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La Perdida

3.34 of 5 stars 3.34 · rating details · 1,151 ratings · 216 reviews

Carla, una norteamericana distanciada de su padre mexicano, decide ir a la capital del país azteca para “encontrarse a sí misma”. Se instala en casa de un antiguo ligue que sigue las huellas de sus héroes William S. Burroughs y Jack Kerouac por los bares de la ciudad. Harry se toma con buen humor la reaparición de Carla en su vida hasta que se da cuenta de que ésta, que se...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published March 7th 2006 by Astiberri

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Jun 26, 2008 Lilian rated it 2 of 5 stars

When I first started to read La Perdida I really enjoyed it because I was excited to read a graphic novel about a young Mexican-American woman. I also enjoyed the author/artist Jessica Abel's sparsely drawn images of Mexico City landmarks (and Pilsen in Chicago).

Unfortunately, as the story progressed I started to become uncomfortable with the authors negative portrayal of Mexico City/Chilango youth culture. Raw honesty I appreciate, but the author painted a seedy world where you can't trust any...more

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Oct 01, 2011 missy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

I divide this book into two parts, even though it's not formally divided as such. There's such stylistic difference between them, it almost seems like there should be a formal divide. The first part of the book is a coming of age post-college, finding oneself while traveling, open-ended exposition. There's not much plot, just a lot of wondering around and talking to people. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- I really enjoy those types of stories if they're done right. But what stopped me firs...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Sotoleon rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like identity-search type novels

Jessica Abel’s _La Perdida_ tells the story of Carla, an anglo-mexican U.S. citizen, who in an aimless sojourn in Mexico city falls into various situations and encounters a variety of people, all of which challenge her custom-made American identity. After a brief period of successfully (or so she thinks) acculturating to not only her local community (which include Marxist revolutionaries, drug dealers, and ESL students) but to Mexican society at large, an international incident occurs which ulti...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Sunil rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Although it's not a memoir, La Perdida is based on the author's personal experience and is memoir-esque. On the surface, it sounds interesting: a half-Mexican woman goes to Mexico to get more in touch with her cultural heritage. It was pretty well regarded.

IT IS AWFUL, YOU GUYS.

I wanted to give it up halfway through the second issue because I was so bored. I just didn't care about anything! All the characters were annoying, and nothing fucking happened. Each issue seemed to be nothing more than...more

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Jun 12, 2008 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: brian gottlieb

Shelves: mexico-mexico-city, graphic-novel

I'd seen an excerpt of 'La Perdida' at an exhibit on the Graphic Novel Art in nearby West Stockbridge (Norman Rockwell Museum) some months ago and was intrigued. A graphic novel about Mexico City by someone named Jessica? How could I resist?! And then yesterday, while trying to hunt down a copy of the 'Savage Detectives,' I found "La Perdida" (The Lost One). So my interest and expectations were high...and for the most part, Abel satisfies them. The drawings are fluid and natural-seeming as is th...more

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Mar 31, 2008 Maria added it

Leídas unas cuantas reseñas aquí, voy a acabar escribiendo sobre algo en lo que no pensaba mientras leía el libro*. Las dos principales objecciones que recibe son el argumento rocambolesco de la segunda parte (estoy de acuerdo) y lo mal que cae la protagonista -es decir, que es difícil identificarse con ella- a lo cual me sale del alma contestar un simple "y qué", no sé si con interrogación o exclamación o ambos.
Carla cae fatal. (Carla se da un aire a Holden Caulfield.) Es una mujer mexicano-ame...more

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Oct 30, 2007 Renee Alberts rated it 2 of 5 stars

Jessica Abel’s sizeable fictional travelogue La Perdida is the annotated postcard of the protagonist Carla’s visit to Mexico to find herself. As she navigates relationships and challenges, from disagreements with her wealthy ex-boyfriend expatriate, Harry to the difficulties of learning an unfamiliar culture, she also journeys through delusion, self-discovery and accountability.

