Keiler Roberts' Preparing To Bite

Keiler Roberts' first book with Drawn & Quarterly was My Begging Chart. For a while, it seemed like it would be her last original book for them. She did a collection of her Koyama Press work called The Joy Of Quitting and a collaboration with her brother Lee Sensenbrenner called Creepy that bore little resemblance to her other work (which may well be why she did it). Then she quit comics, with part of her next book completed but with no desire to finish it. Until now, with her new book Preparing To Bite. 

She offers little in terms of explanation, except saying "I'm sick of feeling exposed" to her friend, the cartoonist Karl Stevens. Sometimes, an artist simply gets burned out, and that goes double for career memoirists. I'm pleased to report that her new work is just as good as her old work, maintaining the same sharp punchlines and gags disguised as quotidian memoir. Or when asked about the book, Roberts said "It's more of the same --vignettes of meaningless experiences." 

This is sort of true, but Roberts sneaks in a lot of genuinely powerful emotional moments into this book, frequently bolstered by her use of gesture and body language. Long-time readers of Roberts know that she is dealing with bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis, both of which contribute to the fatigue, headaches, etc that she sometimes illustrates in her free-flowing vignettes. However, she has always resolutely resisted the kind of reductive narratives that focusing on either of these conditions would entail. Beyond Roberts' withering one-liners and bone-dry sense of humor, the beating heart of her work has always been her relationship with her kid. Indeed, Roberts' first mini-comics series was Powdered Milk, and it focused directly on being a new mother. As the series of comics progressed, Roberts' kid Finn became her foil, saying the sort of hilarious things that a toddler might utter. 

As Finn grew older, you could see Roberts subtly phasing them out of her comics, tightwalking that narrow divide as Finn grew older and needed to be accorded more privacy but was not old enough to advocate for their inclusion one way or another. Preparing To Bite restores Finn as Roberts' foil, but their roles are different. There was always the depiction of loving mutual aggravation, but Finn is now depicted as a full and formidable equal while the love between them is also depicted as deepening on a profound level. More than anything, there is a sense of being seen and understood.

In a previous book, there is an out-of-context image of Roberts sitting on her kitchen floor and crying. In Preparing To Bite, there's another out-of-context image of Roberts crying standing on the stairs, but this time Finn is holding and comforting her. Throughout the book, Finn offers up funny and sometimes pointed rejoinders to Roberts' own withering sarcasm. But if you look carefully at what Roberts is actually drawing, they are snuggling together, holding hands on walks, and otherwise displaying an unwavering closeness. Roberts as a character doesn't talk much about her fatigue and day-to-day struggles, but the way she depicts herself is a portrait of fatigue, even as she withdraws from teaching and other activities that slowly became too much to deal with. The subtlety of Roberts' work is on display throughout; a strip where her husband Scott asks "Am I going to bother you if I'm in here?" is met with "You bother me wherever you are." However, as Roberts is laying in bed, there's a huge grin on her face, as she can't quite keep a straight face with that wisecrack.

The lack of a specific narrative or direction in Roberts' work and its focus on humor on the surface has always added a layer of distance. However, an observant reader can see the increasing vulnerability in Roberts' cartooning over time. Perhaps this is why she had to withdraw for a bit. Regardless, there's a new equilibrium and steady-state in her work that hasn't abandoned what made her work so compelling. It's only deepened it.

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More than anything, there is a sense of being seen and understood.