Lucky and Mirror, Window

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell
and
Mirror, Window: An Artbabe Collection by Jessica Abel

Apparently Alison Bechdel, Jessica Abel, Gabrielle Bell, and Lauren Weinstein were in Bryn Mawr last fall, speaking about graphic novels. That would have been an interesting group to see. I finished these two books today, and again it was interesting to read the two together. Both are collections of mini-comics -- three of Bell's Lucky and four of Abel's Artbabe, along with some non-fiction pieces.

Both Abel and Bell write stories about urban women to whom not much happens, in a dramatic sense. The focus is on conversation and interaction. Bell's drawing style evolves through the three issues of Lucky, going from very sparse to a little more detailed and shaded. In the introduction Bell talks about trying to change her form from diary to short stories, by being more "selective". But there's not much of a difference in quality of story between the first and last issue. Bell's main storyline is the struggle to make money as an artist. She spends a lot of time being frustrated about small apartments and boring jobs (including work as a nude model for art classes) but the constant, for her, is her work. In many of the frames, the main character is sitting at her desk, drawing.

Abel seems to be influenced more by the traditional superhero comics, in that she draws strong-bodied people, fully-shaded. She's particularly good at drawing the faces of gorgeous women. The Artbabestories are more diverse than Bell's, about different sets of characters each time. The one that sticks with me most is the story of a professional ballerina who is dealing with the fact that, at age 22, her career is almost over. Many of the characters are kind of shallow, kind of impractical -- one needs to get a ride home from a club to change her uncomfortable shoes. But they're all searching for something, not entrenched in accepting their lives exactly as they are, and I admire that.

What I like about these two artists and their books is that they seem to present the idea that we artistic people are all in this together. I haven't read a lot of books about living in cities, and I think that's made the transition from Maine to Philly particularly hard for me. I'm used to houses, not apartments. Most of the people I know wouldn't be willing to put up with living in a tiny space in order to live in the city. These women would, and the characters they write about are willing to move from place to place in order to make better lives for themselves and better spaces for their art. One of Abel's stories discusses a novelist's desire to pick up and move to New York City because he thinks that the atmosphere there will be better for his writing. Many of his friends don't understand, but they have an interesting discussion about whether it's brave or stupid to take that kind of risk. I don't have a large group of friends to discuss this sort of thing with, so it's interesting to experience it in fictional form.