The Glamorous Life of a Very Human Cartoonist (Patreon)

-Hopefully the graphic included in this post is animated— if not, try doing that “view image” rightclicky thing on the webpage-version of this post so you can see all the iterations that the Volume Three cover for Oni Press has gone through (or just click this link I added right now). Actually, do that anyway, so you can see it at its full size.

-Voting ends in two days, May 30th, for the Best of Portland Poll. If you feel it warrants it, I’d greatly appreciate a vote for Oh Joy Sex Toy in the “Best Local Blog” category in the Personality/Media section.

-There are 7 out of 10 slots left on the “Unique Drawing” $130 reward tier on the Volume Three Kickstarter, which also ends in 10 days.

-Wondering how my double-convention, ten day trip to Canada went? READ ON…

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I started my trip to Canada by sobbing on Lucy.

Matt and I had launched the Kickstarter for Volume Three that Monday and it had miraculously gotten funded in less than five hours. Volume One had taken twelve hours and concluded with 69k and Volume Two twenty-four hours with 65k, so we’d naturally expected this one to take longer and bring in fewer pledges as well. But nope! Through some miracle it only took four hours and forty-five minutes reach our initial goal amount, and I still don’t understand why that happened.

But that’s not why I was crying on my hotel roommate that Friday, that would be because of the death threats. Like I’ve mentioned before, I don’t read my Twitter replies (as well as nearly all the comments sent to me through social media) but Matt keeps on eye on them in case there’s something Really Important that comes up. The first few days he kept it from me that there was some new absurd smear campaign getting active on Twitter, but the success of the Kickstarter really kicked our misguided hate club into a frenzy and he finally needed my input on whether we needed to involve the police now that death threats were being made by people who proclaimed to live in our city.

I consulted with trusted peers, I had an hour-long phone call with a seasoned online harassment veteran, came to the conclusion that the police would be a colossal waste of time, decided not to engage with any of the attacks and accusations because people who enjoy participating in mass harassment have already decided who they think I am and nothing I say or do will influence that, and that I would carry on doing what I do which includes going to Canada for ten days to exhibit at two conventions and visit some friends.

I mean, that sounds really straight-forward and simple but the mental and emotional toll is, well, it’s really fucking huge, honestly. This stuff shreds your soul.

It would be hard enough to deal with this on a good day, but Matt and I had just spent the last three weeks working double time and through the weekends in order to meet the deadlines Oni Press needed from us for the announcement of our distribution deal— on top of continuing to update our comic that takes a full week to produce. We were both mentally, emotionally, and physically worn threadbare.

So now here I was in Toronto, sobbing like my heart would break because it’s too much. All of it, it’s just too fucking much. I had visions of being a captive on stage to a hostile, bad-faith public call-out during the audience question portion of my panels, or of being cornered at my table or one of the post-convention social events to be told what a monster I am while I publicly cry in front of strangers— which has happened before, and at this exact convention to boot.

But that didn’t happen! Sorry, I know the last few paragraphs have been kinda grim, but that’s not where the rest of this report is going. Maybe I should have led with a disclaimer, “This writing will not be a total bummerfest the whole way through, promise.”

No, so Lucy was a goddamn hero full of support and game plans that I didn’t even wind up needing to use because the attendees at the convention were just…. just a tsunami of love. Coming into this situation at such a devastatingly low point, the praise and affection and tears of gratitude that these giving strangers shared with me helped bring me back to reality, where I’m not a malicious cartoon villain. I’m a flawed human who means well and does the best I’m capable of doing.

