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Local Comics autist Elcahor P/ivis
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’hough it's not a hotbed
for comics artists like
Portland and New
York are, Athens
has its own tiny contingent of
illustrators looking to establish a
bigger name for the scene here. One
of the busiest local illustrators
right now is Eleanor Davis, a
25-year-old artist with a talent
for evocative, lithe and undeni
ably pretty work. Davis is cur
rently finalizing her biggest project
yet: a novel-length comic about
three young inventors trying to save
the world.
The Secret Science Alliance will be
published by Bloomsbury Publishing,
the company behind, among other
books, the sprawling historical fan
tasy Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
and the Harry Potter series. It'll be a
while before the book arrives on the
shelves, though, as Davis has only
just wrapped up the entire thing and
sent it off to the publisher.
Sitting in her house on the
western edge of downtown right
before Thanksgiving, Davis says that
having a traditional book publisher
put out a graphic novel presents its
own problems. "It's funny, when I
originally pitched the idea to them
I did like the idea," she says, with
thumbnail images of the entire
book's pages pasted up on the
wall behind her, "but the more I've
worked with them—and they've all
been very, very nice—I've slowly
realized that traditional book people
don't understand comics very well...
the technical aspects. They have
their own setups of when they do
the copy edits, how they put the
artwork together, what their print
ing schedules are like, so it's been
kind of complicated organizing all
that stuff. I guess I just underes
timated how much the traditional
comics publishers brought to the
table, because they really know
their stuff when it comes to
the sequential medium."
Up to now, Davis has
worked primarily with
traditional comics publish
ers, or has self-published
books through Little House
Comics, which she runs with
her cartoonist boyfriend Drew
Weing. She put out Stinky with
the Toon Books publishing com
pany earlier this summer. Geared
towards younger readers, Stinky tells
the tale of a purple monster who's not
as scary as most monsters, and who has a strong affinity for
pickles. Davis' versatility is apparent when you place some
thing like Stinky alongside her mini-comic Mattie and Dodi,
a stark and mournful meditation with moving psychosexual
undercurrents.
"A kids' book isn't really something I've always wanted to
do," says Davis. "It's been that traditionally, the way to make
money doing comics, or as an illustrator—unless you're doing
mainstream stuff—is to do children's books. So, I kinda got
involved with it because I wanted to get a real job and do
something where I could potentially make a real living. I ended
up taking it really seriously, since I'm really serious about kids'
stuff and kids' comics. Even though I didn't plan on doing kids'
stuff from the beginning, I take it as seriously as I take my
'adult' work."
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RESEARCH MATERIAL
told, says Davis, she has spent more
than a year writing, illustrating
and working on The Secret Science
Alliance.
Her artwork for this book is a lot
more precise than it has been in the
past, with cleaner lines and more
distinctly realistic figures. "I don't
really go for a sharp, clean thing
with a lot of my work," she says,
"but this is about these science
kids, so you just have a shitload of
this hyper-technical, really detailed
work. You know, you don't really
want to have a messy drawing of a
pulley system, or a pinball machine,
or else it'd all be really illegible."
Weing, who is currently at work on
his own nautical-themed graphic
novel for Fantagraphics Books,
provided the inks over Davis' pencil
work.
She is a cartoonist after all,
member of a notoriously self-
doubting (and self-deprecating)
bunch, and so Davis says that
the process of creating The Secret
Science Alliance was a trying one.
"It was definitely one of those
things where about halfway through
the writing process I thought it
was really going to blow. I was
really depressed about how much
it v/as going to suck. But I was
able to pull it out of the gutter
more than I expected, and that's
a nice thing when you're able to
take what you thought was going to
be a disaster and turn it around."
Ultimately, though, she smiles and
lights up when showing samples of
artwork from the book; she says she's
delighted with the book, and will be
even more so once a little time has
passed and she can relax.
P ;
i
V
I avis is from Tucson, AZ, but went to the Savannah
College of Art and Design for its sequential art program,
which is where she met Weing. "I wasn't a particularly
good artist before college," she says. "I went to a hippie
school where you could do whatever you wanted to, so I ended
up working on a lot of crafts and stuff. I did a lot of zines in
high school and got into indie comics and mini comics and
all that. I thought it would be rad to go to school for comics.
Doing mini comics for me and people I know and then going
to being a professional cartoonist, I'm still not quite sure how
I made that leap, but I guess it worked out better than it
could've done!"
The two moved to Athens a few years ago and have been
involved with the local Fluke mini-comics annual festival. All
I avis is biding her time
until The Secret Science
Alliance is released,
though that won't be for a
while. Her immediate plans
are to decompress for a little
bit before seeking more illustra
tion work. "This is a new one on
me," she says, "because you know
how when you're in college, after
the semester ends you kind of crash
out for a little bit? But then there's
another semester coming up and then
you regroup? I'm hoping I don't crash
too hard after this because I don't really
know what I'm going to do after it's
over."
She's also a featured artist in the
2008 edition of The Best American Comics,
the illustrated branch of the Best American anthology line.
(The book also features a contribution from former Athenian
cartoonist T. Edward Bak.) Davis' story "Seven Sacks" is subtly
funny, and caught the eye of the series editors when it first
appeared in the Mome anthology. Those in charge of this year's
book—noted cartoonists Lynda Barry and Jessica Abel—liked
Davis' work so much they selected her to create the book's
cover. "That was very exciting, because I like Lynda Barry a lot,
so it was nice of her to think kindly of my stuff!" says Davis.
"It was a good project, and it paid money! Which was a nice
thing for me."
Chris Hassiotis
For artwork by Eleanor Davis, visit her website at www.doing-fine.com.
DECEMBER 17,2008 • FLAGP0LE.COM 9