"Andy, how do you keep from going crazy?"

Throughout reading Lucky, I began to question the unique quality of the graphic memoir--its bilinear existence as an artistic form of 'memoir' and 'cartoon.' How does it work as a piece of art that mechanically uses a sequential framework to fling the story along, how does it work as a medium of intersection, juxtaposing drawings and textual narration, how does it become successful, engaging, and representative of reality and realism through its memoir-esque quality?

For me, interestingly enough, the answers divulge and differentiate. And lucky for me, the way Lucky dealt with these questions formulated a multiplicity of answers.

I highly enjoyed Lucky. I felt like the definitive black lines and minimalistic drawings provided a landscape and environment that reached an immediate directness to realism, something more relatable when compared to a more intricate and highly detailed cartoon. I liked how Sailor brought Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics to our attention. In a way, I agree with his statement--Lucky's minimalism helped me connect with the narrator quite readily and immediately. I didn't necessarily "see myself," but I connected with Gabrielle and her semi-autobiographical memoir with an instantaneous, fleeting of joy that's reminiscent of when I meet a stranger who could relate to my troubles and ills with ease. Her black and white drawings almost came off a bit more honestly, as strange as that may seem. They shattered the walls of the panels, if you will, and their sequential humdrum--they way she narrated, how her voice was in media res and set up each scene with authority, how her comics read like a diary, how her voice sounded journalistic and humorous--she enclosed the distance that I felt with Laurie Sandell's The Impostor's Daughter, and I found that difference compelling and delightful. Both graphic memoirs use different chapter book breakdowns and jumped from one moment to the next through a linear, narrative framework of panels, and they somehow dealt with distance and narration quite differently and wonderfully. For me, how you can tell a story through a graphic memoir has opened my mind to the myriad of possibilities with the genre's narrative forms. At first glance, you would think that the graphic memoir is banal and simplistic--you use sequence and a linear narrative to tell a story--but that's not the case. There are many ways to weave your story across the blankness of the page, and how Gabrielle Bell did it stuck to my soul. She was the tortured artist living the banality of life. I commiserated with her, laughed with her, drank a glass of red wine or two alone with her. Her relationship with Tom was sweet and endearing and awkwardly monotonous and passionate and insatiable all at the same time--I couldn't help but not relate.

I thoroughly enjoyed how Gabrielle manipulated her panels in Lucky #1, #2, #3, and her extra stories (which read to me like short stories, and her last one was my favorite; it was so fun and almost Aimee Bender-esque [I'm referring to her short story, "The Rememberer," where the narrator's lover experiences a backwards evolution]). The six panels in #1 was a bit difficult to keep up with--the text was rather small--but it was still a brisk read and the lines were much thinner and the spatial detail of the panels and their backdrop were less descriptive. The text took the center stage in #1, which made the tonal expression culminate to a diary-like, journaling-type of writing, but it helped form the narrator and her memoir; it helped build who she was, what her world was like while she was trapped in the confines of her mind, and how she perceived the world artistically, idealistically, and how it also failed her. The dates helped move along the monotony tone of everyday life humorously, and it provided a fresh way to analyze that monotony. The hunt for Tom's apartment in New York city was definitely a great subplot that undercut her artistic frustration. It provided the tension of the artisan's life--how to live  (eat, sleep, keep oneself afloat) versus the creation of art. Tom's subplot flooded into her own plot of searching for a job and making a living, to how she dealt with her crazy apartment mates and landlords' fallout and disdain for each other, to why she came back to modeling and settled with it, coping with the nude occupation by sucking it in and doing it. I loved the last panels where her "self" becomes fully drawn and more detailed, and then the panels shift back to the minimalism and she's walking down the street singing: "At least I'm not modeling!" It's a great way to converge the reality and survival of the artist, and to do it with the immediacy and charming black, fine lines/drawings. It just made me appreciate Lucky even more.

I loved #2 and #3, how Gabrielle took out the six panels and replaced it with four, large panels that filled up most of the blank page. The details were more filled out, the use of empty space was more direct, and you can see through the progression of the panels her growth as an artistan and cartoonist. One of my most favorite panels is on page 54, where her feet is placed in the water bubbles and fish and lizards are swimming about, surrounding her toes. The panel moved like a film and it's like Gabrielle shifted her camera (or angles within the panels) to a more closed position, like a very close third. I loved how Gabrielle used the boldness and directness of the color black more, especially in the panels where she began to sell her comic books on the street. The panel where she's trying to climb the stairs and her supplies fall and collapse--with the stairs heightened by the background's/hallway's blackness--alludes to, at least in my mind, the tale of Orpheus and his wife. Instead of looking away form her art--her books and supplies--she climbs the stairs looking directly at them, and she fails. Her materials collapse. When she finally puts everything together, Tom unknowingly gives her a compliment that's brash and she doesn't receive it well. Maybe it's because of her failure to sell any books at the vendor, which influenced her reception of it, disallowing her to receive his comment with heart. Whatever the case, the story/panels shift immediately (in #2 and #3, they shift without warning, but you feel that narrative arc. Each change of scene/moment is not recorded with a date as it was in #1; however, each narrative arc has a closing [almost that of a short story]. Though it's a bit more abrupt, the moments fit and blend into each other, like an abstract painting, or watercolors blending on a canvas). You get a feeling of abrupt loss or misunderstanding in this arc panel on page 64, but it doesn't make Gabrielle stop her art. On the next story/panel arc, she's in a park with a friend discussing her isolation, her feelings of failure as an artisan, and her friend Andy is able to put her back into perspective. It was lovely shift that led one scene into the other, and it was thematic, almost cyclical.

I could go on and on about #3, but I'll just say for now that I loved how more detailed its backdrops and panels were, how Gabrielle was even more drawn out than #2, and the use of four, large, focused panels. The French boys were darling and rambunctious, she used the monotonous humdrum of her job as a jewelry maker as another way to analyze the artist's frustration with survival and creation of art, and I loved how she focused on her body (through her drawings and scenes) and the awkwardness of social situations. I also could go on and on about her Extra Stories, which I loved. As I said, the last one was my personal favorite. The magical realism of the hole was fun and integrated well with the whimsicality of her voice and tonal style. I wished she used the hole a bit more throughout, to be honest. I just loved it. It was such a compelling and fun plot device.

And last but not least: the last line of the book... loved, loved it.  I felt like most of my life is reminiscent of that very line, whether it comes to my husband (why else would I be in Norfolk, alone, in a hotel, in a city foreign and strange to me?) or my writing (it's why I'm here at Mills, isn't it?)

"But with surprising ease, I slid inside, to go and be with the one I love" (111).

~ Melissa Sipin