17 minute read
An Interview with Gerardo Alba
Gerardo Alba by Audra McNamee
Gerardo Alba
Gerardo Alba is a cartoonist from Mexico City whose work ranges from journalism to slice of life and science fiction. Alba received his M.A. in sequential art from the Savannah College of Art and Design and was a professor of art at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Querétaro, Mexico. His comics have been published by The Nib, Abrams, and Tiny View. In 2015 he co-founded Little Red Bird Press and took on the role of Art Director. In that role he participated in the creation of works like “Sex Bomb Strikes Again,” “Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating,” and “Back Piece.” In 2017 Alba won the Jóvenes Creadores (“Young Creators”) grant from The National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) in Mexico, and in 2018 he won a grant for an artist residency in Angoulême, France from the French Embassy and the Mexican government. He is currently an editor at the Latin American division of Webtoon.
Interview with Gerardo Alba
By Renee Thompson and Lauren Allen
https://jsma.uoregon.edu/GerardoAlba
Renee Thompson: As someone who has worked in multiple different spheres in the comics realm, what specifically pushed you in the direction of journalistic comics? Gerardo Alba: It was 2015, when I was living in Mexico, with my partner—who is American—she also has a background in comics, so I was used to just having shop talk, but every time, every meal, every waking hour, we would talk about comics, or just like whatever was in the news. And at that point, during Trump’s campaign when it started, all of a sudden I found my life completely surrounded. I was thinking about it very often and not in a great way. It was very overwhelming. And I had my only skill set that I had continuously worked on for the entirety of my lifetime was storytelling, so I just put two and two together. I thought that having the background of having been in the U.S. recently, but then being in Mexico, but then still having a connection with the U.S. with my now wife and then girlfriend being American living in Mexico, we had an interesting point of view that we could convey in comics. So that’s how I started working in nonfiction, and that kind of just blew the doors open for me. I had read some comics journalism before, but that was my foot in the door. RT: In the journalistic comics genre, do you have any fanboy loves?
GA: There’s plenty of people in The Nib, like Maki Naro. He is somebody whose work I’ve been following since I was in college. He was doing a lot of science comics at the time, and with time it also turned a bit more political. So I was very interested in his approach. We’ve got to be in the same magazines and websites, which is very exciting. Also Eleri Harris and Matt Bors. They just are such figureheads of comics journalism. Lauren Allen: You are now an editor for Webtoon, but you’re also a comics creator. How do you find the shift to digital has impacted your approach to comics making and how has digital affected the reception and reach of those comics?
GA: In general it’s weird because the process seems so streamlined. I’m still such a big fan of print, but the accessibility that webcomics offers is just mind-blowing, the fact that you can just like blast it, and then immediately so many people can have access to it. It’s something that I’ve always been very interested in, especially coming from Latin America, where I think that there’s so many countries that are connected. We share a language; we’re one after another for the span of a continent—two thirds of a continent. But the comic books that are made in one country do not often break the border. It’s very independent comic book scenes in all of Latin America.
But digital comics break those walls, and immediately it’s accessible to everybody. I remember seeing this phenomenon with this Instagram account, Pictoline. They do a lot of infographics journalism and their market is all of Latin America, all of Hispanic America. And it was just incredible to see how the format, be it Instagram, infinite scroll, Webtoon, or something that adjusts from print to web to mobile (like The Nib), they all serve a different purpose, but you can start to see, like all of the little details that make storytelling function best for each way. LA: How does telling stories about transnationality and border crossing from the perspective of someone who has lived in both Mexico and the U.S. translate into the contradiction that is comics itself? How are you using comics...does it become a cathartic situation?
