CSotD: Drawing from personal experience
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An encouraging strip from xkcd.
The strip isn't explicitly autobiographical, but it isn't not-autobiographical, either, which is a facet of modern cartooning that matters.
Some artists are explicitly autobiographical, like Keith Knight, others are implicitly autobiographical, like Adam Huber, and some put the comic on its own footing but are very open about the creative process, like Dave Kellett.
And I could have swapped out a variety of names as examples. Nor is this element limited to webcomics; Knight is syndicated, though he maintains a very strong web presence.
Nor is it particularly "new," unless you're going to go back into the depths of time. That is, I hope Hogarth wasn't drawing on his own experience.
I guess the fact that he lived to be 67 in a time when a lot of people didn't suggests he was not depicting his own life, at least not in his most famous work.
But in the current era, it's become critical for artists to offer some personal authenticity to readers. I've said before that, just as not every stage actor can become a film star, not every syndicated cartoonist can transition successfully to the web, and this is a strong element within that ability to adapt to the new medium.
I would suggest that the artist who sits in a garrett and does impersonal humor had better be damn funny, because the personal touch is more and more critical to audience loyalty, and the days when you only had to please newspaper editors in order to be successful are fading.
And don't dismiss it as "you damn kids." Artistic disclosure was not invented last week.
Peanuts is more than half a century old, and it was, and remains, common for fans to psychoanalyze Charles Schulz and to speculate and comment on the parallels between him and Charlie Brown, as well as Linus.
And while Schulz was specifically a mentor to Lynn Johnston, Bil Keane was breaking down the fourth wall in "Family Circus" well before Johnston began her explicitly autobiographical, groundbreaking path in "For Better or For Worse."
Johnston herself became a role model and mentor for younger cartoonists, but, inspiration aside, her commercial success was important in that she paved the way in terms of gaining acceptance among syndicates and editors for that more personal approach to cartooning.
Today, we have a large number of strips, particularly by women, that are, if not explicitly autobiographical, unabashedly drawn from their own lives.
In those that are clearly based on experience, it's fun to speculate about what inspired an arc, or to visit the cartoonist's blog and find out.
In the case of the autobiographical strips, however, fans get little snapshots of what's going on in the cartoonist's real world without having to speculate very much at all.
For example, Keith Knight, having just brought out a K Chronicles collection that encompasses the period in which his son, "The Incredible Cuteness of Being," was born, dropped the concept of "pregnant wife" into a strip recently. Which left readers little to speculate on except for what lag-time is at work here, since it's clear that the ICoB is older in real life than his father depicts him in both K Chronicles and Knight Life.
However, when, about two years ago, xkcd's Randall Munroe did a cartoon about a young woman diagnosed with cancer, it sure didn't provide that same warm, fuzzy feeling.
Nor was it a one-off. The concept came back from time to time, sometimes with grim humor:
Sometimes with humor that wasn't particularly grim:
And sometimes in ways that weren't at all humorous:
… but each of which provided some insights into the cartoonist's personal world, in his own unique voice …
Which makes the current cartoon very pleasant reading.
And I hope we can go back to funny geeky stuff now, not for lack of candor but for lack of subject matter.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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