While Carla is not always likeable, Abel’s skillfully expressive bold-line drawings and revealing dialogue keep the rea...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Sharm Alagaratnam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The graphic novel La Perdida by Jessica Abel (check her cool website by the way) follows Carla, a naïve American girl who moves to Mexico City in the hopes of finding her Mexican roots (her estranged father is Mexican) and presumably in the process jazzing up her life.

Carla doesn't speak Spanish and has never previously visited when she first arrives, but vigorously sets about trying to differentiate and distinguish herself from the American expat community. Maddeningly for her she is never full...more

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Nov 27, 2008 planet rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

as a graphic novel, i think "La Perdida" is a total success, the way the awesome illustrations tell the story and are supported by the text. i picked it up and started reading and couldn't put it down. brilliant!

unfortunately, the story lacked the depth and analysis about certain issues (class privilege, racism, tokenism..) that would have made it great. the clueless main character annoyed the shit out of me by making horrible choices and basically just being a total idiot. the story offers grea...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction-general, graphic-novels

This is a well-told coming-of-age story featuring an American woman, Carla, who wishes to "find herself" by visiting Mexico and hunting down her roots (her father was a Mexican.) Initially constructing her idea of "Mexican" from bohemian clothing choices and Frieda Kahlo's artwork, Carla is immediately confronted with the fact that she is a stranger in a strange land, blood relationship notwithstanding. She struggles to learn the language and the customs, argues and bickers with her ex-boyfriend...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

This gets compared to the work of the Bros. Hernandez, but aside from the art style (and only occasionally), the fact that the main character is a woman, and the fact that it's set in Mexico, I'm not really seeing it. La Perdida is told in flashbacks, and is surprisingly suspenseful, despite the fact that we know the protagonist turns out more or less all right. There is something compelling about watching a character make tiny bad decisions, one after another, that inexorably push her towards a...more This gets compared to the work of the Bros. Hernandez, but aside from the art style (and only occasionally), the fact that the main character is a woman, and the fact that it's set in Mexico, I'm not really seeing it. La Perdida is told in flashbacks, and is surprisingly suspenseful, despite the fact that we know the protagonist turns out more or less all right. There is something compelling about watching a character make tiny bad decisions, one after another, that inexorably push her towards a crisis. Carla herself is a character it's easy to empathize with, and it's easy to see oneself in her. Anyone could end up in her situation, really--it didn't happen because she was especially foolish, or because she was a bad person.

In fact, Carla had the best intentions, always, and the men around her regularly took advantage of that, counted on it. Apparently Mexican gender issues aren't, at heart, much different from the ones in the United States. Carla is a nice woman, and as a nice woman, she's absorbed all those lessons about prioritizing relationships above her own safety and happiness, about giving people just one more chance (and another, and another), about how attention from men is more important than the friendship and solidarity of women...all of that. Carla's story didn't have to happen in Mexico, because all of it--including the crime, the drugs, the screaming fights, the danger--could have happened right here, happens every day, with or without the criminal aspects. Who hasn't watched a friend or relative slide deeper and deeper into an inextricable, abusive relationship? Who hasn't been there, or somewhere similar, herself?

So when Abel has Carla say, towards the end, that she chose to wind up in terrible danger, that she could have had help at any time, that's the only thing that caught me up short. There might have been a time when someone could, and would, have helped Carla; there were moments when friends tried to warn her. But the fact that a woman cannot overcome a lifetime of training in subjugation is not a failing of the woman; it's a failing of the culture. It's a symptom of a system so broken that it cannot be placated or repaired, but can only be burned down and utterly destroyed, to allow us to start fresh. Why blame someone for not being able to do that all by herself, when everyone and everything around her is telling her to be a doormat instead?

