I’m pretty bad at keeping up with new cartoonists. I’m stuck in the world of artists who emerged in the 80s and 90s: Daniel Clowes, Mary Fleener, Julie Doucet, Carol Tyler, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Jim Woodring, Roberta Gregory, Peter Bagge, Chris Ware, Dori Seda.
Lucy Knisley is one of the rare younger cartoonists that I’ve gotten hooked on. (I interviewed Lucy on my podcast Gweek in 2013.) I’m a fan of the “ligne claire” drawing style, which Lucy exemplifies, and her sense of page composition is clean but with the perfect whimsical touch. She also colors her drawings with watercolors, not Photoshop, so they have a nice texture.
Her work is mostly autobiographical. Her 2008 book, French Milk, is an illustrated journal about living (and eating) in Paris with her mother. Her next book, Relish, is about growing up in the food industry.
In 2015 she wrote Displacement, a comic book travelogue about taking her frail grandparents on an ocean cruise. Lucy does not have children, and was not familiar with taking care of dependent people, so she was stunned by how exhausting the “vacation” was. Her 91-year-old grandmother had dementia and didn’t really know who Lucy was, and her 93-year-old grandfather had an incontinence problem that he didn’t care about. Lucy ended up having to wash his trousers every evening when she was able to convince him to take them off.
In between the diary entries about things like waiting in line for 3 hours to board the ship, calling her father asking for help (he wasn’t helpful), and putting up with the bossy ship’s crew, Lucy included excerpts from her grandfather’s WWII journal, which shows him to be an excellent, observant writer, much like Lucy herself.
I felt sorry for Lucy because the trip was stressful and exhausting. She had to deal with vomit, soiled clothing, and lost grandparents on a daily basis. But she had a great sense of humor about her ordeal and her patient and sympathetic care for her grandparents was touching. Lucy entered a new level of adulthood on this trip, and her story of how is happened is fascinating.
