#47 - Comics

I found this document I wrote in 2021, and I know I wrote it to post here but since I never did, I'll share it here now. It's been a minute.

Reaching for the Sun


Started in the Summer of 2017, finished in the Spring of 2019.


Hello, I’m Sanbles. It’s just me. Dion is off drawing clouds or something. This story was one of the first I made in my transition to climate storytelling.


It started with my friend, Dion, who told me months prior, maybe late 2016, that he wanted to collaborate on a comic. At that time, I was extremely shy, insecure, and busy with schoolwork so I didn’t want to bother him with anything that I didn’t feel confident about. But that Summer after our Sophomore year in college, I started going to the library. I was reading books like Breaking Rockefeller, books on the BP oil spill, and other things like how a city’s infrastructure works. I can’t for the life of me remember why I chose to read these books. My friend Tess tells me she remembers I was frustrated I didn’t have a cause to be passionate about. Maybe that’s what took me to the library. I wish I had a better origin story.


But the book I can say impacted me and took me on this path was Breaking Rockefeller. It felt like a movie. And I realized people weren’t talking about climate change enough.


While that was happening, I wanted to write a story that used similar elements as my previous comic, Leaf and Wall, but for a bigger and more expansive story. Leaf and Wall didn’t let me fully explore the storytelling possibilities of a comic strip series with an overarching narrative. That eventually became Boreal. But at that point, I started to become disillusioned with my abilities. Everything I made felt too similar and fell into this camp of funny, sad, and a bit sarcastic (still does, as of writing this in the Spring of 2021). So I wanted to do something new and different.


What happened next was I went on a road trip to Missouri with my dad. On that trip, I remember focusing on the clouds around, steam from cars’ exhaust, and steam from coffee cups. I saw water vapor everywhere around me. And it felt poetic. I knew I wanted to tell a story out of the idea of water vapor. And if anyone knows the type of art that Dion likes to focus on, what happens next will be obvious. I thought of him. His art. I wanted to do more collabs that summer, so that’s why I involved Dion with this, why I made Boreal with Katie, and why I made Bleacher Secrets with Kayla. Collaborative projects take me out of them and add spice to everything. In my opinion. So I made a script and asked Dion if he wanted to help out. He said yeah.


I sent him the crude script. He didn’t give me any notes or thoughts. He just said he’d do it. Then school started. And we got busy with work. Months passed. A year passed! During the Spring of 2019, I asked him about it, he got annoyed with himself, then maybe days or weeks later, he sent me the final artwork. They were just these little doodles in black squares. And I thought they were amazing. In the script, I mentioned how I wanted the story to feel nostalgic, maybe they could be in the style of polaroids. And Dion delivered. And I was so happy.


Katie hadn’t finished Boreal, Kayla and I were struggling with Bleachers. And here was this perfect little Zine-sized thing that, with a little formatting and touching up, could be called a final product. In my opinion. But that’s what I did. I added the words at the bottom, traced over a cursive font on a tablet at school. Made the front cover and sold it as a zine. Some people saw it, and I was asked if it could be showcased at a museum for zines and at a museum in Orlando. Now it’s living in this digital space and for free in other places but without these words. These are just for you.


I hope this was an adequate enough write-up on the history behind this story. I have nothing more to say. Maybe some people were expecting me to talk about the toxic relationship theme the story touches on, but I don’t have much to say about that. I saw it as a way to showcase humanity’s relationship with nature up until this point. And I had to make it sad. ‘Cause I don’t know how to not make things sad.


Thanks.

Boreal


Started in the Summer of 2017, finished in the Winter of 2019

Hello, I’m Sanbles. Sorry I couldn’t get Katie on the line. Maybe she’ll talk a bit in the next edition of this file.

This story was both a direct result of me not being satisfied with 1) The way I ended my previous comic strip series, Leaf and Wall and 2) How nobody was talking about what was happening in the tar sands.

Something important I realized early on in my transition to becoming a *nature lover* was that there’s not good enough art covering current topics. Hollywood animation covers broad topics about how to love or find purpose in life, but they never use their super appealing art-style to go in-depth with their subject matter. So I made that a goal. Still trying to do that by the way.



After researching animals and fracking, and life around the Tar Sands, I made a script. But I didn’t like my art style at the time. Or better said, I was tired of it (Look at above example. Exactly.). So, since I was already working with Dion and Kayla on other comics at the time, I said “Why not! Let’s do another collab!” So I messaged Katie. I think I remember us talking about wanting to do a comic together before then, so it happened to work out. She was down. (Although, I did make the background art. Katie did the characters.)

