Bleeding Out – The Courage of Confessional Comics

Storytelling that cuts to the quick always impresses me. It can be magical to watch someone bleed themselves dry in a desperate attempt to rid pain from their system by cutting open every vein. True, many times it’s just self-indulgent shoegazing, but if the stories are raw and honest, they can be as visceral and dazzling as a car crash.

I am particularly drawn to this in illustrated works. I like superheros and zombies and vigilantes and talking cats/tigers/monsters, but I love confessional comics the most. It Did Happen by Jessica Garvey is a great example of how a simple story with a lot of implied emotional weight can result in a substantive and rewarding reading experience. It Did Happen is an autobiographical account of Garvey learning that an ex-boyfriend was caught up in a brutal attack years after they broke up. The story is just a series of moments surrounding the time when she learned of the attack interlaced with flashbacks from their brief relationship. What starts out as a simple, sad coincidence is slowly revealed to be something darker and more complex. Garvey uses the obscuring quality of the illustrated format to elegantly unfold the story so that the reader can add their own emotional context. Garvey doesn’t tell the reader how to process the tragedy, but forces them to find their own way to untangle the emotional knot.

Intimacy can, of course, be achieved in all art forms, but the visual component of illustrated storytelling adds a dimension of vulnerability that can make the reader feel as if they are invading the creator’s privacy. They’ve been entrusted with a dark secret. In film, the viewer is aware that “acting” is happening, no matter how deft the filmmakers are at hiding it. In traditional fiction, the author’s voice controls the context of events.

But in comics, when it is done well, there is so much more space between the dialogue and between the panels. The reader is forced to roam for answers just as the creator did while living through the experience. We get all the juicy parts of the secret, but without the rationalizations. It is just moment to moment, which can be incredibly powerful if the creator is brave enough to allow the audience to make their own decisions on what the events mean.

Garvey is a fellow Okie and more of her stories can be found at jessicartworks.com. Her confessional style is greatly needed in our developing comics community. There are a few other local artists delving into slice of life storytelling, like our own Eric Gorman. These creators are key to developing a wider readership not usually drawn to traditional comics. We do need the superheroes and the zombies and the talking cats/tigers/monsters, but we also need the pure emotion to further legitimize illustrated storytelling as an inclusive art form.