Jessica Abel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Jessica Abel |
|
|---|---|
Jessica Abel in April 2011
|
|
| Born | Jessica Courtney Clare Abel 1969 Chicago, Illinois |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Writer, Artist |
|
Notable works
|
Life Sucks Artbabe La Perdida Drawing Words and Writing Pictures Radio: An Illustrated Guide |
| Awards | Xeric Award, 1995 Harvey Award, 1997, 2002 |
| http://www.jessicaabel.com | |
Jessica Abel is a talented American artist and writer. She is famous for creating many comic books and graphic novels. Some of her well-known works include Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, and La Perdida. She also created the series Artbabe.
Contents
Jessica Abel's Early Life
Jessica Abel was born in 1969 in Chicago, Illinois. She grew up in the Chicago area. After high school, she went to Carleton College and then transferred to the University of Chicago. In 1988, she published her first comic work in a student book called Breakdown. She earned a bachelor's degree from the university.
Starting a Career in Comics
Jessica Abel started her career by making minicomics. These were small, self-published comic books. In 1992, she created her first Artbabe comic. She made four more issues each year. She even won a special grant from the Xeric Foundation to help publish and share Artbabe #5. This was the first time Artbabe was printed professionally.
After Artbabe #5 was published, a publisher named Gary Groth from Fantagraphics noticed her work. He offered to publish Artbabe. Each issue of Artbabe had one or more complete stories. The character "Artbabe" appeared on every cover, but she was not actually in the stories themselves.
In 1998, Jessica Abel moved to Mexico City with her boyfriend, who is now her husband, comic artist Matt Madden. She took a break from Artbabe in 1999.
Comics Journalism and Radio: An Illustrated Guide
From 1996 to 2005, Abel created one-page comics that were like news reports for the University of Chicago Magazine. In 1997, she made a small comic book called Jessica Abel, Intrepid Girl Reporter. It collected her different journalistic comic strips.
She also created comics journalism pieces for LA Weekly in 2000 and 2001. These comics covered topics like the 2000 Democratic National Convention and leaving Lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks. During this time, she worked on Radio: An Illustrated Guide. This book was for the radio show This American Life. It showed how an episode of the show was made and gave tips on how to create a radio show at home.
La Perdida and Teaching Comics
After living in Mexico City for two years, Abel moved to Brooklyn, New York. There, she created a five-issue, 250-page comic series called La Perdida. Fantagraphics Books published it between 2000 and 2005. In 2006, Abel updated the text, and it was published as a hardcover book by Pantheon Books. Many people liked the book. The main character is a Mexican-American woman named Carla. She moves to Mexico City to find out more about herself.
Jessica Abel also taught cartooning classes at the School of Visual Arts. She also led workshops at other places, like the Ox-Bow Summer School of Art.
Creating Comics Textbooks
In 2008, Abel and Matt Madden created Drawing Words and Writing Pictures for First Second Books. This book was based on their many years of teaching. It is a helpful guide on how to create comics. In the same year, Abel also worked on Life Sucks with Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece.
Abel and Madden made a second comics teaching book called Mastering Comics. It was a follow-up to Drawing Words and Writing Pictures and was published in May 2012. After that, Abel and Madden moved to France for an artist residency. They ended up staying there for four years.
In 2015, Abel published a new book called "Out On The Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. This book was a sequel to her 1999 comic Radio: An Illustrated Guide.
On June 7, 2016, Jessica Abel announced that she was moving back to the United States. She took a job as the head of the new illustration department at PAFA, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Awards and Honors
Jessica Abel has received many awards for her work:
- 1995: Xeric Grant for Artbabe
- 1997:
* Harvey Award for Best New Talent * Kimberly Yale Award for Best New Talent
- 2002: Harvey Award for Best New Series for La Perdida
- 2006: Finalist for the Cybils Award for La Perdida
- 2008: Finalist for the Cybils Award for Life Sucks
- 2009: Named one of the Great Graphic Novels for Teens top ten for Life Sucks
- 2017: Nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Publication for Teens for Trish Trash: Roller Girl of Mars
See Also
- List of women comics writers and artists
- List of American comics creators
