An Autobiographix Year in Review - 2022

It’s been a busy 2022 here at Autobiographix, so we wanted to end with a roundup of things we did, and books we loved!

Thanks to everyone who reads, shares, comments - we really appreciate the community.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what we were up to in 2022:

• We started the year with a couple of book reviews. In “Is Your God Not Cool with That?” for Solrad, we discussed Rave, Jessica Campbell’s first fictional graphic novel. Campbell explores one young woman’s relationship with the church as she embarks on her first lesbian love affair. To capture the hypocrisy Campbell herself experienced as a teenager growing up in a conservative church, she turned to fiction to incorporate her friends’ experiences, news stories, and more. (We also interviewed Jessica Campbell.)

• The Rumpus published our next review, of Julie Doucet’s Time Zone J. Even after a twenty-year absence from comics, Doucet proves she is still at the top of her game with Time Zone J. It’s rare to find a graphic memoir where Pussy Riot, Tintin, and a King Cat Comics membership card all comfortably share space.

• We rounded out the year reviewing Kelcey Ervick’s new memoir The Keeper for Solrad. Ervick’s graphic memoir weaves together the history of women’s soccer (both in the United States and Britain), reflections of other writerly goalies (Albert Camus and Vladimir Nabokov), and her personal story of playing in high school and college. (We interviewed Kelcey last year and included The Keeper in our asynchronous book club.)

• We each published a short article in Women in Media: A Reference Handbook. Amaris wrote about low-stakes posting, visual punchlines, and engagement in "From Panel to Platform: Women Comics Creators on Instagram." Nora explored female superheroes in film in her essay “Women Discovered as Super.”

• In February, we presented “Comics on the Road: Drawn Records of Women Traveling,”  at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, NM. This was also the first time we saw each other in person since the pandemic began!

• In May, we went to a virtual conference - Exploring the In-Between: Comics in Flux Conference, hosted by University of Florida. Here we presented some observations about women in comics, discussing pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children in “Motherhood as Crisis: Women Comics Creators Confront Identities in Flux.”

• Amaris also had a comic about the Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT published in Ecotone’s Climate issue.

In case you missed it:

Our top post from this year was Haiku Diary Comics with 214 views!

Some books we loved this year—graphic memoirs, books about comics and collected strips.

Amaris’s Top 3:

This graphic memoir was my students’ favorite this semester. Inspired by Bui’s oral histories, one student even interviewed her father for her final memoir project.

An academic reviewer recommended reading Beaty’s Unpopular Culture to strengthen an argument and, like so much of Beaty’s work, I found it hard to put down. As much as comics sound like “pop culture,” I think I may be more drawn to the comics of “unpopular culture.”

I love getting this serialized comic in the mail periodically. Not only is Thompson’s storytelling and artwork beautiful, it’s fun to see how he plays with the form of the mail-order memoir.

Nora’s Top 3:

I got this engrossing graphic memoir at Cartoon Crossroads in Columbus, OH. It was fun to meet Spooner, the author, and learn more about his work.

I am no where near finishing this impressive, extensive survey of women illustrators and comic artists, but have so enjoyed Kennedy’s research on (often) lesser-known creators. The book is beautifully produced, and contains lots of useful info you can use for inspiration or teaching!

Victoria Douglas is such an innovative comics creator - Biblioware is a inventive, funny, moving exploration of the self, and pushes the boundaries of autobio comics. Victoria also runs halftone hospital which is an open source treasure trove of comics production tools.

What we’re looking forward to in 2023:

• We will be back at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference, this time to talk about diary comics. Join us in Albuquerque, February 22-24.

• We will have an article on Bianca Stone’s poetry comics in Studies in Comics.

• Amaris will have a debut graphic memoir coming out in April!

• More reviews of comics, interviews with creators, dives into history, craft/creation ideas, and more right here!