Today on the site Annie Mok talks to Maré Odomo.
MOK: As we talked about in our conversation in Comics Workbook #9, the intimacy in your work enacts boundaries. (Cartoonist Laura Knetzger blurbed that the comics are “Searching and sincere, yet guarded.”) In your series Internet Comics, the narrator of that work says “don’t @ me,” and here in this book, the narrator says, “I don’t care right now” and “If I see you, I will walk away.” Who are these narrators? Are they wholly you or a combination of fictionalized elements?
ODOMO: All of the narrators are me. Or versions of myself. They could be anybody but they’re actually me. They’re not anyone else. Those pages are more about the person or people I’m addressing. In Internet Comics, I’m talking about like… having privacy. Or like agency. Like, treat me like a person instead of someone who makes memes for you to reblog. I’m not here for anyone to be like “oh this comic is literally about me” because it’s not. It’s about me, because who else is going to make comics about people like me?
“I don’t care right now” is… I don’t know, exactly what it sounds like. I didn’t really care about that page, I just knew I wanted to say those words. That page is kind of like “I can do whatever I want and I choose to do this.”
The “If I see you” page is about burned bridges and like all the people that screw you over or whatever and try to be friends or forget it ever happened. I’m not going to forget, I’m not going to fight you about it, but I’m not going to be your friend either.
Elsewhere:
Congrats to pal Dash Shaw, whose film My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea is debuting at the New York Film Festival this year.
Leslie Stein is interviewed about her excellent new book, Time Clock, on Chimera Obscura.
And Emma Rios and Brandon Graham are interviewed over at the Paris Review.