La Perdida has a lot to offer; aside from great art and a story that's hard to stop reading, there's a lot there about the ways race, class, and gender intersect. Carla is more than just sympathetic; she's interesting, and so is her world, for a value of "interesting" that also slides into "terrifying." Highly recommended.(less)

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Jul 28, 2011 Sarah added it

Shelves: realistic, graphic-novels

I have to say, I was extremely lukewarm to this book. It seems like the kind of thing I would like, but overall I didn't see what all the hype was about. The entire plot rests on the main character being annoying, stupid, and so desperate to please her 'real Mexican' friends that she throws common sense out the window. By the end, you just want her to stop white guilt whining about how HARD it is to be privileged and to stop trying to win the favor of people who she can never win over. The endin...more

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Jan 09, 2010 Raina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, graphic-novel-travelogues, graphicnovel, not-amerika, realistic, urban

I can't really believe I'm only reading this now, especially since GN travelogues are one of my purported interests. For the first half of the book I had the impression that it was barely fictionalized autobiography, but soon figured out that it's a more fully invented true graphic novel. This is the story of a girl trying to imbed herself in the culture of Mexico. She is half-Mexican, but barely speaks the language when she goes to "visit" a former fling and "forgets" to make her flight out of...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-reads

I really enjoyed reading these comic books when they were first published a few years ago, and I re-read them recently for a book club discussion I didn't end up going to. Jessica Abel's five-part story of a girl who moves to Mexico City on a whim - partially to reconnect with the Mexican heritage she never knew, partially to follow an ex-boyfriend, and partially just because it was something new and different to do - held up just as well on a second visit as it did my first time through.

The ma...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Osvaldo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics-related

I don't even recall how I stumbled across Jessica Abel's La Perdida—probably in doing research on Love & Rockets—but I'm glad I found it. While far from perfect, the first three-fifths of the graphic novel or so are wonderful, and while it kind of devolves into a melodramatic plot that unfortunately reeks of stereotypes of Mexico, overall it is still strongly characterized and well-drawn.

Carla, the protagonist may be a post-college naïve-as-hell gringita prone to willful ignorance and drunke...more I don't even recall how I stumbled across Jessica Abel's La Perdida—probably in doing research on Love & Rockets—but I'm glad I found it. While far from perfect, the first three-fifths of the graphic novel or so are wonderful, and while it kind of devolves into a melodramatic plot that unfortunately reeks of stereotypes of Mexico, overall it is still strongly characterized and well-drawn.

Carla, the protagonist may be a post-college naïve-as-hell gringita prone to willful ignorance and drunken outbursts, unable or unwilling to accept her own position of privilege vis-á-vis her Mexican friends and neighbors, but her earnest desire to learn something about Mexico as to learn about her own Mexican-roots (her father is Mexican) along with her foibles makes her all the more believable, and makes her downward spiral understandable, as she gets involved with some asshole dudes, who spout Marxism and machismo in the same rants, littering truthful indictments in their anti-American diatribes (while wanting some of the cache that comes along with hanging and sleeping with an American girl), while also serving to psychologically break Carla down through her confusion and self-loathing.

All of this works and the art reinforces that. Abel uses a clean black and white “cartoony” style, but there is energy and movement in how the panels depict the heated arguments and frenetic partying. She also draws fantastic representations of various sites in Mexico City. She mostly uses a straight-forward six-panel per page layout, which means when she does break into larger panels it effectively displays the importance, breadth or majesty of what is being depicted. The only time her artwork fails is not because of the drawing itself, but because later, when most of the action takes place in Carla's little apartment where she obsessively follows a kidnapping story in the newspapers, it starts to feel static and repetitive. While I think it does serve to demonstrate Carla's relative isolation during this time, Abel might have done more with the text and narration to make it more engaging.

If La Perdida was only about Carla's search and confusion regarding her Mexican-American identity, if it spent more time exploring how she allowed her desire to befriend “real Mexicans” to obfuscate the fact the men she ended up hanging around were just no good, that regardless of her intentions her own desire to party—doing bumps of coke and selling nickel bags of pot—was as misguided as the attitudes of the other American expats who kept themselves separate from the Mexican community surrounding them (and that Carla harshly criticized) it would have been a fine book by itself. It is admirable how Abel has Carla struggle with her privilege. She does a good job describing the social dynamics between various groups of expats, and between those expats and locals and different groups of locals. But there is only a hint of that parallel world once Carla gets caught up in seedy underbelly that unfortunately is the dominate narrative regarding Mexico in general and Mexico City in particular. As such, La Perdida does some work in reinforcing the very stereotypes that I think Abel was trying to avoid. In the end, Carla mentions that there was so much going on that she ended up closed off to because of her own conceptions of immersing herself in Mexico, but those mentions don't do enough to save the conclusion of the novel.

