En aparté (Interview): Melaina infirmière et comics girl

Melaina is working as a nurse on her day job but, she is also working in the comic book industry. She is making her own autobiographical comics.  I had a discussion with Melaina in which we discuss how she works on her comics and how she manage to do it along with her day job as a nurse.

Lex: You work as a nurse and you are a comic book artist, how do you manage your time to work on comics? Do you schedule some comic time in your calendar?

Melaina: I work a 32-hour work week as a nurse, which allows me the rest of the week to do comics. I am not disciplined enough to schedule time to work on my comics when I am working alone. But I do schedule « drawing dates » with fellow cartoonists on a fairly regular basis. I also schedule coffee shop time with friends who write or do other creative projects that can be completed in a coffee shop. On occasion, instead of a coffee shop, we’ll hang out at someone’s house or in a park. Fortunately, my drawing equipment is easy to transport. I am definitely more productive when I’m spending time with a creative buddy. At home, I am easily distracted by other projects or tasks.

Lex: So you are group of artist that get their inspiration from the other members of the groups? How does it works, do you throw some ideas on the table about a story or something else and you get something out of the discussion for your comic books?

Melaina: I have been part of 2 formal groups. I used to attend the « San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy. » They meet as a group twice per month and usually « jam. » What that has looked like, most often, is that someone arrives with a general topic or theme. Then we pass around multiple pages of numbered paper. I may draw in the first frame of page 2, for instance. Then someone else will draw the next frame and so on until all of the pages are full. And somehow, we try to connect the story line into one cohesive piece. I often enjoyed doing the last frame of a page. For instance, I would draw the last frame of page 1 and try to bridge the storyline between page 1 and whatever the person who did the first frame of the second page drew. What I liked about this practice was that it forced me to think outside of my own box and to draw things that I would not usually draw. My comics are autobiographical and for instance, I have not had much experience with guns, so I rarely draw guns. However, one project at the Cartoonist Conspiracy was « Noir. » For that comic, I needed to draw a gun to have the story make any sense. I enjoyed being challenged with something that was foreign to my own personal genre of writing.

The other group I used to attend was the « Sunday Nights Comic Group. » This group was very different. We met once a month and each person would have the same amount of time to present what they were currently working on and get feedback on it. We would all help one another as we each grew with our own art. Some of the biggest gifts I received from that group were related to my main character and my comic covers. When I started out self-publishing, I was struggling with the covers for my comics. Frankly, I just didn’t like my covers. My group asked me to pick out 3 or 4 of my favorite comic covers by other artists whom I admired. We then talked about what the covers I liked all had in common. This activity profoundly changed the appearance of my covers; I was so much happier with them. My main character is modeled after me, as my comics are autobiographical. I quickly developed an iconic image that I used whenever illustrating myself. But over time, my style of drawing started to evolve in a different direction. This group had a fascinating conversation about iconic images seen in comics and the evolution of well-known comic characters, such as Mickey Mouse (see for an example) as part of a conversation about where I should go with how I was illustrating my main character.

Currently, my « group of artists » is much less formal. I have individual friends from many forms of creative expression, such as fashion designers, photographers, writers, painters, knitters, singer/songwriters, musicians, dancers, performers, jewelry-makers, chefs, interior designers and of course, fellow cartoonists. I’ve been pleasantly surprised where some of us have overlapped in our work. For instance, I asked a fashion designer friend to help me broaden the wardrobe of my characters, which was a fun practice. Instead of a formal group, I am now part of a broader community of artists whom all support one another in our individual creative projects. Many of these friends know one another, so we socialize less formally and offer one another encouragement. Having community support, in whatever form it takes, has been invaluable to me in creating my comics.

Lex: Since your job is quite difficult, is your comics a kind of therapy A way to exteriorize your self and take some emotionnal distance from your job ?

Melaina: Yes and no. When I first started making comics, I had just gone through a bad breakup. I was super mad at my ex. Madder than I’d been with anyone in a very long time. And I didn’t know what to do with that anger. Conincidentally, at that same time, I had been painting with my friend MariNaomi in her studio. She is also a cartoonist. I was self-publishing short-story memoir pieces and painting and MariNaomi suggested I put the visual art and the written together and start making comics. So those first two comics, given what was going on for me, turned into a place where I vented my anger at my ex. Given my profession as a hospice nurse, I decided to call that first collection of comics, « Death, Dating & Other Disasters. » I was only playing around with drawing comics at the time and hadn’t drawn any about death and dying yet, so the « Death » component of that very first volume ended up being some poetry I’d written about my job that I threw in there instead. My comics continue to be an informal « art therapy » for me, but I rarely write about my work as a nurse.

