Oh lovelies,

Reading has been tough. My mind is currently focused on bringing up all the pain of the past 20+ years and parading it around, making focus difficult and spare time unpleasurable. Today is the third (is that possible?) anniversary of my father's death. He had terrible dyslexia; he was so proud that I enjoyed reading, even though it made us further apart. This year reading has not been the refuge I crave. What interests grief hasn't flattened, depression has steamrolled.

I'm still in The Crystal Eaters, still hoping the end supports everything I love about story developed so far. Shane Jones definitely has a razor insight into the thoughts and compulsions of children, especially traumatized children. It's so difficult to get that right. Place that precision in a book also dealing with complex family sadnesses, and dang, you've just created a book I am deeply into and can barely bear to read! He also captures what pain drugs can take away while also showing what pain they can give subtly and without moralizing.

I've been reading everything from my comics subscriptions (Ley Lines from Grindstone Comics/Czap Books, Kus, Retrofit/Big Planet and Frontier from Youth In Decline), but at a leisurely pace and without the calming effect of falling into a novel. CAB was fun and I'll dive in to my haul, mostly longer works, as soon as seems wise.

What have you been reading?

Your friend,
Carrie

Goodbye, friend

Today I am heading down to Philadelphia to my great friend Sally's wake. I will be witnessing the sorrow of my two friends, Jenn and Greg, her children, as well as the many other people who loved her and relied on her.

My own sorrow is furtive and strange. I am in shock--I don't believe that she is gone, but I know that it is true. I fear that I won't be able to support my friends in their grief because of the power of my own. I am afraid that I will become furtive and strange, myself. I am afraid of life without her.

Sally had much to teach someone 40 years her junior about life, but one of the things that made her special is that she also was always ready to learn something about it, too. As you can see from the photo below, she was always up to help out with a project, especially if it meant trying something new. That is what I will keep with with as I try to create a lesson out out a tragedy.

Photo by Jennifer Shahade

Dr. Sally Solomon 

1940-2013

Dylan Williams, RIP

Dylan Williams, publisher of Sparkplug Comic Books, has died. He was not my friend, in fact, we've only ever met at conventions. A few years ago we had dinner together with a bunch of people at a macrobiotic restaurant after MoCCA. We sent a few emails. He always had the grace to pretend to remember me at cons, and may, in fact, have actually remembered me at least one of those times. He was charming and sweet in an industry known for its jerks and weirdoes. He was an important force in comics that exposed us to new and exciting voices and respected those voices with excellent production. He was a good cartoonist too, no matter what he said about his own work. I always had a little crush on him.

When it was recently announced that Dylan had cancer, the community rallied around him with cash and well wishes. Nobody did that because of the comics, even though the comics were good. Everyone flooded Sparkplug with orders because they loved Dylan. And surely, our love (and money) could beat cancer, right?

I'm sorry it couldn't. I'm sorry that most of us had to be shocked by his death, and then feel stupid for being shocked. I'm sorry that someone so lovely is gone. I'm sorry for me, I'm sorry for you and I am sorry for everyone who will never get to meet Dylan and think, "What a great guy."

I'm sorry.

Let's talk about it.

Edited to add: For more memorials to Dylan, see The Comics Reporter's Collective Memory page.

The past weekend I was in unsunny California to help my aunt continue her months-long process of cleaning out my deceased grandmother’s house. What’s taking so long, you may ask? Well, my grandmother kept everything—like her deceased father’s pay stubs from his 52-year career on the Reading railroad and cruise brochures from the 70s—and had a house with many, many hiding places. She was doing a genealogy of our family, and had been doing so for over 50 years. That’s a lot of paper.

As cool as it was to find photos of my beloved and long-deceased grandfather looking spiffy in his Navy uniform or sexy on the beach, it was less fun to chance upon unexpected photos of my brother, or of the two of us together.

Shortly before I left, I was given a small pack of items that my grandmother had had from him, including a sweet note written to her in his baby-handwriting. It simply said, “ I love you Grammy.” It reminded me of his particular ability to love, and the huge, painful absence that he left behind when he died. Later, at the airport, running late and lacking sleep, I was overwhelmed with grief.

People will stare at people who are crying, but they won’t sit next to them, as if they fear that whatever caused your sadness is contagious. I remember the feeling of being shunned from my infrequent public forays shortly after my brother died. It was interesting to be in that situation again, but have the wherewithal to observe others’ behavior, but mostly it was lonely. Grief and sadness are, somehow, in this age of youtube ass (and assery) and religiosity-for-fun-and-profit, socially unacceptable.