Toronto was good to me. My books sold out, I had dinner with Lonnie Mann who is just starting his career and full of enthusiasm and spirit, several sex workers who I admire came by just to meet me (me!), after the dumbest falling-out fifteen years ago a colleague and I happily reconnected, I picked up a handful of new comics (though not as much as I wanted, because I only had half an hour to explore the other tables before it ended), and have a small-ish dinner (“small” for a convention dinner, that is) with a couple tables full of the original Flight anthology contributors and other peers I’ve grown with over the last ten years. I had the chance to tell Kazu Kibuishi what an impact he’d made on my fledgling career by including my work in the first Flight anthology over a decade ago. He’d seemed like such an accomplished grown-up to me in my very early twenties, but I’m older now then he was when he was changing the landscape of comics back then. He must have seen some of the petty, hurt-feelings comments I made when my work (rightfully) wasn’t accepted in the subsequent volumes when I was… what? 21? 22? An immature baby child who couldn’t see that comics would become more than a self-indulgent hobby, that they’d become my career, my life. Kazu is gracious and thoughtful, and, if he remembered my old temper tantrum then, he didn’t hold it against me now. We reminisced about the last decade, about where our careers have taken us. We talked like peers.

Toronto was very good to me.

So then Lucy and I were off to Vancouver! We had our respective friends to stay with for the week while we waited to set up for that weekend’s comic convention. Chris and Brian (hosts of That Thing You Like, one of my favorite podcasts) spent the first few days showing me around their goddamn beautiful city and indulging me as I spent way too long staring at the creatures in their incredible aquarium. We’ve been mostly Internet Friends for years with the occasional meal together once every so often, but we’ve never had the chance to actually, like, spend real time with each other. There are some genuinely, really, truly good people in the world, and Brian and Chris are two of them. Thursday I was meant to stay with Cherry and Matt, but I woke up that morning For Reals Sick. My throat had been sore since Toronto, but I chalked that up to overuse. This, however, was Undeniable Sickness, with Bonus Fever Fun Times. No way could I stay with my scheduled hosts and keep a clear conscience, especially since Cherry already has so many chronic health conditions she deals with (and documents thoughtfully). Risking exposure, they still generously fed me and let me sleep on their couch for a couple hours until my last-minute hotel room was available.

I spent the day resting and then Friday Matt drove the six hours from Portland to do the convention with me. Which we did! I was strung out on cold medication, as was my table neighbor Lucy, but we all managed to move a good amount of books and have as pleasant a time as our poor, sick bodies would allow. Haha, oh man, I’d forgotten that about an hour before the show opened I’d gone shuffling off in the show’s building, groggily search for a semi-private place to lay down. I only set off the clearly marked fire alarm door twice before a concerned staffer pointed me towards two chairs I could push together and lay my dizzy head down on until the show opened. I was pretty out of it. But I rallied! And I only came home with 10 books out of the 100ish we'd brought! Not to shabby, Abby.

Monday morning Matt drove Lucy and me the six hours back to Portland! I refuse to believe that I “slept Homer Simpson-style” sitting upright with my head tilted back and mouth wide open for several hours as they report, but you can trust who you wanna.

I foolishly thought that taking a week “off” from work would rejuvenate me, but I’ve come back to my deadlines even more exhausted than I was before. I thought I could hit the ground running, power through this Tuesday’s comic (a review! Those take less time!) AND continue to crank away on the Oni Press deadlines just like I had been before. Instead I made it through one day of sluggish, inefficient “progress” and then the next I made it the three steps from our bed to the door frame before exhaustion made me lean all my weight against it. My legs gave out under me and I slowly slid to the floor where I just couldn’t move for the duration of Matt’s shower. Was I being too lazy to actually make myself move, or was my body genuinely not responding while I futilely ordered it to stand back up? Either way, Matt decided we’ll run our very last, emergency back-up guest comic next week so I could focus on the Oni stuff and then take an actual weekend off from work entirely. I feel guilty, that I should keep pushing and getting SOME work done, but Matt points out that it’s better to have me take two days off and come back at it closer to 100% than for me to keep giving 15-25% every day and making myself sick.

So here we are!

The glamorous life of a very human cartoonist.

As always, tell me about the best thing that happened to you in the last seven days. I really do love reading your answers.

XOXO,

Erika