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

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