I'm not very artistic. I may be a writer but that doesn't make me an artist. My specialty is factual writing, not creative. The name of HigherEd Anxiety was inspired from one of my favorite movies that I recently watched (Mel Brook's High Anxiety). My comic focuses on what has been dominating my thoughts lately – graduation and my future. My humble artistic skills are brought to you by InDesign.
Lynda Barry's One!Hundred!Demons! was fresh in my memory when I started on this, and I let her inspire me. Though Barry's comic is much more detailed and colorful, I tried to mimic her message. Graduation is a rite of passage, and many of Barry's demons reflected issues that we face in childhood and during our rites of passage. My demons in this comic are self doubt and stress. They are represented by snapping teeth eating away at me. Barry struggles to overcome her demons in each chapter of her comic just as I struggle to overcome mine in the comic above. After I formally introduce my demons, the next frame shows me trying to beat them off with a newspaper. I primarily chose newspaper as my weapon of choice because it represents my career choice. But it also shows how I view these demons – beatable. You use newspaper to sway away an annoying bug that's buzzing around your head. My demons of self doubt and stress are just that, annoyances in my head that I need to just swat away.
I also channeled Art Spiegelman's Maus in my comic. I always found his use of masks as interesting. They represented the different races, but also provided a sort of anonymity. Spiegelman said in an interview with The Comics Journal that one reason he chose to represent the characters in animal masks is that it allows the readers to envision themselves in the story. Scott McCloud echos this sentiment in Understanding Comics, he said that humans will look for human characteristics in objects, so they will try to relate to those objects and will pay more attention to them. I chose to represent myself as a minimalistic stick figure in an attempt to employ McCloud and Spiegelman's theory. The figure is a blank slate that audience members can drop themselves into, it doesn't even have a face or any details that would point to a certain gender. I also think that the topic is a popular one that many soon-to-be graduates can relate to.
I relate a lot to this as an English major nearing graduation! Mind, I'm flying the coop and pursuing a different field for graduate study... but I can say that I have no regrets about my undergrad major and I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised that employers really appreciate the strong critical thinking/reading/writing skills that English majors (and liberal arts majors in general) have to offer.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I try to remind myself is that there really are no "safe" choices in life. It may be hard to get started, and it may take a little longer to get to where you want to be in your field, but you could and probably would be in the same boat even if you picked a "safe bet" like business, right?
The stick figure was particularly effective. I saw myself (makes me feel like I am nothing but an ego, haha) in that stick figure with an attitude standing in front of McMicken and felt sad and stressed upon finishing as if I were reading my own story (even when the details are totally different).
Thanks for sharing, dear. I wish you luck on graduation! You'll get places; don't worry.
Very evocative images. I like how clearly you conjure the fears associated with graduation!
ReplyDeleteI do agree with Alyssa (for obvious reasons!) that having an English major doesn't make you unemployable at a all--and that many employers prefer hiring an English major to those in less writing-centric fields.