Island of Memory is Volume 1 of WILD MAN - The Natural History of Georg Wilhelm Steller, a work I have spent several years researching, writing and drawing. Im currently at work on volumes 2-3, looking to wrap up all general project research within the next year. In 2008, after years of developing various mediocre comics projects and stories, and cultivating for myself an embarrassing, idiotic, gladhanding adolescent cartoonist persona that I still struggle to manage (Good morning, Facebook) I was beginning to question the validity of my work as a cartoonist. I was also broke and on a whim accepted a 6-month contract to work as a ships steward aboard a small touring vessel. Within a month I had stepped off a plane and onto a ship in Sitka, and in retrospect saw the trajectory and arc of my life that had delivered me there. In SE Alaskas Inside Passage I began learning firsthand about forest succession, glacial retreat, and began for the first time recognizing regional tree and animal species. A dormant interest in science and natural history was (re)awakening (and eventually, I returned to school for Environmental Studies); I was introduced to Native Alaskan cultural traditions and their experiences with Russian expansion in the North Pacific. Meanwhile, the ship I worked aboard was constantly surrounded in the water by marine wildlife—by plants and animals that would profoundly change my life and worldview. I am painfully/acutely aware of how clichéd this all sounds, to become transformed by nature. But I also cannot deny that the moments of terror, elation, bewilderment and wonder I experienced alone in the remote wilderness rearranged or fixed in my mind a new way of considering my relationship with the world. I emerged with a healthy fear and new-found respect for nature. It took months for me to begin to understand what I had really been through. But the impulse to share what I was learning and seeing—to compel or inspire through my artistic efforts a desire in others to understand and perhaps even preserve the natural integrity of ecosystems, and to see how human beings, for better or worse, are emotionally, physically, and spiritually bound inextricably to the natural environment—was immediate. Thus, the book began to take shape. There is no question about the legitimacy of the comics medium as a pure art form. But comics is unique in its accessibility, it is a peoples art form. It is easy to dismiss advanced technologies or social media or the urban experience as impure compared to the natural environment. But I dont see it that way. The world follows a continuum, and we find our places throughout, among its phenomena. Despite our best efforts to control it and map it, the world is still a vast and wild place, worth getting lost in. I dont make money from Island of Memory sales and Ive already spent my advance. So, why am I sharing all of this with you? I dont feel as if I owe anyone an explanation, but I wanted to let you know why I am doing what I do. Of course, my story is irrelevant in the big picture, and this is all simply an absurd response to the absurdity of existence in an indifferent, infinite void. But the exploring and the writing and the paper and the drawing and the ink and the mind figuring out how to share all of it is all part of that infinite continuum, and its the thing that gives my life meaning. It compels me to go on.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 17:26:50 +0000