Panel Reflection, C2E2 2019, Part 2 — “Lucy Knisley: My Life in Comics (So Far)”
The Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, or C2E2, took place this year from March 22 to March 24. I attended as a professional and have decided to share my personal take on some of the panels I attended. This is the second of my Panel Reflections.
On Friday afternoon, March 22, 2019, in Room S405B of McCormick Place, instead of a panel, there was a two-person discussion as Tony Breed interviewed Lucy Knisley. With all the intimacy of overhearing two friends have a conversation over coffee, the audience was treated to two talented local comics artists discuss their influences, work ethics, and love for and approach to the medium. Sitting next to each other at a long table that was bare except for microphones and water, the projection screen to their left went unused. The tone was set from the start with Ms. Knisley joking about their lack of visuals and how they would both simply sit there staring with “dead eyes and a strobe light.”
Mr. Breed explained that he “likes to tell stories,” which Ms. Knisley said was the “NPR version of what we do,” and that they share a “specific point of intersection,” events drawn from real-life; retold as autobiography in Ms. Knisley’s case, while Mr. Breed writes closer to thinly-veiled fictional accounts. He shared the aphorism “Life is what happens when you don’t know what you’re doing” before giving a brief history of his own entry in comics. When he was young, he would read every comic on the Sunday paper except Prince Valiant, and specifically cited Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, and For Better or For Worse, especially their uses of story arcs. His first attempt at a comic was the title “Gay Bunny and Walrus,” before realizing there was nothing to it beyond a funny name. He decided to take his life, change the names, and write a newspaper-format comic strip.
Ms. Knisley sees her work as “more episodic” as a series of graphic novels with “longer chunks” of autobiography. She highlighted how her first book, French Milk, detailed how she “ate all the food in France” and also brought up Relish, a “collected storybook” about food and how much she loves it. Her more recent Something New and Kid Gloves explore the “capitalist hellscape” of marrying and having a baby, respectively, but also the wider issues of reproductive health and the biases therein. Ms. Knisley had a “really terrible pregnancy” during which she had almost died, which made Kid Gloves a “very different book.”
Mr. Breed chimed in that “actually writing” about one’s personal experience can take something in entirely unforeseen directions.
“I didn’t want to make a book about getting married, but wanted a book like that when I was getting married,” Ms. Knisley said, and it was the same thing with childbirth; she had only male doctors during her pregnancy, and didn’t see herself reflected. One of the only female perspectives she could find was May Gaskin’s espousal on the “orgasmic nature of birth,” which drew a huge laugh from the crowd and set both Ms. Knisley and Mr. Breed to giggling.
Mr. Breed explained that his format was “boom-boom-boom” with a setup, joke, and punchline structure, but Ms. Knisley gave him credit for being “cerebral” and “deeper.” Mr. Breed had intended that, as “comics became a way to process the world.” It became a challenge to write about depression and what it feels like on the inside while also maintaining the tone he’d set. “Can I keep it funny?”
Ms. Knisley attributed the effectiveness of his humor in part to its strong relatability. Mr. Breed talked about how even his depression had “imposter syndrome” and mentioned how his sister is a clinical psychologist. Ms. Knisley cracked that she was jealous he has someone to name things for him.
Mr. Breed shared a story about how his late husband’s brain cancer led to erratic behavior, including an impromptu trip to San Francisco and a tattoo of a Rimbaud quote, “Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.” Mr. Breed’s sister was concerned that this was indicative of depressive thinking, to which Mr. Breed quipped that Rimbaud was the one who must have been depressed.
Both of them tenderly shared a story of how Mr. Breed was the first person to cook for Ms. Knisley when she had been recovering from her near-fatal birth experience. “I made a big pot of pasta,” he recalled, “because that would mean easy leftovers.” The hour afforded not just insight into two great artists, but practical advice for people caring for others during difficult times.
Returning to the topic of her career, Ms. Knisley expressed disappointment at a panel she had attended that was ostensibly about food and comics, but was mainly “chefs and Marvel editors” talking about what they like to eat. She sees herself as originally a creator of “food comics” and is glad when these two things come together as subject and form, since the latter is already a “dual-sensory artistic experience” from having both words and pictures, and “comics about food” add an extra dimension of “sense memory.”
Mr. Breed spoke about how his father had been a food and wine writer; he had always been interested in art, and there are a lot of artists in his family. Ms. Knisley started to tell everyone how her son can speak French words such as macaron and chocolat before interrupting herself with exuberant laughter, saying, “We should talk about comics more!”
She asked Mr. Breed if he has plans for another book. He had changed formats this year, experimenting with full-page compositions instead of his signature three-panel strips. He described it as an “awkward experience,” likening it to being back at square one as he tries to develop new pacing and styles to go along with this new form. “How do I break up panels?” he asked rhetorically. Restraints were “comforting,” but having as many as four panels could be “destabilizing” let alone a whole page.
Ms. Knisley has been teaching comics and spoke about her son’s baby Totoro costume for Halloween last year. She was dismayed that more people didn’t recognize him. Mr. Breed joked that his life has been made up of laundry and taxes recently.
The topic of what each of their favorite conventions came up, and Mr. Breed spoke of the “strong sense of community” at TCAF and SPX. He also shared how he had been nominated for a Promising New Talent Ignatz Award at TCAF one week before turning 40. On the topic of community, he mentioned sharing his “darkest traumas to help people” on Twitter and social media. He has received praise and encouragement along the lines of how it is “so good to hear other people going through this.”
Ms. Knisley commiserated with him about feeling obligated to share, to “create worth out of depression.” One shouldn’t feel obligated about that. “That sucks.”
Mr. Breed concurred, delving into his thoughts of “I don’t want to write about this; I don’t want this story.”
On the other hand, Ms. Knisley talked about the importance of “normalizing talking about difficult things” and how this helped her pregnancy. She was “sick” of thinking about it, of “reliving trauma,” but it “makes it worth it to hear other people thank you.”
The time was running short, and they both shared thoughts about their processes. Ms. Knisley triumphantly asked, “Is there anything better than a project being done?” Mr. Breed wanted to know if she started with words or images, to which she replied, “Writing is words, isn’t it?” She stated that she “needs to have a topic.” She likened her process to writing an essay. She remembered how she had been called a “graphic essayist,” and really liked that term. He tries to “come up with an idea, a sentence that describes the plot.”
Neither Mr. Breed nor Ms. Knisley are able to work in a cafe setting. She said she’s “always eavesdropping” and whether she’s writing or drawing is always bothered by people wondering what she’s doing. As with every topic during this interview, she detailed this annoyance not with understandable peevishness, but the good-natured acceptance about human nature that has informed her oeuvre.
Lucy Knisley’s new book is Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos and is available wherever books are sold. Tony Breed’s current comic strip is Muddler’s Beat, and was at CAKE Chicago at the Center on Halsted June 1st and 2nd.
