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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
San Francisco's comics community was full of artists using controversial and ultra-personal material, so when Gloeckner began to show her work to local cartoonists -- some of whom were casual acquaintances of her mother -- most weren't shocked by its content. It was her talent that caught their attention.
Diane Noomin, creator of "DiDi Glitz" and co-editor of "Twisted Sisters," an edgy comic by women cartoonists that greatly influenced Gloeckner, recalls a teenaged Gloeckner showing up at her apartment to show her work. "Even then I thought she was way better than many cartoonists who were already in print," Noomin says.
"I remember thinking, when we looked at her work, nobody would believe they were done by a teenage girl," says Noomin's husband, Bill Griffith, creator of "Zippy the Pinhead." "They were so beyond her years in every way. Phoebe was speaking with a very honest and strangely mature voice."
Gloeckner continued to publish a few comics a year in small underground comic books like "Weirdo" and "Young Lust." "You have absolute freedom when you know that very few people will see it," she says. "There were no limitations as to what you could depict or write about. It was incredibly freeing, and I really enjoyed that."
But instead of eking out a living as a full-time cartoonist, Gloeckner decided to explore her interest in science at San Francisco State University; she was determined to get an education, unlike her artist-addict father. She received a master's degree in medical illustration from the University of Texas and began a career drawing pamphlets for doctor's offices and pharmaceutical companies. Her technical training is immediately evident in Gloeckner's work, in her intimate knowledge of the human body and in her objective, distant eye. Her illustrations are precise, capturing the most subtle facial expressions. "She's one of the very best draftsmen in comics, period," says Griffith. "The drawings are so fully detailed that you can gain as much from a close-up of someone's face as you can from a page of text." Noomin agrees: "Due to her medical illustration background she has the ability to depict things so perfectly and true and therefore it's more shocking to people. You can't ignore it."
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In a wooden cabinet at the back of her studio, Gloeckner's teenage diaries are stored in a giant plastic container. She pulls out a blue folder, worn with age, and shows me the tattered typewritten pages that evoke lines from "Diary." Aside from the run-on sentences and misspellings, it's unmistakably Minnie's story. I catch an actual passage that I recognize from "Diary." "Lovely lovely colorful daytime. How could you exchange it for a drunken night?"
Gloeckner also wrote in a Hello Kitty diary, which she carried around San Francisco, writing in coffee shops and diners. The first entries are neat, the handwriting large and round and childish, the dates carefully recorded in the small spaces at the top. By the end, during her time with "Tabatha" on the streets of the Tenderloin, the pages are stained with lipstick and blood, the writing haphazard and messy.
But even though "Diary" is based on her own diaries, and even though the book's cover is a picture of Gloeckner at 15, she hesitates to label it autobiographical, or even semi-autobiographical. She's been asked this question so many times; answering it obviously frustrates her.
"OK," she says, taking a deep breath. "I believe that all art is about the artist," she says. "So, yeah, my work is about me. But being an artist -- art is artifice, it's creation. By reading that book, you're not experiencing what I experienced. You're perhaps experiencing my interpretation of it, but you're bringing yourself to it. In that way, I always hesitate to say this is a true story. I'm not attempting in any way to make documentary. You can never represent everything. It's always a selective process.
"I mean, really, my motivation is, 'This all happened to me. I feel really totally fucked-up. I don't understand any of this. Let's look at it. Let's not look at it sideways or make it look prettier, but let's just look at it for what it is.' I think the reason people relate to it is because I don't avoid things that may seem unpleasant. I don't really judge things ... I just look at them."
"Diary" is different, somewhat, from Gloeckner's actual adolescence: She omitted unnecessary characters, merged characters, and crafted an ending. But even though she refers to Minnie as a character, the two are so intertwined that Gloeckner moves seamlessly between referring to herself and referring to Minnie.
"As I grew older, I had experiences that made me feel that perhaps Minnie didn't have such a great upbringing," she says. "It's possible to develop a compassion for yourself ... it's almost this schizophrenic thing, where you can look at yourself and think, 'Gee, that poor girl, I wish I could help her.'
"In everyday life I tend to hate myself half the time, but yet, I love that poor little girl, and look at all those assholes -- I've really got to help her! And by extension, I understand all those other little girls that this might be happening to, or who might be having these disturbing feelings, and I love them all and I'd love to give them a voice. She's not me anymore. She's Minnie. She's all these girls ... She doesn't have to be me. She's bigger than me."