While yes, my job as a hospice nurse can be quite difficult, I spent 2 years writing prolifically on a blog about my early experiences with death (http://deathmaiden.blogspot.com). That writing was also therapeutic at the time and helped me to come to terms with my own mortality (well, as much as one can, really). So my nurse-related stuff doesn’t overlap with my comics as much as one might think. It’s been suggested to me that I illustrate some of the posts from that old blog. And that’s been in the back of my mind as a possibility, but new life experiences never cease to happen that I decide to write about instead.

That being said… My comics definitely support my nursing in that drawing comics feeds my spirit. And although being a nurse can feed my spirit; at times it can be quite draining. Drawing comics will often « refuel my tank » so to speak. There is a part of my mind that is very scientific and likes the art and science that are a part of nursing, but there is also the highly creative side of me that needs to express itself creatively, which I do through my comics. And I find inking comics very meditative, so that meditational time helps me perform better as a hospice nurse as well. Nursing and comics have created a kind of balance for me. Homeostasis, as we’d call it in nursing lingo.

Lex: What are your influences and what kind of comic books do you read?

Melaina: My main influences are primarily other self-published artists. My mentor, MariNaomi, has been my biggest influence; she is having her first graphic novel published by a major publishing company in 2011. Some of my other favorite local cartoonists whose work I follow most closely include Jason Martin, Briana Miller and Andrew Goldfarb. Josh Frankel is the cartoonist whose covers I was inspired by (mentioned in question #2). I also enjoy graphic novels. My favorite is Blankets by Craig Thompson. My favorite book of all-time is Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner, which was done in a multi-media format, which included comic segments.

Lex: How is it to publish your comic books?

Melaina: What a great question! I was the Artist-in-Residence at the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California in November 2009. For that event, I taught children (and some adults who were considering getting started in making comics) how I self-publish my comics. I created a little flip book that went step-by-step into how I make comics.  I made illustrations for each step of my process, from coming up with the idea, to creating an outline and doing some research, to sketching out panels in pencil and then inking them. I usually self-publish the comics by scanning the pages into my computer, cleaning them up a bit in Adobe Photoshop, laying them out old-school using Microsoft Word, printing an original and taking it to a copy shop. In the beginning, I folded and stapled the comics myself. But as my comics got longer and thicker, I have had to ask the copy shop to fold and staple for me. Since Bewildered Bisexual was in full-color, I sent that one into a print shop. I now have a Melaina Comics iPhone app (http://tinyurl.com/melainacomicsapp) as well. That’s been an easy way to share my comics in full-color without the geographic limitations of a convention or store; though I only have a small sampling of my work in this first version of the app. I’m hoping to publish some of my longer and more popular pieces this way, but perhaps using the iPad to allow for a larger format.

Lex: How do you promote your comics?

Melaina: I do most of my sales at comic conventions. I’ve had tables at some of the bigger national conventions, including WonderCon and the Alternative Press Expo. I haven’t made my way to ComicCon yet, though. I prefer small, local conventions. In San Francisco, my favorite is ZineFest. Not only do I make my best sales there, but I also enjoy the community and being amongst other self-published, like-minded folk. This is going to be the first year that I attend a convention outside of San Francisco. I’m heading to the East Coast (of the U.S.) and am delighted to say I’ll be attending Small Press Expo this year.

I have also carried my comics in some local comic book stores in San Francisco, such as Whatever Comics, Isotope, Needles & Pens and the bookstore for the Cartoon Art Museum. And I have a Facebook page for Melaina Comics, twitter (http://twitter.com/melaina), and do some sales through my website (www.melainacomics.com).

Lex: What are your upcoming projects? You mentioned your most recent comic book, « Crash Course, » what can you tell me about it?

Melaina: « Crash Course » is the comic I’m currently working on. I hope to have it completed this summer. All of my comics are autobiographical. How do I describe this comic without giving too much away? Let’s see… I learned to drive when I was 16 years old, but then didn’t have a car for about 10 years. This comics depicts my starting to drive a car again after those 10 years. And let’s just say there were quite a few mishaps along the way.

Again I want to thank her for doing this with me. Don’t hesitate to visit her website www.melainacomics.com

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