GA: My first approach with comic journalism was the telling of “Caminata Nocturna.” And it was almost an autobio but making an analysis as we went through the experience. (I say “we” because I took my now wife.) It was cathartic, but it’s also a little bit scary to put yourself there. I think that sometimes to present facts or opinions, in a way separates you from the work, and that’s still doing the work of journalism, but kinda draw some distance. There are definitely some comics where I feel like they need the personal touch, but it’s always scary. It’s always the fear of “Is this comic lessened by me inserting myself into it?” I do not want all the facade and just having it be very preachy. Any piece of information that I have there, any piece of actual data that I might have is lessened by having this cartoony mustachioed drawing in there. So it’s trying to find a balance, and I don’t know
if I actually have hit it. I think it’s just an ongoing thing of gauging what your best storytelling tools are for the journalistic approach of the comic. RT: You addressed it quite eloquently: there’s this struggle, as someone who makes cartoony type art, where you get perceived a certain way. So who do you feel is your audience? GA: That’s a great question, and that’s a question that has been something that I have wondered. Because there’s probably two answers: there’s probably who the audience actually is versus who I would like the audience to be. Sometimes there’s a bigger overlap than others. My answer would be that I want to have comics that could be read by...saying anybody is very idealistic...but a wide spectrum of readers. Very often, when I’m writing a piece I have this approach of stating things but coming from the point of view that I do not want to make any assumptions at the beginning. I don’t want to make any assumptions that the reader has x or y piece of information already in their head. Because then you are losing a lot of people from the get go, so when you present information do not take things for granted, do not take political affiliation, or any connection to a culture, do not take those things for granted. Because a lot of times that’s where a lot of friction derives in all of the political spheres, and it’s from people looking below anybody who’s not on their same side. At the same time, I do post for very liberal websites, so it would be naive for me to say that my audience is anybody. The comments sometimes make it very clear, but the mere fact that there are disagreements in the comments means that it’s actually reaching some people that I wasn’t really anticipating, so that’s always a good thing. (laughs) Once it settles…once the negative comments settle, there’s a very positive [benefit] in receiving that type of thing. LA: Your work covers a lot of sensitive and sometimes traumatic reportage, including immigration and transnationality, and the violence at the border. How do you find a balance between accurate storytelling and overinforming or overwhelming your readers visually? GA: That’s a constant struggle where I wish that I had a formula, because that would make my day way easier on the drafting table. But generally, I think that it’s just finding the statement or the key information that you would like the reader to take away at the very end. Because once you start doing research, you are going to find resources until kingdom come. You’re going to find so much data that if I know I have 10 panels, 20 panels, and I know that there’s enough information for a book, it’s understanding that that’s not what I’m doing: I’m not doing an in-depth. I’m more so giving my point of view, or pointing towards a direction and, hopefully, opening the curiosity on people. But then, using that statement, or the piece of information that I want the reader to take away from the piece, and then trying to disseminate the information that makes a case for that.
It’s almost like putting it side to side: like does this stat— maybe it’s a stat that’s very impactful—but does it help make that point? And sometimes the answer is no, and you let go of information that is hard. There’s testimonials of people that you sometimes let go because there’s not enough space, or numbers that in the abstract it’s easy to let go, but then you know that there’s a lot of people attached to it, and then it’s a little bit harder.
You have to, if not prioritize, think of the final thesis of the project. LA: Your comics move very fluidly between this metaphoric analytical style and very journalistic encounters with a lot of crossover in between the two.
How has comics journalism affected your approach to truth telling and subjectivity? How do you decide what parts of your reportage to include or to scrap when you’re forming a cohesive comic?
GA: First off, thank you for that. I’ll take that as a compliment. My approach to paving the way of the thesis in my pieces is more informed by fiction comics than nonfiction comics. Before 2015, I don’t think I ever thought that I was going to be working in nonfiction or in journalism, so at the same time that I was doing “Caminata Nocturna,” I was trying to pitch a story about a tattooing tiger.
So I was thinking at the time of like the beat sheet, and the three act structure, and making sure that the story flows. It’s just that same idea of storytelling, but you just swap character decisions or conflict to pieces of information. You’re still gonna have this arc, hopefully, that you can take people through the thick of the conflict or the subject matter of the piece, and then at the end either have an idea of what to do, a reflection or something that the readers can relate to bring it back home for them. So it’s just a lot of making lists. If I have 40 panels, I just write panel one, panel two, panel three, and then try to see what is a key part, like the key information for each of those, to make my own beat sheet, but with journalism. RT: In this current newsscape people get information from all sorts of different types of media and there are definitely people who just get news from different social media apps. How do you feel comics journalism will evolve and change into this new age where we’re dealing with things like misinformation and malinformation?
GA: Unfortunately, I think that comics journalism is gonna, like all types of media, be informed by the prospect of putting things too quickly, without doing enough vetting or not getting enough good sources, or just doing something for getting the likes. At the end of the day, a lot of this content is just hosted in social media and getting approval of a certain group with a certain opinion. If you know your audience and you are catering content towards them, inevitably you’re going to fall in some of those pitfalls. So, that’s the biggest risk of comics journalism being a part of the digital landscape, that it’s also subject to those problems. I think inevitably comics journalism will have to realize that they cannot keep up with other types of media, they cannot keep up to the immediacy of a newspaper or an article that’s just written. I’m not putting any judgment or anything on traditional journalism or newsmedia, but by its nature it’s way faster. [In] comics, writing is one thing, and then you have to do a comic, and it takes forever man. It takes so long to do a comic and make it appealing. The direction that I think is more sustainable is either the political strip, like the format of the newspaper strip that is very immediate, very snappy, but also for bigger pieces, just like an essay, the visual essay format is kinda like the future. Because it just gives a more evergreen perspective, or it reflects a certain time, but it is not pretending to be the primary source of information, because I don’t think that comics journalism is ever going to or should be that. I don’t think that’s the point about comics journalism. I equate it to some of the shows, like Last Week Tonight, for example, they’re not breaking news they’re just repackaging it. So that’s basically what we’re doing. We are sometimes giving a different point of view, but we’re not breaking news; we don’t need that immediacy. LA: What is one piece of reportage that stood out to you in terms of its impact on you? GA: Maybe I’m being a little bit skewed, but definitely the Guantanamo Voices scripts that Sarah [Mirk] wrote and some of the testimonials that she had. It was kind of a weird project to be a part of because it was very exciting, but it was also heartbreaking. It was hard to read some of those things, some of the testimonials, some of the personal stories from some of the chapters, so that one was very impactful. Persepolis was, I think, probably the first nonfiction book of that style that I read when I was in high school. Getting comic books and graphic novels in Mexico was kind of hard, so what I would do is go online if I was going to travel to the U.S. and do some research of the best graphic novels and write a list on post-it notes, put it in my pocket, and then I would look at Barnes and Noble. That was my way of sourcing, and I bought some books that I was way too young to understand or some that were not my cup of tea (things that I’ve come to appreciate now), but that [Persepolis] was definitely one that I read then, loved it, read it now, I still love it. I think there’s something very universal about that one.
