit the floor. B showed up later and we ended up having a good MoCCA:

I find the armory to be a rather glum space, but it does have a few things going for it:
--a tantalizing mezzanine
--a very Age-of-Aquarius 69 motif throughout, engaging the military use of the building in a sexy swirl of counterpoint
--wooden phone booths, as modeled here by A.:


There were far fewer minis and prints than I hoped for. As stated by everyone else in the world, the price of tables is forcing many minimakers out of the fest. Since I am mainly interested in comics and art with that handmade touch this is very disappointing, but unsurprising. I noticed a ton of slicker, stupider-looking, and/or child-oriented stuff, as well as the arrival of iPads for displaying art. None of this stuff really made me want to look further; I wish I had been able to spend more time on the floor, asking around about hot books. Last year newspaper anthologies were all the rage. I didn't see as many this time around, but that could be my own blindspot. Ugly ass neon melty faces still sadly dominate the print subject matter, but I did manage to find one silkscreen that was large and lovely, by Mark Burrier (see below), that didn't look like a poorly-raised Ft. Thunder/Basil Wolverton love child. As usual, I missed a few books I was looking forward to including CCS anthologies and Finders Keepers #3.

And, now, some of the many people and things I saw and bought, spottily and unskillfully photographed by myself:

Ah MAh GAh Breathers, one of our fave minis, is a book now, Justin Madsen does not say to me


Charles Forsman and Melissa Mendes make me happy


Anna Raffi is a master saleswoman


Alexandra Beguez belies her student status


Alabaster's website is broken!


Morgan Pielli is the only person is a Robin shirt that I would happily talk to


M. Jacob Alvarez means serious business


Mark Burrier and friend were wisely camera-shy


L. Nichols and Darryl Ayo are shining stars of joy

As are these portraits of B and I by L.

The requisite floor shots:



And a note about dissonance: Perhaps exhibitors would be less touchy about higher prices if the fundraising aspect of the MoCCA fest, that is supporting the museum, directly benefited the community. The museum's programming generally feels stuck in the past--perhaps a few more exhibits and events showcasing students, local, national and international self-publishers and small presses, or an artist-in-residence program, could create more goodwill in the community and at the same time increase awareness and support of the museum. As an attendee, I don't really feel like paying such a high door price to support a museum I have no interest in going to, ya dig? Next year it is quite possible that I won't. What do you think?

Check out my review of Tessa Brunton's In the tall grass, issues 2-4 over at inkstuds.