I can't give this four stars, but three seems too low. It is was very engaging and I tore through it and I'd recommend it, but it just doesn't go deep enough for my tastes.(less)

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Jul 20, 2012 Rachael Smyczak rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another graphic novel that I just pulled off the shelf without knowing anything about it and another good one at that.

Carla is half Mexican and half American. When an ex-boyfriend moved to Mexico, she decided to go too and find the other half of her roots. Carla leaves with little money and no real plans except to see everything that she can see. She has a ticket home but she doesn't really plan on going back. She shows up on Harry's doorstep with no real plan, knowing that she intends to live w...more Another graphic novel that I just pulled off the shelf without knowing anything about it and another good one at that.

Carla is half Mexican and half American. When an ex-boyfriend moved to Mexico, she decided to go too and find the other half of her roots. Carla leaves with little money and no real plans except to see everything that she can see. She has a ticket home but she doesn't really plan on going back. She shows up on Harry's doorstep with no real plan, knowing that she intends to live with him even if he doesn't know it. Harry, she says, was not really a boyfriend so much as a good lay. Neither of them are the other's type. Harry is a rich boy living off of his parents. Carla has been raised by a single mother and enjoys the arts. It becomes obvious, quickly, that the two won't last long. Harry does introduce Carla to his friends and she likes them but the first person she pursues in Mexico is a radical Marxist called Memo.

Through Memo, Carla meets a number of Mexicans that she begins to consider friends. There's Ricardo, a nephew of a "promoter" who deals drugs and Oscar, the first guy who is actually sweet to Carla. People are always warning her about the dangers of the city but Carla refuses to be afraid. Eventually, Oscar moves in with her and she gets a job and it seems like she might actually settle in Mexico, even though the reader knows from the intro that she is not welcome there anymore.

The turn this book took was a surprise to me. I had a sense that something bad was going to happen but I figured it had something to do with how the men treat Carla. Harry is an angry drinker with a temper that tends to explode. Memo is a lady's man, always trying to get into Carla's pants. Even Oscar, who starts out as such a nice guy turns out to be controlling and angry and inept at life. However, the road Carla ends up on is worse than expected and it is a wonder that she gets out of it.

I enjoyed this book and it only took a little while to get used to the language. Being able to read Spanish would make it a lot easier to read even though everything is either subtitled or translated into English. I liked the idealist vision of Mexico better than the other side at the end. Still, this was exciting and intriguing.(less)

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Dec 21, 2007 carmie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pictorial

Should be called La Dumbass. The heroine(?) of this novel succeeded in irritating me with her idiocy and horrible choices as no one has since....Ann Coulter?

When the drug lord offers you a sample of cocaine, the wise choice is to LEAVE, not take it! Sigh.

I guess I could consider Jessica Abel successful because she created a character who inspired strong feelings in me, even if those feelings were mostly annoyance.

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Dec 30, 2011 Jonathan Schildbach rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is more like a 3.5 for me, but I'm rounding up.

In some ways, I think the format of the graphic novel is somewhat limiting to the subject matter, since it involves issues of race and identity, and what it means to be of mixed ethnicity--which is some rather complicated stuff to convey with simple line drawings, dialog and occasional narrative.

The main character, Carla, has grown up in the U.S., always speaking English and only English, but moves to Mexico City and gets caught up in trying t...more This is more like a 3.5 for me, but I'm rounding up.

In some ways, I think the format of the graphic novel is somewhat limiting to the subject matter, since it involves issues of race and identity, and what it means to be of mixed ethnicity--which is some rather complicated stuff to convey with simple line drawings, dialog and occasional narrative.

