{"id":14990,"date":"2018-07-19T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2018\/07\/19\/diary-comics\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:32","slug":"diary-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2018\/07\/19\/diary-comics\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary Comics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t pretend that I invented the genre of diary comics. In fact, discovering those is what lured me back into drawing again. There are two Canadians I particularly adore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One is Guy Delisle, whose wife works with Medecins sans Fronti\u00e8res, so he\u2019s written about being a house-husband and father while in these remote, usually oppressive places. His style is cute and simple, but he conveys so much information and feeling in those lines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Guy<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The other is Michel Rabagliati, whose \u201cPaul \u00e0 Qu\u00e9bec\u201d series is beautiful, particularly The Song of Roland, which is about his large French-Canadian family going through the process of losing his father-in-law.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Michel<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

They also made a lovely film of it called Paul of Quebec<\/em>. (A good Canadian film!!)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nearly all my favourite comics are in French; shame I can\u2019t read them in the original language (despite growing up in Canada).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The guy who runs my comics club is awesome, and I really respect his talent and views on the art, but he\u2019s not into \u201ccute\u201d stuff. I, on the other hand, think cute is my secret weapon: People will go much deeper with you when you\u2019ve won them over, I feel, than if you\u2019re being all ugly and angsty.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s theatre, really. Whenever I start to beat myself about all the years I tried to avoid drawing and do other things \u2014 and all the skill I might have gained in those years \u2014 I remember that I\u2019ve learned a lot about human nature through theatre and writing, and those things make me a sane person and someone who\u2019s able to connect with the reader (though the diary comics are completely self-absorbed).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d just done comics, I might think that people were obliged to look at my edgy work just because I care about it (they\u2019re not), and if I\u2019d stayed in theatre, I\u2019d be a crazy person for sure.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Anyway, I must go do some work-drawing. Tonight is Comics Club, and I\u2019m thinking about the old Natalie Goldberg rule that \u201cfor every cosmic statement you have to provide ten concrete details\u201d; I think this will serve me as I continue writing about all this heavy Dad-stuff.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t pretend that I invented the genre of diary comics. In fact, discovering those is what lured me back into drawing again. There are two Canadians I particularly adore. One is Guy Delisle, whose wife works with Medecins sans Fronti\u00e8res, so he\u2019s written about being a house-husband and father while in these remote, usually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}