Unfinished tales
Scraps from my old drawing book
Hello, drawing book readers! I’m back for another week of comics from my old sketchbook journal series. This weekend, I almost didn’t make it here - I have a few too many things on my to-do list! But this is always fun to do, and luckily, this week’s story was pretty easy to put together.
So, where have we arrived, in the annals of the drawing book? We’re at a stage of my comics-making history, when I was thinking about writing stories for other people to read, instead of just writing down things in my journal for myself. The comics became more structured. Everything was divided up into panels. And most of these stories were left unfinished.
Why? I didn’t really like them.
When I showed my early drawing books to a publisher at the San Diego Comic Con in 2000, he said, “your pages have an organic feel to them.” I really liked that compliment. These new pages were anything but. They felt contrived. And they didn’t achieve what the old drawing books had done: they didn’t really provide an outlet for my feelings and experiences.
But, they’re still part of the story. So here are a few of those unfinished tales.
Actually, I wish I’d finished that story! It ended with the shoes being stolen from me in Slave Lake, Alberta… just after I’d learned to really love them.
Just a note to say that may have been the first and last time I ever introduced myself to anyone as “Samantha.” That name is just way too fancy for me!
And another note: I recently learned from my mom that she didn’t just meet my dad in that French class. She asked the teacher if she could switch to be in that class… because my dad was in the class! So maybe she wasn’t so aloof as I portrayed her in that drawing, twenty-five years ago. But, that’s another story!
If you don’t know the story of the Kon-Tiki voyage, you should… it’s amazing! I’m linking to the Wikipedia article about the Kon-Tiki expedition, but it’s no substitute for Thor Heyerdahl’s book, in which he tells the story in his own words. Go and read it - and don’t leave it unfinished!
One more thing, just to counterbalance all those structured pages: here’s one of the “organic” pages from an earlier drawing book, that I liked (and still like) better. I happened to pick this one, and then realized that the first thing on the page is a reference to Future Bakery, a Toronto locale that I used to love! I guess coffee is still a good thing, regardless of how you tell the story.
That’s all for this week. See you again soon!
I like your unfinished comics! Would you finish them now, years later? Or would it be better to write a new story?
Funny you mention Future Bakery in this one. Marlo and I drove past it on Wednesday night and were reminiscing about visits there before we moved here. That’s the location at Bloor & Brunswick, still going strong (though I haven’t been there in years). Sadly, I’m the one that used to be just up the street from us in Bloor West is long gone…