RT: Correct me if I’m wrong, but in your work with Guantanamo Bay, you actually contacted the person whom you wrote about. Would you like to talk a little bit about that experience? GA: Yeah sure. I actually did not get in contact with him until after I did the piece. To be completely honest, while I was working on it, I was very intimidated by Mark Fallon. All I had to go by was a script, and what he did, and the photos, and he is a counterterrorist expert. I didn’t think, I’m going to reach out to this guy and see what he has to say to this cartoonist. I was a bit intimidated, but then, when I started posting sketches or promoting the book, he is very active on social media, and he started commenting on things. That’s when we started contact, and obviously I had a very narrow way of looking at him, like “His job is who he was.” Of course not, he’s actually super friendly; it’s just that his work is incredibly high-stakes and intimidating for somebody who draws for a living. Fortunately he was very open in his
interviews with Sarah, and he was very descriptive. He also provided descriptions; he provided photos; he provided a lot of things that were a prime resource for a book about a place that is so secretive. In hindsight, if I were to start on the book again I would definitely have made contact beforehand. But, hey, you live, you learn. LA: As someone who has been both the student and the professor; the writer and the artist, the editor—you wear a lot of different hats—are there any pieces of advice that you have or anything you wish you knew as an aspiring comics creator? GA: It’s funny; that’s a very common conversation with my wife. You will have to cut me off at some point if it gets too much. First thing: there are some pieces of advice that are perceived to be these common understandings that I would just say completely disregard. There was this saying that I encountered both as a student and then a professor that if you work doing what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s not true. That’s not true at all. You’ll end up working way way more hours, being way more invested; it’s going to be more taxing, so that’s rough, but it does have its higher highs. Similar to that, very often I remember hearing that you’re only as good as your last project or as your last book. I would say that’s bullshit. I don’t think there’s any truth in that, or if there is some truth to that, that’s not the right mindset to have with any project. There are some projects that you should learn to just finish, hit the deadline, and is it the best thing you’ve done? No, but at the end of the day, you’re a commercial artist. As high and mighty as we cartoonists like to think we are, we’re commercial artists, so we do have deadlines. We have to learn when to finish a project or when to let a project go. There’s plenty of unfinished scripts that maybe you dedicated a lot of time, but not everything is going to end up being a project. I think that other industries are better about understanding that. I’m sure there’s so many unfinished Hollywood scripts that you just let go. Your breakout project doesn’t have to be the first idea that comes to mind so.
And then, as a general advice, every skill, every piece of information can always be beneficial if you let it. Like you can learn to do hand lettering with the Ames Lettering Guide, and then never touch one in your life. But it might help your digital lettering. And that’s a very simple example, but if you put it in the realm of any additional skill, any language, any
book that you read, at some point you never know what’s going to inform your work. So be open to doing that, and be open to changing—as you were saying—changing hats. You’re not always going to be the inker. Sometimes you’re just gonna have to shovel some shit, and you’re just gonna have to do some projects that wouldn’t be your dream project, and that’s fine.
Even if it’s comics, take it as a job. Every job comes with red tape or parts of it that you don’t want. I really like teaching. There are a lot of things about academia that I didn’t like. There’s a lot of things about being an editor that I don’t like. You’re always going to find that, but you just have to balance it, so take off the rose-tinted glasses. And it sounds pessimistic, but I actually think that it’s very freeing when you learn you’re not doing art every single day if you’re a cartoonist, let alone a nonfiction cartoonist.
I do not have that mindset of you have to sketch every waking hour. There are weeks when I do not draw, and I have come to really enjoy that. I don’t remember the last time that I bought a sketchbook. I just draw for work, and that’s fine. If you can sketch all the time, more power to you, but it’s not a requirement. Everybody finds their own balance. LA: Any comics or projects you’re nerding out over right now? GA: I’ve been revisiting Emily Carroll, and I had never read her work printed only digital; it’s beautiful either way. And Paco Roca; I’m always surprised at what he can do. Just excited that I can now buy his books in English, now that a lot of them are getting translated, so that way my wife can also read them, so it feels like a better investment for the household.
