Originally published on Medium in The Memoirist
Last year, I had a crisis of faith. I tried to shoehorn a few graphic memoir-like stories into our diary comic. But it turns out that trying to draw a comprehensive version of your life in real time is about as misguided as trying to build a sandcastle at high tide.
Graphic memoir focuses around a central theme that spans for a specific period. Diary comics tell daily stories as they happen. They are both kind of autobiography.
When John Hazard and I started Background Noise Comic we were trying to get a short gag strip out every day and our life was a good place to find comical stories. We weren’t trying to write a graphic memoir, we were trying to be funny.
Because we posted on social media many of our friends and family felt like they were up on our life. “You seem good,” a friend might say, “I keep up with you in the comic.”
Is it real, or is it a social post?
Social feeds are far from reliable narrators of our lives. But it turned out that our comic hit a version of the truth that wasn’t too far off from what I might relay when catching up with a friend over a phone call or a zoom. They liked that.
Here’s where the problem started. As we told longer interconnected stories, we couldn’t keep our comic lives current with our reality.
Grieving takes time
Death had been a character in our comic almost since the beginning of the strip. But then death came into our life in a real way.
Once my father grew sick and I knew he was going to pass, I couldn’t stop writing about it. I took notes. I took weird and probably inappropriate pictures with my iPhone. I wrote more comics than John could draw.
Many of the stories were too raw and personal and my family didn’t feel comfortable having them shared. But even the abridged version of the story helped me process my grief and honor my Dad’s memory.
Our Europass adventure
The second longer story we told was about our summer adventure in Europe. As we wrote, we found ourselves looking at more memoir like themes — like how travelling can help you understand who you are and who you used to be.
Although the trip was only two weeks — it took us a solid 2 months to get through the material. (And that wasn’t even all the comics I wrote!) That meant our comic selves were way behind our real lives.
Our readers expected our comic storylines to be sequential and current. But the gap between the “today” of our real life and the “today” of our comic selves had grown as expansive as the Grand Canyon.
“Wasn’t John’s birthday last month?” one of my besties who lives in another state asked me, “you’re confusing your friends.”
Drawing takes time. And while I wish John could sketch, ink, color and letter faster, I’m told by other artists that he’s actually pretty prolific. And the guy has to sleep once in a while. Right?
Is it a diary comic or is it a memoir?
Over time, we realized — what started out as a diary comic has also become a graphic memoir.
When we read our comics sequentially, we uncovered so much — about our individual selves, our families, and our romantic relationship. While our comics were written for the most part in the spur of the moment — strung together they tell a story of our life that highlights the love and the laughter. It’s a story I’m not sure I’d have remembered without them. And for that I’m incredibly grateful.