Cecil and Jordan in New York
By Gabrielle Bell
Drawn & Quarterly

They didn’t change the name of the title story or stick a group of actors on the cover or add the words “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture,” but timing reveals more than any of those things could—Cecil and Jordan in New York was released in an attempt to capitalize on Tokyo, a collection of film shorts recently released in theaters, a third of which was co-written by Michel Gondry and Gabrielle Bell. The lead off comic, which lends its name to this collection of short strips cherry picked from Bell’s work over the past few years, forms the basis of her segment in the film.

Let there be no mistake, however, while the release of Cecil and Jordan in New York is something of a thinly-veiled attempt to provide supplementary material to curious film-goers, it is, above all, an celebration of Bell’s work as a sequential artist. The decision on the part of the publisher to package the book as a fairly straightforward collection of comics, rather than a movie tie-in, is an attempt to create something that will outlast Tokyo’s likely relatively brief stint in limited theaters, a life that hinges on the quality of the strips contained inside. Fortunately as a cross section of some of Bell’s best work in recent years, there’s more than enough contained herein to sustain that life.

The strip “Cecil and Jordan in New York” is a rather strong note on which to open the book. In a sense the short story is a graphic representation of what is so powerful about Bell’s best work. It’s an embrace and subsequent transcendence of one of underground cartooning’s most dominant themes: alienated youth. That Bell manages all of this in four short pages is, of course, a testament to her mastery of storytelling pith. This time out, Bell enlists the aid of a magical realist conceit, but rather than overwhelming the piece, her momentary flirtation with the fantastic compliments wonderfully her protagonist’s sense of useless upon moving to the big city.

“My Affliction,” arguably the weakest story in the collection, demonstrates what happens when the fantastic is embraced too fully, drawing Bell away from the her core strengths as a storyteller. The story weaves a dreamlike narrative, complete with a flying Gabrielle and a fidgety “behemoth.” The story sheds some interesting light on the manifestations of Bell’s own neuroses, but it’s a far cry from the tight storytelling the artist embraces in her best work.

“Gabrielle the Third” and “Helpless,” the two stories that close out the collection, are every bit as strong as the first, but both manage to transcend their boundaries without the aid of Bell’s keen knack for understated magical realism. The first parlays a sense of isolation into a connection with animals, an innocent lot whose natural tendencies parallel the manner of alienation Gabrielle’s character feels in urban surroundings. “Helpless” is an equally sweet tale whose themes of playful adolescent rebellion echo strongly the duo from Dan Clowes’s Ghost World. Like “Cecil and Jordan in New York,” the two stories also serve as strong reminders of that one element often overlooked in Bell’s writing—her understated sense of the comedic.

Born, perhaps, out of financial motives, Cecil and Jordan in New York is ultimately a collection of some of Bell’s strongest work and a friendly reminder of why she has become on of the most celebrated storytellers to come out of the mini-comics scene in recent years.
–Brian Heater

The diary strip has become a nearly ubiquitous form of expression in the world of alternative comics, and while there’s certainly something to be said for that old adage about writing what you know, it’s rare to come across an artist that breaks free from the pack.

Thanks in large part to her primarily autobiographical series, Lucky, Gabrielle Bell has managed to do just that, with oft introspective short stories that focus more on the power and humor of universal experiences than the pursuit of extraordinary circumstances.

In this second part of our interview with the author, we discuss the ups and downs of autobiography and the role that the Internet has played in Bell’s storytelling.

[Part One]

Are autobiographical comics inherently self-indulgent?

I think you need to evaluate that on a case by case basis.

Were you reading other strips in that style when you first went ahead with Lucky?

Not really in any consistent way.

Not with the intention of influencing your work?

Well, like I said, I’ve been doing diary comics since way before I knew that other people were doing them. Perhaps it was other people doing them that gave me the courage to do them myself.

You mentioned working on pieces that you had no intention of ever releasing. Are those diary strips?

No. I think it’s sort of the difference between a diary strip and a personal journal or essay. Lucky sort of started out as diary strips, recounting something that had happened. But even then I was selecting themes to bring out, because there is always an element of storytelling. Nowadays it does seem like a diary, but I’m really looking for something else. I like diary strips, too, but I’m really trying to bring stories out of them.

The “Myspace” story in the new Lucky is certainly more fantastic than just straight diary. Is that an area that you’re interested in pursuing further?

In that case, it’s more of a personal essay. It’s starts as a diary, because something will happen and I’ll write about it, but that’s more of a launching pad. I like that kind of stuff very much. I’m always aiming for stuff like that, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

You’re looking for less straightforward methods for telling the same story.

Well, I guess the idea is my being addicted to the Internet, which I guess is something that people struggle with, nowadays. I was just making a story around that.

Having you being working with the Internet much, in terms of the comics that you’re creating?

I use it a lot for general research, but I actually don’t use the Internet very well [laughs]. I was reading an article about the way the Internet affects the way we read—I guess it sort of proves his point that I couldn’t read the whole article—but it was about how we read and look at some things here and there and go from link to link and skim things. We don’t really read whole articles. Our concentration is very fragmented. It affects the ways that we read books and magazines. Most people are reading less. I think that I never really learned how to read in that fragmentary way, because I still read novels.

That’s interesting, because most of the pieces in Lucky are only a couple of pages.

Yeah, well, it takes me a long time. I wish I could write a graphic novel. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for people to jump from subject to subject and skim links. Our attention is divided up. We can be reading an article and checking our e-mail at the same time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it’s a good skill. Unforuntately, I don’t have it.

Multi-tasking.

Researching and reading on the computer and the Internet.

Is it the lack of technical savvy or more an investment in the physical format that sees so much of your work coming out in print?

Well, I don’t really read a lot of comics on the Internet myself. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with it. Maybe I’m just getting old [laughs].

[Continued in Part Three]

–Brian Heater