The main character, Carla, has grown up in the U.S., always speaking English and only English, but moves to Mexico City and gets caught up in trying to live an 'authentic Mexican' life there. Unfortunately, her means of doing this is to fall in with the first group who will have her. And while several members of this new cluster of friends rail against tourists, whites, capitalism, and the United States, they seem to connect to Carla exactly because that is what she represents--and because they think she may provide them some advantage from her ties to the United States and the world of privilege. But they are fooling themselves just as much as Carla is fooling herself about her ability to become Mexican--or even half-Mexican--by rejecting some of the more obvious connections to the world of the expats.

So characters like Memo attempt to impress Carla by inviting her along on 'authentic' excursions which he admits to his friends are only meant to impress gullible American women. And Oscar, who becomes Carla's boyfriend, seems to be perpetually bugging her for money (which she doesn't have) or to connect him to Americans who can further his DJ career--a career he never really pursues in any meaningful way. Carla believes she is finding herself, but is mostly just drifting. Her story could be like that of many people in their early to mid-20s, running around to parties, not having any real direction, and making plenty of bad choices--she just chooses to do it in a city that is foreign to her.

I was somewhat disappointed with what occurred in the final act--it seemed a bit too easy to go that direction, especially when, up to that point the entire story had been more about relationships and connections between people. Although looking back I realize that Abel was leading up to that kind of conclusion, I think I had been blinding myself to it, in the hopes of a more 'down to earth' end to the story.

Still, there is plenty of good material here, and it's easy to identify with much of it, and the misguided decisions Carla and those around her make. For instance, it's very telling when, near the end of the story, Carla realizes she never even bothered to look up the village where her father's family came from, or made any effort to track down any of her blood relatives. There were ways for her to connect with (half) her roots, but she left those paths unexplored.
(less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Eris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

To be precise, I'd say this is more of a 3.5 than a four or three - but I don't get a middle option with the stars.

This is a well-told piece of fiction. I understand the beef some have with the portrayal of the seedy side, however she is portraying the people that Carla CHOSE and makes a strong point in the very end that there were many other options, many good people... she was blinded by her own cultural assumptions, and by her personal arrogance.

At first I was wondering "why bother" telling...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Rattoni rated it 1 of 5 stars

The dust jacket is the only reason this book should get a single star, its beautifully done and with a grat color pallette. Besides that, this is the perfect book to take to a campmfire if you are out of wood or fuel. Terrible story, full of cliches, awful black and white drawings. Maybe if it had been done in full color it could have been eye catchy, but its not. It does not seem to start that bad , but as you continue it only gets worse. The depction of mexico city at the beginning is quite fa...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Colin rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, graphic-novels

I did not finish this book.
First of all, the art is all black and white. I have no problem with that, however when an artist restricts themselves to b&w, they need to be careful not to get too detailed or the pictures will get very crowded and busy. La Perdida is a good example of that. The art itself is not bad but I found the level of detail in each panel a bit distracting and for me it detracted fro the experience.
Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing however because the story itself is a b...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Nelly Paulina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chicano-lit, comic-books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 31, 2010 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

The art in this book is great, and I enjoyed the story too. I just have some quibbles with how it was done. The language thing was clunky (especially the footnote translations), but then again, I suppose it was somewhat important to capture the transition from uncomprehending gringa to Spanish speaker. It was hard to read, though. The other thing that was annoying was that the set-up took such a long time. But I guess that's also essential - if things had happened more abruptly, it would be hard...more

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May 05, 2009 Marisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

While, I thought the art work was really good for a graphic novel (clear while artistic at the same time)I didn't connect with the characters, especially the narrator/main character Carla. She seemed a bit superficial and seemed to take in very little of the Mexican culture she claimed to so desperately want to learn about. Her continual search for an "authentic" experience in Mexico City (versus her American ex-boyfriend's) seems to push her to hang out with low-lifes (if I can say that without...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Alicia rated it 5 of 5 stars

