Laydeez Do Comics Recap [1]

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post, or sent me some other words of support and encouragement. I did in fact manage to stand in front of 30ish people on Monday and talk about not only my artwork, but all the really personal stuff that I'm writing my graphic novel about, without going to pieces. I couldn't have asked for a more receptive, supportive audience: they listened attentively, they laughed in all the right places, and they asked me lots of interesting questions. If you were there, thank you too. I hope this experience will be a major step towards getting over my mortal fear of public speaking....

As promised, I'm going to share some of the content of my talk here over the next few days. There will also be a commentary of the entire evening on the Laydeez Do Comics blog in a few days' time, written by Mike Medaglia. I'm really intrigued to see/hear how my talk came across (I hope it went as well as I thought!), so I'll let you know when that's available. But instead of starting by posting materil from my own talk, I thought I'd introduce you properly to my fellow speakers who all contributed to the brilliant evening.

The evening began with everyone present being asked to introduce themselves, give a little of their background and answer the 'question of the month'. This time it was something that scared you recently. It was clear everyone in the room was as nervous about speaking up as I was, and this really broke the ice and helped me (and I'm sure the other speakers) feel less uncomfortable. Still, I was glad that it was Andrew Godfrey, not me, who was up first....

Andrew presented some of the work from his graphic novel about living with cystic fibrosis, and engaged me immediately with his sense of humour. It's one thing for me to face everything that happened to me in the past with laughter, but Andrew's illness is not in the past. He was quite candid about his own situation, medical issues and even life expectancy, even admitting that he uses laughter and playing the clown as a way to deal with things. But that's what I loved so much about his work: brutally honest, not shying away from the facts, raw and genuine.



I followed Andrew, and I think his attitude and sense of humour helped them to laugh at my story too - which is what I was hoping for.

After me, Professor Charles Hatfield spoke about his teaching at California State University, where he teaches courses on comics in the department of English. I was most inspired by his approach and passion for comics as a medium that spans several disciplines: in my opinion this is why comics are such an excellent storytelling tool, but also perhaps why they are so difficult to define and to accept in the more usual confines of how we describe art and literatue. Charles' talk only got me started on thinking about these things, and I have much more thinking to do: this interdisciplinarity (Charles' word, not mine!), or rather the lack of it, was one of the main reasons I was uncomfortable as a scientist....but that's for another blog, another time. Charles also introduced the book which sprang from his PhD thesis: Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. I can't wait to read it.



Finally, the evening ended with Joumana Medlej talking about her comic Malaak, Lebanon's first superhero. Joumana grew up in Beirut surrounded by civil war, and this provides the backdrop to her comics. I loved the details Joumana pointed out in the images, like the mosaics and artefacts in the public buildings encased in concrete to protect them from destruction in the war: not crucial to the story and I probably wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't pointed it out, but it lent an authenticity to a (mostly) fantastical story. Malaak is self-published (yay!) and is also available as an iPad app, if you're that way inclined...