Later, when my tears had dried and my heart settled more or less in its usual place, I was still getting looks, but mostly because I looked puffy and unwell-—perhaps a carrier of the piggish flu?

Dori Stories by Dori Seda and others

I went in search of Dori’s work about one second after seeing this picture on Mary Fleener’s convention blog. When I saw her gap-toothed smile and wild eyes, I just had to know more. From the gushing remembrances of her by friends and colleagues that fill this book, I gather that she tended to have that effect on people.

This is more than a collection of Seda’s comics, it is a memorial to the woman she was and a patch for the giant hole she left in her friends’ lives when she died. The essays, personal photos and memorial comics dedicated to her, bring so much background and depth to Seda’s story that when you finally get to her comics there is a weight and sadness that she never intended.

Like her much more famous male antecedents in the alternative comics world, Seda’s comics are sex n drugs-filled, a bit cartoony and portray a world long-gone where making comics could actually allow a hedonist to scrape by. Her art is lush, heavy on the blacks and quite detailed. Her auto bio comics are filled with filthy living, sloppy sex and being poor. Persona and personality are almost inextricable here, but in her stories about her dog Tona, Seda’s capacity for love and affection (mentioned in some of her friends’ writing about her) shines through all the fishnets and leather. Her fictional work is sex-filled as well, with a bit of horror thrown in. Also included are a few picture stories from Weirdo magazine where Dori plays vixen with other cartoon greats in “Foto Funnies” stories such as “Slaves of the Comic Book Factory” and “Girls Turned Into Vibrator Zombies”; everyone really looks like they are having fun, especially Dori, despite all we learn about Seda’s health problems and wild self-disregard. Was her look being exploited? Yes. Did she seem to care? Not really.

The final comic in the book is by Leslie Sternbergh and chronicles a meeting with Seda’s willfully hindering mother to sort out Dori’s legacy. Sternbergh’s detailed drawing blurs a bit gray in this sad and frustrating story. The haze is appropriate—the only things that become clear in this comic is how Seda got her famous smile and where she picked up smoking. Sigh, parents. “Dori was ours,” said Olga. “Dori was Dori’s,” said Leslie (and the reader). Dori’s perspective on her family’s attitude towards her life, told with a light, tongue-in-cheek touch, can be found in the story “How My Family Encouraged me to Become an Artist.” You get the feeling that her mother’s refusal to allow her work to be printed after her death would almost have been enough to force Seda to burst from the grave and freak everybody out all over again.

Dori’s work simply left me wanting more. I wonder what her place would have been in the comics-drenched world of today. That’s the thing about early death; it robs the world of a proper ending. This book is “the Complete Dori Seda,” and it's just not enough.

wearing black

I won't be updating for a few days because I will be traveling to D.C. for my grandmother's funeral. She was an easy woman to be impressed by, an easy woman to admire, but a hard woman to love. Now that she is dead she will be reunited with her only love, my grandfather. In fact, she will be buried right on top of him, which is almost overwhelmingly metaphorical. She will be in the ground like so many of her friends, so many people better and worse than her. The most positive lesson I can squeeze from my memories of her is that old age doesn't have to be ugly or boring, especially if you are committed to always learning something new.

I didn't cry when my father called me to tell me that she had died, angry and doped-up, but I did when I saw my address in her writing on an envelope, my name in her hand.

RIP

Studs Terkel died today.

He was 96, but that doesn't make my heart hurt less. His autobiography Talking to Myself changed my life. Everything I know about listening I learned from him, the original rockstar with a tape recorder.

Here's a long obit.

Safe travels, friend.


(Tribune photo by Charles Osgood / May 16, 2007)

Thanks for the thoughts I never would have on my own.

I have been very busy doing non-blog things. Mostly emailing and editing and emailing and pacing and emailing and drinking tea, but sometimes putting labels on things. I am in a tizzy.

In the midle of this tizzy of practicality, it is hard for me to express my thoughts about the death of Kurt Vonnegut. I will try soon. B was a little suprised that I ws upset when I heard the news; he was under the impression that I didn't really like Vonnegut's books. For me, "liking" his stuff... well. it is not that simple.

Though RIPs are a part of life, I am always sad to write those three letters again.