I'm a published comic artist now!
Well, technically, I had been for a while, after publishing one once in the arts and culture magazine I edited in college.
But something super cool happened this summer: Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of Covid Lockdown was released by Pantheon Graphic Library at Penguin Random House, and the first-ever comic I made in May 2020 was published on page 131. See below, titled “Westie Days,” about my childhood dog and feelings of remembrance for a world we dearly love.
Madison Karas
To back up a bit, I’ve always been a bit of an amateur comics fan. It was never something I’d dedicated a ton of time to, but I’d go on trips with friends who were die-hard DC and Marvel fans to local comic book shops in high school to buy Robin and Blue Beetle books. I also distinctly remember my high school’s social studies class curriculum on Persepolis, and in college, I took Comics Journalism and led one class on Maus by Art Spiegelman. At some point, my Instagram feed started exposing me to the world of indie comics and zines, and I began receiving zines as gifts from friends on my birthday (and at one point, I wrote a piece on zines for the Star Tribune).
In between all that, at the beginning of the first COVID lockdown, after I got kicked out of my college dorm and stayed in a room at a family friend’s in Philadelphia, @desertislandcomics popped up on my Instagram feed. The independent comics book shop in Brooklyn, New York put out a call for artists to submit a 9-panel comic about the world when the pandemic is over: “Please send comics visualizing your ideal future, in a utopian world after we survive this moment,” it read.
The prompt touched me, especially as someone who has always been idealistic and was clinging to any hope I could in the desperate, depressing, messy, and confusing times of the early COVID lockdown. Some of the early submissions posted to the project inspired me, like one about your friend building a foreboding temple and another about falling in love with telemarketers.
So, I took a shot with the extra supplies of markers, highlighters, and Sharpies in the junk drawer of the desk in the extra room I was staying in. I wrote and created a comic about my feelings of the moment through the eyes of the West Highland Terrier I grew up with and dearly miss, Jack. I sent it to the Rescue Party email listed on the account, which, a few weeks later, stopped publishing in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial justice protests that began at the end of the month.
I never heard anything from my email, and the project appeared to cease. Then, more than a year later, in fall 2021, I received an Instagram DM requesting to get in touch with me. I then received an email from Desert Island explaining that Panethon was taking up the project and that my artwork cut of 150 works from hundreds of submissions. I remember receiving this news on fall break from college, when I was doing school work at the office of the truck repair shop my family works at, and using the scanner there to submit the high-quality files needed for publication.
From there, I received a few updates about the project and progress on getting it to publication. Eventually, a release date was set for July 27, 2024, which was a bit after I’d already forgotten I had pre-ordered the book on Amazon (and far after I’d forgotten that in the contract I signed to be compensated for my artwork, we were also told we’d be sent a free copy of the book). The hard copy showed up on my front step, and I saw my name and short biography in print, and yes, it was a big sappy reminder that with some risk-taking, perseverance, hope, and a lot of patience, sometimes good things do come out of the worst of worst times.
I attended the release party for the book at Printed Matter, Inc. in Manhattan earlier in August. I met other comics who were published in the book, read my piece out loud, and told the story behind it. After talking to the other artists and signing a few copies, it encouraged me to keep my hand at this craft and form of expression, slowly but surely, and share more of my work with the world solely for fun and to see how it evolves. I’ll be publishing some of my work digitally here and probably, at some point, soon open up an Instagram account.
All in all, this experience was a big lesson in shooting your shot because you’ll never know where it takes you, and inspiration for making light and seeing opportunity in the most horrible moments ever, and to keep on pushing on for projects you believe in even then after. A special shoutout to Desert Island Bookstore owner and Rescue Party Gabe Fowler for editing, initiating and forwarding this book throughout these past few years.
You can read more about Rescue Party at these links, and buy a copy and leave a 5-star review:
Penguin Random House | Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of Covid Lockdown
Amazon | Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of Covid Lockdown
Kirkus Reviews | Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of Covid Lockdown
Hyperallergic | Making Comics Rescued These Creators During COVID-19