La Perdida by Jessica Abel is an amazing graphic novel about Carla, a biracial American, who travels to Mexico to seek to understand the father she has never met. She ends up becoming disillusioned with her boyfriend and his idea of how to live the expatriate life and leaves him to seek out a more "authentic" experience. Falling in with a crowd of disaffected young men who quickly become petty and not-so-petty criminals, Carla is swept into a lifestyle that becomes more and more uncomfortable un...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This graphic novel by Jessica Abel follows Carla, a half-Mexican, half-German woman who moves to Mexico City in order to find her roots and herself. She arrives barely speaking Spanish and eventually makes a life for herself, but, as the title suggests, she doesn't exactly find herself. I really connected with Carla's feelings of curiosity and confusion around her ethnic heritage. The plot slows down a bit in the middle, but then it really picks up and goes full speed ahead to the end. I wasn't...more

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Jun 24, 2010 Lara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

Yes, Carla is an idiot on the whole, but taking the drugs is what you do when you're in another country. That's the time to do them, when none of your back-home acquaintances will be gossipping about it tomorrow. That's the time to find the squalid neighbourhood to live in, to get too drunk and yell, to have pointless conversations with obstinate Marxists.

And she's not so much of an idiot that she doesn't recognize her own indiocy, and I like her for that. Plus, her frustration at the fact that...more

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May 19, 2010 Patti rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels, summer-2010

I heard rave reviews of this coming-of-age graphic novel about a young Chicana woman's experiences in Mexico. Unfortunately, since the protagonist was completely unlikable and unbelievably stupid and the other characters were essentially stereotypes, the novel's attempts at emotional depth fell flat. An abrupt plot- and tone-shift midway through raises a crime-ring plot that seems forced and disjointed. And the Spanish glossary in the back makes it patently clear that the target audience is US r...more

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Mar 15, 2010 Erica Harmon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-by-ladies, graphic

This novel made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't put it down either. In fact, I tried to stop reading it, put it back on the shelf in used, but ended up taking it right off the shelf again and staying up till 1 in the morning finishing it. Anyone who has experienced the great "abroad" during, or after college knows what it feels like to be in a foreign land, surrounded by the great other (that we often try to emulate) as well as fellow ex-pats. A lot of the feelings, and mis-steps were familiar...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

More than anything a coming of age graphic novel where the young person is not only the narrator but their identity and that of a county lurching into the 21st century. The narrative trips over itself a few times and the dialogue can feel a little set-upy instead of natural. But make no mistake. La Perdida is a huge-friggin achievement, amazingly drawn, so sure of its setting in Mexico City and place in time (late 90s) that it feels as much a diary or historical document. Or just a conversation...more

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About Jessica Abel

Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him an...more Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him and his publisher, Fantagraphics. She printed 50 copies of Artbabe #1, but Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth, who claims not to remember this encounter, didn’t take the bait. Four issues (and four years) later, she won a Xeric grant, put out the first full-sized and professionally printed issue of Artbabe, and thus finally appeared on Groth’s radar. She began a new volume of Artbabe with Fantagraphics in 1997.

Abel won the 1997 “Best New Talent” Harvey and Lulu awards and she completed Artbabe Volume 2 in early 1999. She took time off from fictional comics in 1999 to complete a 32-page comic for This American Life, a Public Radio International program, written in collaboration with host Ira Glass, and then 2000 saw the publication of Mirror, Window, a collection of the second volume of Artbabe. Soundtrack, a compilation of early comics work, was published by Fantagraphics in 2001. La Perdida, a graphic novel thriller set in Mexico City, was originally serialized by Fantagraphics, during which time it won the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award and was featured in the first Best American Comics anthology from Houghton-Mifflin. La Perdida was published as a complete book by Pantheon in 2006 and has been translated into French, Spanish, and Italian. Abel’s most recent books are a vampire romantic comedy called Life Sucks published by First Second Books, and, in collaboration with her husband, Matt Madden, a comics textbook called Drawing Words, Writing Pictures, also published by First Second Books in spring 2008. Abel’s upcoming projects include a prose novel for teenagers for HarperCollins, and a script for a graphic novel about roller derby on Mars. She is also co-series editor (with Madden) of The Best American Comics, and teaches at the School of Visual Arts. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn. (less)

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