Autobiographical Comics - 1990s

1990s

Autobiographical work took the alternative comics scene by storm during this period. The autobiographical genre had turned into English-speaking alternative comics subculture's "signature genre" in much the way that superhero stories dominated the American mainstream comic books, the stereotypical example recounting the awkward moment which followed when, the cartoonist sitting alone in a coffee shop when their ex-girlfriend walks in. However many artists pursued broader themes.

• Maltese-American Joe Sacco appeared as a character in his journalistic comics, beginning with Yahoo (collected in Notes from a Defeatist) and Palestine.

• Howard Cruse's graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby told a fictionalized version of Cruse's young adulthood as a gay man in the South during civil rights conflicts.

• In the anthology series Real Stuff, Dennis Eichhorn followed Pekar's example of writing true stories for others to illustrate, but unlike Pekar, emphasized unlikely tales of sex and violence. Many of the Real Stuff stories took place in Eichhorn's native state of Idaho. In 1993, Eichhorn received an Eisner Award nomination for Best Writer and his Real Stuff series received nominations for both Best Continuing Series and Best Anthology. In 1994, Real Stuff again received a Eisner Award nomination for Best Anthology.

• One of the most popular self-published mini-comics of the 1990s in America, Silly Daddy, depicted Joe Chiappetta's parenthood and divorce, sometimes realistically and sometimes in a parallel fantasy story.

• Julie Doucet's series Dirty Plotte, from Canada, began as a mix of outlandish fantasy and dream comics, but moved toward autobiography in what was later collected as My New York Diary.

• A trio of Canadian friends, Seth (Palookaville), Chester Brown (Yummy Fur, The Playboy, I Never Liked You), and Joe Matt (Peepshow), gained rapid renown in North America for their different approaches to autobiography. Brown and Matt were also notorious for depicting embarrassing personal moments such as masturbation and nose-picking. Seth created some controversy by presenting realistic fictional stories as if they had actually happened, not as a ploy to fool writers but as a literary technique. However some readers did get fooled.

• Phoebe Gloeckner created a series of semi-autobiographical stories drawing on her adolescent experiences with sex and drugs in San Francisco, collected in A Child's Life. She later revisited similar material in her 2004 illustrated novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl.

• Seven Miles a Second, written by painter David Wojnarowicz and illustrated by James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook, was based on Wojnarowicz's life and his response to the AIDS epidemic.

• The graphic novel David Chelsea in Love described the eponymous author's romantic difficulties in New York City and Portland.

• Rick Veitch told the story of his twenties entirely through a dream diary in the Crypto Zoo volume of Rare Bit Fiends.

• Ariel Schrag's tetralogy Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise, about discovering her sexual identity in high school, was unusual in having been mostly completed while in high school.

• Jim Valentino's A Touch of Silver portrayed his unhappy youth in the 1960s.

• English artist Raymond Briggs, best known for his children's books, told the story of his parents' marriage in Ethel and Ernest.

• James Kochalka started to turn his daily life into a daily four-panel strip starting in 1998, collected in Sketchbook Diaries, and later in the webcomic, American Elf.