I need to mention that I used to hate talking animal stories. When I was little, I loved them. But as I got older, I realized they were just a convenient way to give a backstory to characters. We all know how lions act or how fish act so there’s a certain level of knowledge we bring to any movie we watch with talking animals. So whenever they act in a way we wouldn’t expect them to, we find it entertaining. And I hate it! Then I did it! I’m a hypocrite. 

My goal as a climate advocate is to get the message out to as many people as possible. So the point here is the classic artist’s dilemma. Do you make something true to yourself and risk nobody seeing it? Or do you make something that borrows from the mainstream culture so more people will be drawn to it? I think I borrowed from the mainstream then turned it on its head and injected it with my own flavor. I didn’t do it consciously. It’s just how it turned out. Either way, not many people have read this story as of the Spring of 2021 haha! Oh boy.

I loved the idea of someone who has the purest intentions going out into the world to explore and do new things only to come back home to realize everything they were doing was bringing unimaginable harm to their community. There’s something so tragic and beautiful yet true about it all. In the world we live in, everything’s so interconnected that we can’t just do anything we want anymore. Before, I’m guessing you could buy a head of cabbage from a neighbor who grew that cabbage and know you are directly supporting him. Now you buy the cabbage and you’re supporting the Mexican Farmer, the fertilizer maker in Europe, and the plastic packaging that came from China, besides your grocery store in charge of getting it to you! 

But that’s where the story didn’t work out so well in my opinion. And by that I mean the second half. Too much talking about the effects from Bou’s mom about what he caused and not enough doing from Bou. So maybe one day I’ll revisit this story in a sequel. I am very intrigued about what would happen if Bou meets the indigenous people of Northern Alberta, Canada. But we’ll see. Time is not on my side.

Thanks.

Bleacher Secrets

Started in the Summer of 2019, finished in the Winter of 2019

Hello, I’m Sanbles. Kayla’s not here right now. She’s hard at work on her thesis. It’s tough stuff.

I don’t really know where to begin on this story. It probably started somewhere around the time I met Kayla in our college’s comics club. The presidents were graduating in my junior year/her freshman year and I became president. The summer leading up to my senior year, we decided to collaborate on something. I didn’t care about making anything climate-focused (although given the capitalistic vibes of the story, it could very well be haha). I just wanted to collaborate with someone.





In any conversation I have with Kayla, we sort of just riff off each other and say the weirdest things. At some point, we were like… Jeans? And then... Chubs? Because originally, the story focused extremely on whether you were chubby or not. But we felt it was too weird… or derogatory…? So we changed it to people bleachin’ which meant people not wanting to participate in gym glass by hiding under the bleachers. But that was wayyy after we had finished the story. For the longest time, we had words like “chubo” and “chubster” flying around in the comic and we thought better not to have that. We also made a playlist for inspiration which you can find here. We never went back to it after we made it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxqpAR89F-KO0NAM3vkDdSZyDwFf6PG3V


One thing for sure was that we wanted an easy way to split up the work so we could show off exactly what we were responsible for. Sort of like a “You can focus on this chapter and I’ll focus on this chapter” type of thing. We did that so there wouldn’t be any confusion in handing off things to each other. I think we even split up the chapter scripts, but eventually, I had to look at everything we had written and condense it/make sense of it. So I did a clean-up pass on the script and that led us to start designing the actual visuals for the comic!

I almost forgot another important point which was that we wanted to make a web-comic. For us, that meant making the comic vertical. And that’s what it did turn into. If you don’t know what that means, maybe the sketches lower down will explain things. The irony is that now we’re selling it as a normal book format.



From here on out, Kayla and I didn’t discuss things much. We just talked about whether things read or not, as in whether they were clear or if the audience would understand what was happening. I mean, given the subject matter, we were never sure if people would understand it. I don’t think we completely understood it ourselves. But we had a lot of fun! 


I really secretly hope people like this comic. It’s so random and fun but like, with a semi-serious undercurrent running throughout it. And the designs Kayla came up with (She designed Jaret and the Bum and I designed Georgeanne and the Principal) were super wacky.

Thanks.

Red Waters

Started in the Fall of 2019, finished in the Summer of 2020

Hello, I’m Sanbles.

The story behind Waters is fun. Some people know that my Down animation was based off of my 2018 Inktober series. Well Waters was based off of my 2019 Inktober series. I didn’t mean to clean it up, but I guess that’s how the process of commercialization goes. I realized I really liked the story and wanted more people to see it.





Wet Paint

Started in the Spring of 2020, finished in the Summer of 2020


Summer in the North Pole

Started and finished in the Winter of 2020.