Abel

Biography

Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel is the author of the new graphic novel La Perdida (Pantheon Books). Previously, she published Soundtrack and Mirror, Window (Fantagraphic Books) , two collections that gather stories and drawings from her comic book Artbabe, which she published between 1992 and 1999. She also collaborated with Ira Glass on Radio: An Illustrated Guide, a non-fiction comic about how the radio show This American Life is made. Abel won both the Harvey and Lulu awards for “Best New Talent” in 1997; La Perdida won the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award. Abel’s Young Adult novel Carmina is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2007; she is collaborating on another graphic novel, Life Sucks, due out from First Second in 2007; and she is working with her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden, on a textbook about making comics. She lives in Brooklyn.

The long version:
Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him and his publisher, Fantagraphics. She printed 50 copies of Artbabe #1, but Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth, who claims not to remember this encounter, didn’t take the bait. Four issues (and four years) later, she won a Xeric grant, put out the first full-sized and professionally printed issue of Artbabe, and thus finally appeared on Groth’s radar. She began a new volume of Artbabe with Fantagraphics in 1997, and won the 1997 “Best New Talent” Harvey and Lulu awards. The second half of Artbabe Volume 2 was completed during the two years that Abel lived with her now-husband Matt Madden in Mexico City, 1998-2000.

Abel took time off from fictional comics in 1999 to complete a 32-page instructional/journalistic comic for This American Life, a Public Radio International program, written in collaboration with host Ira Glass called Radio: an Illustrated Guide. The year 2000 saw the publication of Mirror, Window, a collection of the second volume of Artbabe by Fantagraphics. Soundtrack, a compilation of early comics work, including much of the self-published first volume of Artbabe, was published by Fantagraphics in 2001. Her next comics work, a graphic novel set in Mexico City titled La Perdida, won the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award. La Perdida was published as a complete book by Pantheon in spring 2006. Abel is also at work on a prose novel for teenagers, tentatively titled Carmina, and due out from HarperCollins in 2007. She has co-scripted a graphic novel called Life Sucks with Gabe Soria that will be drawn by Warren Pleece, which is to be published by First Second (Henry Holt) in spring 2007. In addition, First Second will publish a textbook on creating comics that Abel is writing with her husband, Matt Madden.

Abel has been teaching comics since 1998, and teaching in the Cartooning Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York since 2001. She lives with her husband Matt Madden in Brooklyn, NY.