Chicago artist Jessica Abel recently received a letter that began as follows:
“Artbabe’s messin’ with my head.”
The missive was written by an enamored reader of “Artbabe,” Abel’s alternative comic book that showcases young adults grappling with life’s meaning–all while maintaining tragically hip poses.
Abel, 26, has been receiving a lot of mail lately. After self-publishing “Artbabe” for four years as a photocopied “mini”–the comic version of a ‘zine–Abel was approached by Fantagraphics, the primary publisher of alternative comic titles in the U.S., about adding her to their catalog of comic artists.
Now, on the strength of a revamped “Artbabe,” whose polished format owes much to the publisher’s deep pockets, Abel is being lauded by her peers as a rising star.
It was a fact driven home last April when the Bucktown resdident received the comic community’s Harvey Award for Best New Talent at the 1997 Wondercon, the annual comic convention held in Oakland.
“She’s the most successful new artist we’ve had in the last several years,” said Eric Reynolds, a spokesman for Fantagraphics, which is based in Seattle. “We’ll have to reprint the current issue in the next few months to keep it in stock. This title has had a faster turn around than usual.”
Reynolds was quick to note Abel’s personal participation in her success story. “We were pretty confident about `Artbabe’ because Jessica had made a name for herself on the small-press level.”
Abel’s deliverance to the alternative comic community and her success within it seems almost predestined.
“My love of comics is of very long standing,” she said in a recent interview. “I can stare at the drawn image for hours. I like photographs for a sense of place or fashion, but I don’t get emotionally involved with them the way I can with a drawing.”
A childhood penchant for animation and science fiction led to an adolescent interest in mainstream super-hero comics, providing the 15-year-old Abel, who had already discovered her talent for drawing, with her first alternative urge.
“I thought it was really punk rock to be a girl who read comics,” she said.
As a freshman at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., Abel stumbled onto the Fantagraphics title “Love & Rockets,” an alternative comic classic by Gilbert and Jaimie Hernandez, featuring the exploits of a group of West Coast female punkers. Realizing that her own talents might find expression in similar types of graphic narrative, Abel, having transferred to the University of Chicago, joined a student group that published a comic called “Breakdown.”
As editor of three issues of the student ‘zine, Abel cut her print-production teeth, gleaning the skills to produce her own work.
After graduation, Abel won a contest staged by comic artist Peter Bagge, in which first prize was a guest appearance in his widely-read alternative title “Hate.” Scheduled to meet Bagge during his appearance at the Chicago Comicon, a comic convention held each July at the Rosemont Convention Center, Abel decided to self-publish her own mini-comic in an effort to attract a publishing deal.
While the first 50 copies of “Artbabe 1” given away by Abel at the conference garnered no such deal, Bagge was impressed enough to mention it on the editorial page of “Hate,” setting off the comic industry’s version of buzz.
Word-of-mouth publicity is crucial in an underground industry. Consumer information is scarce because publishers are more apt to spend what money they have on production rather than promotion.
Additionally, alternative titles are greatly overshadowed by their super-hero counterparts, the flash of which seems to draw public attention more readily. However, Hollywood’s regurgitation of “Batman” and the recent television and film versions of the hyper-violent “Spawn” are a far cry from the near-literary meanderings of much alternative work.
“Batman and Robin don’t act as great ambassadors for us,” lamented Reynolds.
Not surprisingly, alternative comics rely on alternative venues to spread the word. Most titles feature an editorial page made up primarily of plugs for new comics discovered by artists on comic-shop signing tours or sent to them by ambitious newcomers.
Conventions, supported mainly by the collector base of super-hero titles, provide another forum for alternative artists to meet and track new work. Of course the Internet has provided new ways for people to navigate the underground scene and newsgroups abound with news, reviews and recommendations.
Abel recalls what it was like to be new to the comic community. “It took a while to catch on to what was out there. I remember not knowing which stores to go into, being bewildered by all the offerings, not remembering any of the artists’ names and not having anybody to ask about what was good.
“But the scene is small,” she continued. “You can get a handle on it, see what’s happening and begin to track the trends.”
“There are a lot of really great titles out there,” explained Eric Kirsammer, proprietor of Chicago Comics at 3244 N. Clark St., which boasts one of the country’s largest selections of alternative books. “I think the alternatives ultimately appeal to more people and as such it’s the only area of comics that’s really growing.”
This notion of growth is echoed by Fantagraphics’ Reynolds, who notes greater consumer interest triggered by the television network success of Matt Groening’s “The Simpsons” and Mike Judge’s “King of the Hill.” The cult following of Comedy Central’s “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” and that cable channel’s heavy promotion of its recently launched “South Park” are further evidence of an increasing mainstream regard for cartoons and comics as a successful art form for telling adult stories and reflecting real life.
Such activity can put stars in the eyes of an artist whose title is being bandied about nationwide by the big players as well as committed fans. Abel now counts Groening among her readers after she was complimented by him during a brief meeting at a San Diego convention.
In addition to her increasingly strong draftsmanship, Abel knows how to structure a compelling story.
“Jessica finds an urban lyricism in the most unexpected moments,” said Jorge Colombo, art director of San Francisco Focus Magazine. “In many (comic) books the characters are so charged that there seems to have been a loss of the Everyman. Jessica gets the Everyman. She gets fiction. She switches genders, telling the story from both the male and female point of view.”
Abel says gender is not an issue for her. “I have a lot of male readers who feel my sensibility is one to which they can directly relate. I have a lot of male friends and I try to understand them on the abstract level of being male. But the best male writers have the same sensibility about women.”
Each cover of “Artbabe,” which is published twice a year, features a four-color rendering of the title character staring down the viewer with an alluring smile. However, Artbabe has yet to make an actual appearance in any of the comic’s stories of hipster angst. It’s a source of intrigue for many readers. Many insist that Abel, herself, is Artbabe.
Abel explains that while Artbabe is a little flaky, she always “pulls it off. Artbabe wins. I think I’ve come up with a good explanation of how she relates to me: She’s my Alfred E. Newman.”
