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Comics from a forgotten sketchbook
Hello, Drawing Book readers!
It’s Mother’s Day, so I thought about sharing something motherly. After all, I have written a lot of comics about my own mom, Jocelyn.
But I keep promising to get back to the old comics in the original drawing book series, so I’m sticking to my promise. If you really want something about mothers, I’ll put something in at the end of this post. But for now, let’s take a look at “The Drawing Book,” my old sketchbook journal series from the late 90s - early 2000s.
Over the last couple of months, these newsletters have been going through the pages of a story of my romance with an American boyfriend, and its untimely demise. After that, as I wrote in this episode, I was so heartbroken that I hardly drew anything in the drawing book for a few months. I didn’t think I’d find much material to share, during this period.
But when I was going through my old sketchbooks, I found something that surprised me: a book I had forgotten about!
It seems that, during that summer of heartbreak, I abandoned my usual drawing books, but I didn’t stop writing comics. I just started drawing in a different book. I think this was an attempt to make a fresh start - and also, it was an early attempt to experiment with a different format. For the first time, I was thinking about how to make comics that could be published on the internet. (It was 2000.) Later, I’d start dividing my pages into two large horizontal panels suited for screens. Some of the pages in this book actually did get published online, but we’ll get to that later.
For now, here are the first few pages. They are busy and full of small print… not very screen-friendly. And not very family-friendly, either!! (Clearly, I was writing for a grown-up audience!)
This is weird. It’s the only place where this happens in all my drawing books, I think. The last two panels of the page above, are pretty much identical to these two panels, which I’d drawn only a short time before in my usual drawing book (they appeared in this previous newsletter). Weird!
My earlier drawing book pages had been organic - just written for myself, without any planning or structure. It seems that with this new book, I was trying to write the beginning of a story. (Maybe I thought that the account of my conversations about sex would make for an intriguing beginning?) Anyway, on the next page, it seems like I’m introducing the characters in the story.
Back when I drew the first page of the original drawing book, four years earlier, I started by writing about my three brothers. Here they are again. (And although I have smudged out the names of most of the folks who appear in these journals, I thought I might as well leave in the name of my country-music brother here!)
This story was taking place a few months after my break-up with the American boyfriend. I wasn’t really in the market for a new boyfriend (in fact, I think the 10-minute conversation mentioned below, was actually just a conversation with the same old boyfriend, whom I was still hoping might change his mind…).
When I wrote this, I had been living in Calgary for about three years. (I grew up in Calgary, moved away, and moved back in 1997 for a new job with Air Canada.) All that time, I hadn’t really started to feel at home there. But around this time, I finally started making some friends, like the aforementioned “cool girls” who invited me to the fish fry!
I mentioned before that I always blur out the names of the people in these stories, but I’m leaving Macushlah in here. I haven’t seen Macushlah in 16 years, so I hope she won’t mind. She was famous for having long hair, and it was always funny to have my own long hair constantly compared to hers!
I wonder if her hair is still so long? I still have exactly the same “mystery hair.” I really need a hair cut!!!
That’e enough from The Drawing Book for today, but next time I think we’ll continue with comics from this interim sketchbook from the summer of 2000.
Ok, I promised to include something motherly for Mother’s Day. Let’s see, here’s a random comic about motherhood from late 2013!
Motherhood is hectic, and busy, and ever-changing! These days, my days look quite different, even though I’m still a mother.
Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who celebrate! Call your mothers! We’ll see you back again soon for more old Drawing Book comics.