Jessica Abel
Jessica Abel was born on November 15, 1969, in Chicago. She attended Evanston Township High School before going on to Carleton College and later the University of Chicago, giving her an educational path that moved through several institutions before she established herself as a working artist and writer.
Abel works in English as both a comics writer and a comics artist, occupying dual roles within the medium. Early in her career she received the Xeric Award and the Harvey Award for Best New Talent, two recognitions that came during the period when she was building her presence in the field.
Her work sits across both the writing and visual art sides of comics, and she is a citizen of the United States. The combination of the Xeric Award and the Harvey Award for Best New Talent reflects two distinct forms of recognition she earned as she made her way into the industry.
Abel received the Harvey Award for Best New Talent, an honor that arrived alongside the Xeric Award and marked a concrete point of acknowledgment in her career as a comics artist and writer working in English.
Quotes by Jessica Abel
How I draw and how I leave things out is parallel in some ways to the non-verbal soundscape in radio stories.
It's an incredibly supportive and friendly field. Older people want to foster and help younger people. Which is not true of all creative fields, but it is true of comics, and it is true of radio.
What's gratifying for me and interesting is that people are picking up on exactly what I want them to, which is that this is energizing people, and making them want to make stories.
I work daily, but not always on comics. I'm doing quite a bit of writing now, and I teach as well.
I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested in my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.
My drawing, like that of most cartoonists, is intended first of all to be functional: to create believable space and communicate information. My strongest point in drawing has always been my ability to show characters' nonverbal communication through facial expression and posture.
When I'm working on comics, I have to give myself a million deadlines, or I'd never get anything done. Comics are just so hard to make - I find it very difficult to motivate myself.
I sit in front of the notebook and feel like it’s just too late for me. And that this book isn’t working, nothing’s working, everything feels like it’s made of spiders.