The final story in the latest issue of Lucky stands quietly aside from the rest of the book. “When I Was Eleven” follows the story of a young Gabrielle Bell so enamored with her experiences in summer camp the year before that she steals away from the day to day grinds that come with being an 11-year-old, opting to live out her days at the camp in the off-season.

It’s quiet, reflective, and arguably the most powerful piece in the book—in its own way, the story also goes a ways toward defining the grownup Bell who occupies the remainder of the issue.

As such, a discussion of the piece seemed an ideal place to close out our interview with the artist.

[Part One][Part Two][Part Three]

You describe the pieces in Lucky as being almost like blogging, in terms of their immediacy, but there’s a piece in the new issues called “When I was Eleven.”

Ah yes—I liked to sometimes include extra stuff like that, as well.

Did you just sort of stick in in at the end, or is the piece somehow consistent with the rest of the book?

Um, it’s not really consistent, but I happened to have this comic that sort of fit in with the book. I think it’s too much to blast the audience with pure autobiographical work.

But “When I was Eleven” is pretty autobiographical, no?

Yeah, it is.

Did something jump out about that story that made it something that you wanted to tell now, in the context of Lucky?

Well, an anthology asked me to submit a story, and I submitted that. They rejected it, so I ended up putting it in Lucky.

Have you ever considered collecting some of these stories from when you were much younger?

Um—that story and stories like that are going to be in upcoming collection, but I would like to do more of those stories, too. What do you think? Do you think I should?”

I do. That might actually be my favorite story in that issue.

Really, you think so?

Yeah. I understand reading it why it was an important moment in your life. I think it fits the context of the story in the sense that there are certain moments in our lives that we can point to that have made us who were are today.

Yeah.

Does this strike you as one such moment?

Possibly, yeah. I don’t know, there’s something about me always trying to escape. I remember, when I was in kindergarten, we were all walking in a line back to class. I think I was at the end or close to the end, and I started thinking, “why do we have to stand in this line?” So I sort of jumped out of the line and walked on my own. The other kids shouted at me and I got back into the line, because I was sort of shamed into it [laughs].

You were a little attempted non-conformist in kindergarten.

And then in that story, where I run away from home and I try to live in summer camp, it was a similar thing of my wanting to jump out of my expected life and go into the life I wanted. It’s that urge to step out of line. I think there’s always an urge in me to break free of my life. In that way, that story defines that a great deal. It was a very calculated attempt to break out of the life that was given to me [laughs]. And the thing is that you can’t just break out of it—you can’t just break free. You have to slowly work at it.

Are there any moments in your recent life that are sort of on-par with stepping out of line in kindergarten or escaping to a summer camp?

Good question—it’s getting harder and harder [laughs].

Doing something creative that you have full control over is sort of a manifestation of that though, right?

Yeah, doing comics is definitely a manifestation of that. I’ve been working slowly at it. I did decide to step out and do comics, but it’s still been a long, long process.

Do you think they speak more about you as a person than they did when you started? Have you gotten better at expressing yourself?

I think I express myself well enough. There is a this attitude with comics where you have to keep it like a comic, but I’ve really pulled away from that, I think. My comics don’t have to have punchlines. But there is still that tradition of lightness. I don’t let myself get too heavy with my autobio stuff. I keep doing light things because I don’t want to embarrass anyone or make anyone feel bad. And to be honest, I don’t want to embarrass myself or make myself look bad, which I think is to my detriment, when I look at people like Joe Matt or something.

Does the addition of humor make your personal expression more or less truthful?

It’s not like I’m hiding behind humor. It’s just one way at getting at the truth.

–Brian Heater

In this third part of our interview with Gabrielle Bell, we discuss the artist’s burgeoning solo career, years of anthology work, and the key differences between Lucky volumes one and two.

[Part One][Part Two]

You worked on a screenplay with Michel Gondry, recently. Is that the first time you’ve really separated your art from text?

Yeah. I think it’s harder to write screen, because in comics, I write things out in a storyboard kind of way.

You don’t storyboard your screenplays?

