"Mother's Day 2023"

Couple points right off: One, is that the title refers to when it was drawn. More specifically when the feeling started growing that I need to say something, after the latest, at the time, in a series of mass shootings. The concept came from a particular shooting that happened a week before Mother's Day on May 6th, in a mall in Allen, Texas. The content was adapted from an amalgamation of sources that all reported on the experiences of a first responder. Almost as importantly was the realization it had also been about a year since the events at Uvalde, and the succeeding week of what turned out to be my eighth and final summer teaching cartooning at the UAF Visual Art Academy. I will delve into specifics on both process + perspectives over the rest of the post.
But before that, here's a short, panel-by-panel narrated version:

Tools of the trade included: Microns for text (#8) + caption boxes (#12), freehand dip-pen panel borders + images. Initial guidelines for everything ruled out first in pencil, then freehanded so as to retain some organic aesthetic quality to the linework. And it’s extremely simple: just contour shapes, no textures, no background – neither any physical environment nor backstory or context on the specifics of this particular mass shooting. It relies instead on the disconcerting juxtaposition of image versus text. In short, there were a lot of instinctual artistic decisions that otherwise would have been part of the normal process I deliberately omitted.
 

These were the specific words that kept haunting me

Most of the verbage didn’t require much digital tweaking, a few lines re-centered, some kerning adjusted, but a little closer to my ultimate goal of having everything “camera ready” ie what you see is the way it was originally drawn. Another element that is slightly different from the usual is in using all caps, and no photoshoppy gradients for shading either – just one cut for contrast per panel (ex: crane + raven beak, wolf tail, bear + bunny footpads). Not even any cast shadows as it keeps the characters ungrounded, adrift, sorta like how I feel so unmoored at all the terrible news these days.

I purposely didn’t credit specific corporations or individual writers of the articles, as it was an amalgamation of different sources, and didn’t name either the interviewee nor the victims. We all own this, and everybody is paying for it. Couldn't attribute exact quotes either, as the text was so edited/adapted/mutated to work with this different medium. Keeping it anonymous is a deliberate choice and essential method of delivering the countering/contrasting meta-narrative, as described in tangent with the text saying one thing and the images another.

As mentioned in the post opening, it’s called “Mother’s Day 2023” because that’s when I started working on the piece. But there’s no title image or panel or frame, it just starts and ends. There’s no goddamn warning, like “trigger warnings," which I don't use in the classroom, or in public, and neither does reality when it intrudes on our mental and emotional safe space, which is usually simple awareness of the issue or problem at hand. While I had some reservations about using cartoony animals it’s actually quite a disarming approach to sucker punch readers (perhaps the best example of this anthropomorphism technique is in Spiegelman's Maus, which uses mice to address the horrors of the holocaust). Preliminary sketches experimented with literal illustrations of the depicted scenes, some with, some without gratuitous carnage. But I’m personally tired of such graphic imagery – the story is enough. And better to approach the subject matter in an understated manner, as opposed to showing everything, which takes a cue from the oft-employed film technique where any action is implied ie takes place largely “off screen,” a blank that is filled in by the reader (ex: Alien, Jaws etc.). Probably a hallmark of getting older - mind you, not maturing per say - that sex, violence etc. is actually now kind of boring to me personally. That being said, I think the tide of public opinion would change (much like what happened when the press released imagery from the Vietnam war) with the publication of just exactly what these shootings actually look like, and what the carnage is really like from the perspective of the operating room.

First I tried roughing out actual scenes from the story as reported, and making up the rest with generic illustrations depicting familiar scenes (ex: mall food courtyard). That approach was abandoned, as was a second draft using a sampling of saccharine, stereotypical scenes to contrast with the text, like for example, a sunset, a dinner, drinks, presents, playing with puppy, ballet dancer, campfire, flowers etc. were all sketched and then trashed. Somewhere along this time the piece went from a 3-pager to one single tabloid-sized sheet. This served as another reminder that oftentimes "less is more" and working within the confines of a seemingly restrictive format can often be liberating.

Still I was worried it would be taken as a potential cheap shot that runs the risk of belittling or trivializing the source material. Objectively it’s already borderline schmaltzy with the predictable mother + child angle. That evolved from another attempt that first used just a single beaver narrating the story, which then became a variety of different species, which then included offspring, which then cycled completely back around and made it a Mother’s Day piece, accentuated by the - at the time - impending holiday itself. I remember walking out the post office, noticing the flags at half-staff, and went in to ask why, and they said it was the shooting, and I honestly said “which one?” How sad is that. 

I also mulled over a “trigger warning” but no – just like the random violence that has permeated our culture and spread throughout society, no place is safe… that’s the marketing of fear that merchants of death will profit from. Another subtle distinction with this piece as compared to my usual style is the rare coloring in of the caption/text boxes, so as to isolate the eyes with being the only pure whites, which in turn facilitates a connection with a viewer. The gaze is a powerful cue, and staring makes it harder to look away. This can be seen in another longer work from graduate school days, “Please, Please, Please,” and even more recently in “Translation,” a spontaneous comics-poem done on the fly while on-site for a classroom demo.

(row six, number five, please step forward)

I’ll tell you who was another real inspiration for this: in 2018 a local photographer Kate Wool created a series of stunningly sobering portraits of people holding up a paper target. It was at a rally downtown for March For Our Lives that I took the opportunity to be included. Ever since then it stuck with me how for once here was someone who used their skills to address one of the most important issues we face. Many artists create safe, pretty pictures that appeal to the majority of consumers who don’t want to be confronted with anything that makes them uncomfortable. Makers and viewers alike shy away from politics, confrontation, any imagery that might upset their delicate sensibilities to say nothing of the status quo.

Sometimes as a cartoonist (and an artist, and a teacher, and a person) I really feel like a fraud, a charlatan who plays the jester part by drawing silly pictures for purposes of mindless entertainment and amusement amidst the unfolding disasters in our homes and across the planet. Put another way, I’m not good enough to see the humor enough to help with any healing (note: some great examples of comic relief here, here, and here). Not to get all art-therapy here, but the occasional piece like this does help somewhat with assuaging that guilt, and for channeling the anger. I know it does, because I kept tearing up over the six-hour session for penciling + inking, and before that several times during the preceding several hours while researching, scripting, editing and thumbnailing. The sole background score was looping a handful of instrumental extended remixes from “Passion” Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack to “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

One last point about the politics behind all this, in effect what makes all this horrible shit keep happening. And it lies squarely at the feet of Republicans and like-minded “Independents” - who only care about power, and are “pro-life” no matter how many people have to die to prove it. It is useless appealing to their sense of morality as it is pointing out hypocrisy if one doesn’t possess either the self-awareness or lack the simple human decency to feel ashamed. They lack both intelligence and capacity for basic empathy. Time and time again I wonder “what the fuck is wrong with these people.” Don’t ever forget they, these extremist white supremacists, are in the vast minority. And also villainizing the mentally ill is a cheap, uh, shot, because if you really wanna go there, wait until we figure out just having a gun now by itself is a red-flag symptom of mental illness.
It's. the. guns.

This is on all of us. From the bottom of my heart, fuck these weapons of war.