Jesse

The first funeral I ever attended wasn’t for a family member; it was for a cartoonist.

Three illustrated comics panels done in ink with a grey-blue watercolor wash. Panel one: a woman rides up a hill on a bike. Panel two: she takes off her helmet, looking sad and worried. Panel 3: a wide shot of mourners at a funeral, all looking back at her.

Dylan Williams passed away in 2011, shortly after I’d spent a formative semester as his student in the IPRC’s Comics Certificate Program. He’d battled leukemia for many years, but I didn’t know him as someone struggling with a disease. I knew him as a generous teacher with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure and unsung cartoonists, a champion of small press creators, and a source of quiet humor and encouragement.

I’m almost certain that the first time I met Jesse Hamm—or maybe only saw him—was at Dylan’s funeral.

I realize, looking back, that Steve was there, too. And Greg. And probably countless other Portland comics people who would come to feel like a patchwork family in the years that followed. I was just a newcomer to that crowd at the time, still trying to find my place within the medium, but the funeral left a huge impression on me. I ended up drawing my thesis comic about that year in the IPRC program, and my first convention experience, and Dylan’s death, which led to my first Kickstarter, which led to my becoming an intern at Helioscope (then Periscope Studio), which led to the career I have now, ten years later.

A graphite portrait of Dylan Williams, a middle aged white man with short buzzed hair and a pencil behind his ear. He's smiling gently.
Dylan Williams, by Jesse Hamm

I remember using this portrait Jesse drew for his memorial post about Dylan as reference when working on True Believer. It was uncannily accurate and tender, as were his recollections of Dylan as a publisher and community member.

Toward the end of his post Jesse wrote:

Dylan understood that comics are really for and about people — that people are what give comics value. Like he said elsewhere in that interview:  “Encouraging people is like the greatest feeling in the world.” And he did encourage people. One blogger recalls: “He was able to say …the things I needed to hear in a way that I actually heard them. [H]is support and encouragement changed my life.”

It felt so true to what I knew of this man, even if I’d only known him for a short while.

Three comics panels in ink with a grey-blue watercolor wash. Panel one: the exterior of a building with the words "Individual voice is something to be treasured and respected" coming from a window. Panel two: the words "You've gotta make comics your own way. Every time." over a classroom full of students. Panel three: Dylan saying "Don't forget that" from his seat at the head of the table. Lucy enters the room panel left saying "Hey guys" and clutching a notebook. She's rushed.

I was in the middle of writing a difficult email yesterday morning when I opened the Studio’s Discord page and saw that Jesse was dead. A blood clot in his lung. Sudden and unexpected and impossible and awful and so far away from me at this laptop in California. Far away from my studiomates. Far away from the cemetery where we had buried Dylan a decade ago—the same one where another dear friend buried his mother late last year.

Seeing the outpouring of love and grief on Twitter from cartoonists who’d known Jesse through his threads of advice and educational PDFs, I found myself reaching for that old post about Dylan.

Rereading it this morning wrecked me all over again, because so much of what Jesse wrote about Dylan echoes what people have been saying about him: that he was impossibly knowledgeable, and fucking funny, and deeply opinionated in a quiet sort of way. That he wanted to encourage people. To help us see and appreciate all the thoughtfulness and knowledge that goes into practicing this craft.

An ink and watercolor comics panel showing a classroom full of students seen from outside the window. Dylan sits at the head of the classroom saying "Whatever the project, we have to think about the stakes. We have to ask ourselves: why am I doing this?"

I’ve felt distant from the idea of the Comics Community for a while now, trying to figure out my place in an industry that’s changing so rapidly, caught between different generations and genres of creators.

But this loss, like Dylan’s loss, feels like a smack in the face; a radical recalibration toward what brings us to this practice. What binds us to each other as a wider community. How lucky we are. What a wealth of information and knowledge there is out there. And of course, as with any death, the question of who we are. What we’re doing. How we’re impacting the people around us.

I kept thinking about how much Jesse knew, and what a staggering loss that is, but then yesterday a studiomate told me she’d just drawn a page earlier this week with a piece of his advice in mind. “I literally think of him every time I use it.”

That’s how this works, if we choose it. We share our knowledge and our enthusiasm and we welcome people to the fucking table so they can make the things they came here to make.

Dylan couldn’t have said it better. And now we have to keep saying it for both of them.

Thank you for everything, Jesse. We love you.

Periscope Portrait

I’m sad to report that my internship at Periscope Studio officially came to a close on February 27th. It was an amazing four and a half months, but I’m not going to write too much about what being there meant to me. Not only because I’ll get all mushy and start crying on you guys, but also because…

I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! That’s right. I know. I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. I get to stay. At Periscope. For the foreseeable future. (I’m trying to use real words to talk about this rather than just replacing every letter in this sentence with an exclamation point, can you tell?)

Now, I’m only a lowly Studio Assistant, but it means I’ll continue to work alongside an incredible group of dedicated, powerhouse artists who inspire me to improve every day. If I have to run blogs and scan pages and help with shipping to make that happen, I’m more than happy to do so.

ANYWAY. That’s some of the big news I’ve been sitting on for a while. And boy howdy am I excited about it.

To thank everyone at the Studio for being so welcoming and helpful, I spent part of last week drawing up this group portrait of all the members. Ain’t they a studly bunch?

periscope

I’ll be away in California for the next three weeks helping out with a family medical situation, but I hope to keep you all abreast of what’s on the drawing table during that time. (And I should note that any orders you place in the store while I’m gone won’t ship until I return on April 3rd! Thanks for being patient.)

So long for now!

ROM, Periscope, & Comics Underground

Bad-ass Baggywrinkles reader Aaron Meyers recently asked me to do a commission of ROM the Spaceknight. Who was I to refuse? My apologies to Mr. Meyers, Mr. Gosling, and anyone whose childhood memories I have defaced by creating this thing.

In other news, the first print run of Baggywrinkles #3 is SOLD OUT! Gonna reprint that sucker ASAP, but expect a delay of a couple weeks as I sort out some print quality issues and juggle other comics work. Also: today was my first day hanging out at Periscope Studio, where I’ll be interning for the next three months alongside some of Portland’s finest comics folk. Words don’t really convey how excited I am to be in a place that looks like this:

Also: huge thanks to everyone who showed up at Comics Underground last night to hear Baggywrinkles #3 performed with a live cast and sound effects. It was such a treat to perform in front of all you nice people. Here’s a blurry picture of me being sassy about the Lady Washington (Thanks, Cory!):

That’s all for now! More art soon…