Well, I haven’t tried it yet. I’m really new at the screenwriting.

Can you talk about the projects that you’ve been working on, in that space?

Weeeeeell, let’s see. The screenplay for the short film that we did. Michel wrote most of it, and I wrote the ending. We sort of worked very closely on it. We threw out different ideas and went back and forth. And then I would go through it and try to clean out the awkward parts—sort of Americanize it, in a way, even though it’s a Japanese film. Then you have to go through the whole process of Japanesifying it [laughs]. And then I helped him to write another script. He wrote the whole thing, and then we went through it, line-by-line and talked about what worked and what didn’t, and what could be changed. We wrote that, but it’s still being reworked, again and again. The difference I guess is that, with comics, I’m the authority, but with this, someone else is the authority.

Is that your first real experience collaborating on a large scale?

Um, yeah. I don’t really like to collaborate that much [laughs]. I made an exception for Michel.

Was it difficult working with someone, especially when working on a pre-existing piece?

Sometimes it was difficult, and other times it was a great pleasure.

Did the difficulty lie in the inability to express your own voice in the work?

I guess the question of having it be a movie was the difficult part.

Creating something for other people to work with or just operating in a new medium?

Both. I guess it’s just really being out of my element, in movies. I know what works in comics, I don’t really know what works in film. In the first draft of the screenplay, I had people waterskiing in this brief dream sequence, and Michel said, “you can’t just write that in, do you know how expensive it is to have people waterskiing.” Or in another, I had someone playing a piano, which was a very big deal, bringing a piano into the room. In comics, you just draw a piano, or you just draw people waterskiing. In movies, you have to think about the physical possibilities. There are just so many logistics that I wasn’t quite familiar with. I’m a little more familiar with now.

It’s funny to hear that coming from Michel. I’d imagine that, on a whole, reading one of his scripts would be something of a logistical nightmare…

Yeah, but then there’s a lot of problem solving and a lot of hands-on approaches to things. He’s thinks about these things, beforehand.

Did you feel similarly out of your element when you first started working in comics?

Not really. Comics, especially alternative comics, have this sense that you can just invent your style as you go. I think I did feel a bit of pressure when I was starting to get noticed, and people started to give me feedback. There was a pressure to top myself that’s always there, but that’s a healthy pressure, I think.

Is there a big distinction in your mind, between the first and second volumes of Lucky?

Yeah, definitely. Volume One was sort of experimental. I was feeling things through.

Why did you split them, initially?

I didn’t really draw the line. I stopped doing Lucky for a while, and then at one point, I just wanted to pick it up again.

So, initially you set out with the intention of ending the series at three issues?

Yeah—actually, I can’t really remember if I had it in my head that I just wanted three issues.

How large of a gap did you leave between the two volumes?

I guess it must have been a couple of years. I was working on stuff for different anthologies.

What prompted the decision to go off and work on those more dissonant pieces?

It wasn’t really a conscious decision. It was more that a lot of anthologies were asking me to do different stuff, and I could never refuse, because I never like being left out [laughs]. I did the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase and Kramer’s Ergot and Mome.

Is there a marked difference between that work and what goes into Lucky?

Well those are short fictional stories, for the most part. And if they were ever autobiographical, they were very removed. They were very fictionalized accounts that were very removed.

Removed in terms of the time that occurred between the events and your writing?

Yeah. Lucky’s more immediate. I think of it kind of like blogging.

[Concluded in Part Four].

–Brian Heater

In the decade or so since she first began distributing her work through the standard channels of black and white photocopied minis, Gabrielle Bell has fairly quickly become one of the more beloved autobiographical cartoonists in alternative comics, thanks in large part to her long-running, recently revived title, Lucky, which captures the life of a 20-something artist with frankness and unexpected humor.

In 2003, Bell moved from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. She’s appeared in a number of popular of anthologies like Fantagraphics’ Mome, and in 2006, Drawn & Quarterly began publishing Lucky, beginning with a hardbound collection of the title’s first volume. Bell has also begun to dip her feet into filmmaking waters, working with with acclaimed filmmaker Michel Gondry. The first fruits of their labor, Interior Designs is an adaptation of a piece that Bell created for the Kramer’s Ergot anthology.

We sat down with Bell upon the release of the latest issue of Lucky to talk about craft, autobiography, and what winds up on the cutting room floor.

Looking at the new Lucky [Vol. 2 # 2] versus some earlier issues, it seems like the text has become a bit more sparse, even as the becomes more detailed. Do you feel like you’ve shifted your focus at all?

Oh sure, yeah. The text has gotten shorter, you think?

Certainly in parts.

I don’t feel like I’ve necessarily changed my focus. I just feel like I’m trying to refine my craft. Lucky is—actually, with most of my comics—I don’t have too much loyalty to consistency. I’m more interested in holding my point-of-view. Maybe that’s why I tend not to commit to longer works. Comics are so unwieldy, and I still have a lot to learn from doing short works.

When you say “honing your craft,” are you speaking mostly about the art itself?

Well, the writing too—the two together. Art as storytelling, for example.

At what point did the two come together for you?

Um, I don’t know—probably 12 or 14 years ago. I mean, they’re the two things that I like to do the most, so it made sense to try comics.

Had you not stumbled into the world of alternative comics, do you think you might have attempted to combine the two by some other means?

Possibly. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to try to look at the past and predict things like that. I don’t think it would have been possible not to have discovered the world of alternative comics, at some point or another. It was much too in my line of view. There’s no way I could have missed it.

In terms of consistency—which you said before wasn’t of utmost importance to you—what sorts of themes hold Lucky together as a cohesive piece? What keeps you going on that specific title?

[Pauses] I think the sorts of issues that I deal with translate very well to comics. There are going to be stories to tell, as long as I live. And I know that it’s not for everyone, but there’s always going to be an audience, too.

Is there anything specific to your own experiences that makes for an interesting read, or is it more dependent on your abilities as a storyteller?

I have to say, I think it’s more dependent on my abilities as a storyteller. But I try to look for things that people can relate to, rather than things that are interesting for their own sake.

Were you doing a lot of autobiographical work, prior to Lucky?

Some, yeah. They weren’t really being published, though, but I did do a lot of autobiographical short stories. Lucky came more from a diary. It was shaped into a story.

Were you hesitant to work on something so personal? Is that why a lot of it went unreleased for a while?

Yeah, that is a tricky thing, respecting people’s privacy. You have to be very careful with stuff like that. Now I think was just trying to refine my storytelling and find my voice.

So it was more about the privacy of others than your being afraid to put yourself out there?

A lot of it had to do with the fact that I wasn’t sure if the work was good enough. I think that before you release anything, you have to practice at it, for a while, and in order to fully open yourself up and be true to a story, I think you kind of have to do it privately for a while. If you sit down and think that everything is going to be published, it’s going to inhibit your creativity, a little bit.

Was there a point for you when it was clear that your work was publishable, or did you ultimately just want to get it out there?

Well, I think it’s more of the latter. I just wanted to start getting stuff out there. But I definitely do comics with intention of publishing them and others with the intention of not publishing. Sometimes I do comics that are sort of in-between and I think that maybe I could publish it, and then when I finish, I realize that it’s not publishable. And then there’s a lot of stuff that just ends up on the cutting room floor.

Are there any consistent things that come up which make works unpublishable?

Generally it’s just because it’s not interesting enough, or it just embarrasses me, in one way or another. Usually when I do Lucky, there will be several more pages that I don’t release, because they’re just kind of boring. The comic could really be twice as many pages. I kind of have to weed through stuff I’ve written down and comics I’ve done. It’s not necessarily that the most interesting things that happen get published—there are a lot of personal and sentimental things that I write.

The personal and sentimental do or don’t make the cut?

I think that they do. It really just comes down to instinct. The themes are often my shyness or alienation—disconnenction from others. I think that everyone has those feelings, but sometimes I feel like I’m being redundant or hammering the point too much, so I’ll leave stuff out for that reason.

[Continued in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater