Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Jam in the Band
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: c. 1981
WEBSITE: http://robinenrico.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/news/news.jsp?id=5621 * http://bust.com/arts/9667-interview-robin-enrico-indie-comics-artist.html * http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/interview-comic-artist-robin-enrico-article-1.288640
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born ca. 1981.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Comic book writer, illustrator, and video editor. City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College, adjunct professor of music and art.
WRITINGS
Writer and illustrator of self-published comics, including Controller and Stupid and Unkind. Coeditor for the Friend of Lulu’s anthology The Girls’ Guide to Guy’s Stuff.
SIDELIGHTS
Comic book writer and illustrator Robin Enrico is adjunct professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College in the City University of New York system, where he teaches music, art, and graphic narrative. He has self-published several comics, including Stupid and Unkind and the autobiographical Controller. Enrico explained in an interview on the Borough of Manhattan Community College website why he likes to work with autobiographical elements as well as fiction: “My comics now are in a way, extremely autobiographical,” he says, “but I really like that I have the option to bend fiction. I have room for creativity; I can invent characters, I can invent scenarios. Even if they’re based on real-life things, couching them in the form of fictional characters gives me such a larger toolbox to work with. I like that.” At NY Daily News, Patrick Montero described Enrico’s work: “With thoughtful and believable dialogue, eye-popping visual elements, simple character designs, and influences ranging from graffiti art to candy packaging, his comics are some of the most stunning artwork available in the mini-comics industry.”
Enrico’s independent label web comic Jam in the Band was written in installments over seven years and appeared in 2017 in a 400-page graphic novel. The story follows the ups and downs and clashing personalities and goals of an all-female junk-rock band called Pitch Girl. Desperate to leave her hometown of Watertown, Pennsylvania, lead singer Bianca has dedicated herself to making the band a success. Meanwhile, band mates Tiara and Corbin want to balance a singing career with life and family. Trouble starts when Tiara begins a romantic relationship, and Corbin admits she joined the band only to meet girls. An overseas tour pushes the band members even more apart. Enrico employs multiple devices to tell the story, such as interviews with the band, diary entries, news reports, music video sequences, web chats, and promotional flyers.
Since Enrico is a man writing about women’s lives, Dre Grigoropol on the Bust website asked if he considered himself a feminist. Enrico replied: “I would never actually label my art as feminine. I don’t think of it as such. I make work about people: flawed, emotional, shortsighted, selfish, caring, passionate, driven and occasionally transgressive people. Those people just happen to be women in the stories I have worked on.”
A Publishers Weekly contributor gave Jam in the Band a mixed review, saying that the book’s 400 pages wore thin after a while and that the illustrations were drawn showing the same angles and same distance. Nevertheless, the contributor added, the blocky cartoons had charm, and Enrico “has a knack for candid dialogue that enlivens the rise, plateau, and fall of Pitch Girl.” In a review online at Comic Bastards, Sarah Miller also had mixed feelings, commenting that Tiara and Corbin’s characters were more well-rounded than Bianca’s and that she would have liked to see more insight into Bianca’s personality and mental health issues. Moreover, the black-and-white artwork is stiff with its lack of movement. Miller added that Enrico also uses a variety of interesting story techniques and that “there is an enthusiasm for the art of storytelling that shines through and saves the work from tedium. In spite of its intimidating length, I recommend this work for anyone who has tried to follow their dreams,” said Miller.
Other reviewers found the comic a success. Calling Enrico’s comic a realistic portrayal of an indie band on many levels, John Seven said online at Comics Beat: “It’s a winning comic. But Robin Enrico’s story goes a step further. It sends you plunging into the moment and then grabs you and pulls you outside of it in an amiable, on-target examination of the tug-of-war between nostalgia and change.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, May 22, 2017, review of Jam in the Band, p. 80.
ONLINE
Borough of Manhattan Community College Website, http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/ (April 27, 2011) author interview.
Bust, http://bust.com/ (February 1, 2018), Dre Grigoropol, author interview.
Comic Bastards, https://comicbastards.com/ (March 29, 2017), Sarah Miller, review of Jam in the Band.
Comics Beat, http://www.comicsbeat.com/ (August 29, 2017), John Seven, review of Jam in the Band.
NY Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/ (March 27, 2008), Patrick Montero, author interview.
Robin Enrico Website, http://robinenrico.com/ (February 26, 2018).
April 27, 2011
“I am the lone comics professor here at BMCC,” says Robin Enrico. “I teach Art 175, Introduction to the Graphic Narrative.”
“It’s an art class; it’s run with drawing as a primary component,” says Enrico. “The concept is basically, ‘How do you tell a story visually?’ It’s kind of like creative writing, but you have to draw instead of just do prose.”
But what exactly is a “graphic novel”?
Some would say it’s a cross between a comic book and a novel; it’s a story told frame-by-frame, in comics form, and the audience has expanded to include adults. According to the American Library Association, graphic novels are one of the fastest growing categories in publishing and bookselling, and according to Books in Print, sales of graphic novels have doubled since 2002.
Bending the rules
Enrico’s students often start with autobiographical writing, as he did with own first comics, but, “if you stick to the memoir genre,” Enrico says, “it’s kind of limiting because you’re only dealing with what you’ve experienced.”
His new comic book series, Jam in the Band, features an internationally touring women’s rock band, traveling through vivid, stylized settings.
“My comics now are in a way, extremely autobiographical,” he says, “but I really like that I have the option to bend fiction. I have room for creativity; I can invent characters, I can invent scenarios. Even if they’re based on real-life things, couching them in the form of fictional characters gives me such a larger toolbox to work with. I like that.”
Getting started
“I’m sort of a life-long comic fan,” says Enrico’s student, Rob Gizis, who works in BMCC’s Office of Public Affairs, and credits the class for giving him “that extra push” to get started with his project.
His short comic novel, A Bridge to Mummy Island is “sort of a tongue-in-cheek horror story,” and went from a 14-page version—“there were two people building bridges, the mafia was involved, and there was a series of battles throughout”—to a pared-down eight pages.
“I think one of my biggest problems was, I didn’t think I could come up with a plot line,” he says. But once in class, he “actually really liked coming up with a story, as far as going from the ‘a’ to the ‘b’,” and making the story “transition from one page to the next.
"It's a different sort of problem solving," he says. "I really liked that part of it, which I’d never done before.”
Disney’s influence
“I got a lot out of the class,” says student Angela Russo. “Professor Enrico taught us the basics of what we needed; knowledge about how you go about making a cartoon, how much work and effort goes into it.”
Russo’s class project, the comic strip, Road Trip, features characters with peace signs on their T-shirts, and even the cars and other details in her drawings are era-specific.
“I wanted to take a visual storytelling class because when I was younger,” she says, “Walt Disney was my idol, and at that time, I wanted to be a cartoonist.”
Distilling skills
“I took this class because, truth be told, I’m not really interested in superhero comics, anything that’s too action driven or plot driven,” says Nora Whelan, who now attends Brooklyn College, as a creative writing major.
“I know that I love painterly illustration, but I also love narrative,” she says, “And I’m not pithy, and so I needed to figure out a way, with the guidance of an instructor, to tell a story and not just keep beating around the bush until a reader wasn’t interested anymore.”
The class, she says, helped her “distill” what she was already doing.
“Robin taught me some basic methods about easy communication with the reader,” she says. “I needed to get more creative with the visual, while being efficient in the narrative. So I think the class helped me with that.”
The art of feedback
However different the work created by Enrico’s students, they all seem to share an appreciation for the sense of community in his class—an environment of supportive feedback Enrico values from first-hand experience.
“A lot of the reason I’ve stuck with comics for seven or eight years now,” he says, “is that you are surrounded by other people who are making art—that is incredibly inspiring, and that’s kind of the way I try to run my class.”
Presenting their own work and critiquing the work of others involves skills Enrico’s students can apply in other academic settings, as well—once they get past their reluctance to share work, in the first place.
“They don’t think it’s as good as someone else’s,” Enrico says, “but when other people see your work, the response is always positive. And I feel like that kind of positive feedback will really empower you and give you the ability to do art for years and years and years.”
Community: Real and virtual
“It was pretty recent that I started my blog,” says Enrico’s student Nora Whelan, “and I did it because I realized something that I got from this class—that even if I’m not 100% thrilled and I don’t think I’m reaching my complete potential with my one illustration, one comic, I need to put things out there to get feedback.”
Whelan’s WordPress blog, NoraIsDrawing, provides a forum for her works in progress.
“I’m not going to be perfect,” she says, “and if I keep things to myself my entire life, and go nuts over every little line, then I don’t think I’m ever going to progress, and people are going to find thousands of pages in my apartment when I die.”
Enrico understands that not all students will continue, like Whelan, to work on the genre of comics or graphic novels, creating blogs and developing their craft.
“So my hope,” he says, “is that, ‘Okay, you do what you want on this first one and I’ll just kind of monitor you; I’ll help you, I’ll guide you through this process, and if at the end you realize you liked it—then I can say, ‘Okay, this was good, let’s do the next one’.”
Interview with comic-artist Robin Enrico
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Brooklyn comic-artist Robin Enrico
Brooklyn comic-artist Robin Enrico
BY Patrick Montero
Thursday, March 27, 2008, 6:53 PM
Before 2003, indie comic-artist Robin Enrico had never picked up a pencil with the intention of creating art. Now, in only a few years, he has self-published several comics including "Controller" and "Stupid and Unkind," his web comic "Jam in the Band" and was the co-editor for the Friend of Lulu's anthology "The Girls' Guide to Guy's Stuff."
With thoughtful and believable dialogue, eye-popping visual elements, simple character designs, and influences ranging from graffiti art to candy packaging, his comics are some of the most stunning artwork available in the mini-comics industry. Although his work is not really autobiographical, Enrico draws from real-life experiences in his comics, which range from his video game addiction in "Controller," to relationship drama in "Stupid and Unkind" and "Jam in the Band."
The 27-year-old Brooklynite discusses how he began his journey as a comic artist, what he has in store for the future, and how others who want to become comic artists should, "just do it."
How long have you been creating comics?
Pretty much since 2003. I mean, it was a weird deal. I had never really drawn before, but I was friends with someone who was a cartoonist and basically just by hanging out with her enough I was like, "Oh, this seems like something I could do, this seems like something I would 'want' to do."
How did you get involved in comics?
I met [MK Reed] when I was about 20. She was already a cartoonist, or had starting to be one, and she read a lot of comics. I had read X-Men when I was a kid, but I really wasn't into comics, I didn't think much of them. I was going to school for film and I was really into video games more at that time. When we met, she was like, "Alright, here's a pile of books, read these and tell me what you think of them." And I was just like, "OK, wow I did not know comic books could be like this." I guess at the time it was stuff like, "Blue Monday" and "Good-bye, Chunky Rice" those are the ones I specifically remember her giving me first. I was blown away that a comic could be like this instead of being stupid and ridiculous. I guess right after that, she started going to conventions and I would go with her to help and I was like, "Oh, OK, this is something I want to be a part of, this is amazing, this wonderful little scene of people doing this kind of art work." So, that's how I got into it.
What was your first comic?
I can't even remember. I did a bunch of bad comics that I have long tried to forget that were very much the work of a young man dealing with romance. I don't even remember them at this point, I've kind of buried them they're so awful. I didn't know how to draw and they were way too emotionally charged, so that's my older work. "Stupid and Unkind" is really the first thing that I even did that I'm actually proud of and not shamed to show people, even if the art is kind of crude. I was getting a grip on how to do a comic at that point.
Enrico's comic about video game addiction, "Controller."
Enrico's comic about video game addiction, "Controller."
What was the process you went through with creating "Stupid and Unkind"?
Well, it took me about a year. I was working pretty much full time while I was going to grad school, but I worked on it every free chance I got. "Stupid and Unkind" is fictional but it's pseudo autobiographical. I drew on my real life a lot for it or just conversations I've had, but really it just started out with a script. I went to film school. That's what I'm trained in and all my comics start out that way. I just write dialogue over and over again. I try to hammer it down until I have very tight conversations and a good graph of what the story is going to look like. I have the bullet points, I know generally what people are going to say, and then I take it page by page, so that at any point if I need to change the narrative, I can do that. I just draw one page and then ink it and finish it and then go to the next. I had the loose script, I had the loose outline and I just worked through it, I originally had intended to end it 16 pages earlier than it finished, like the whole epilogue, all that stuff was never written until I actually got there and then I was like, "Oh this isn't done, I need to write more, I need to make this a longer story."
What was the next comic after "Stupid and Unkind"?
"Party @ Horror Beach," the collected edition of "Stupid and Unkind," and then I did "Controller" which was another somewhat short piece, it was about 20 pages. And it was also an excuse for me to do the kind of interesting cover that it has, which is an idea I came up with and always wanted to do.
You essentially designed the packaging to look like the original "Legend of Zelda."
Yes, well there's two versions, there's one that looks like a normal Nintendo cartridge and one that looks like "Legend of Zelda." It sold a lot of people. I've sold about 300 copies of that. It's kind of a pain for me to make though, because they're so intricate and delicate, but it's nice to know they're going to sell. I generally make money off that, mainly because of how it looks, but if that's people's introduction to my work then that's fine.
"Controller" is a bit more autobiographical, right?
Yeah, "Controller" is pretty much autobiographical. But really more than that it was an experiment, a kind of a reaction to a lot of autobiographical comics. I really don't like work where basically the narrator talks directly to the audience, I feel that's very lazy as a writer to do that. Also, just having them in a room discussing a subject, makes no sense. Why even do a comic? Why not write an essay? It feels completely worthless as a use of the medium.
The "Jam in the Band" comic collects 100 pages of Robin's web comic.
The "Jam in the Band" comic collects 100 pages of Robin's web comic.
So, I wanted to discuss an autobiographical subject in a more complex way. I used a lot of the script writing and the dialogue stuff I had learned from doing "Stupid and Unkind" to do that. So, it tells an autobiographical story but it's completely in the context of a conversation. It gets the information across that way, it shows the characters progressing through New York City on the subway to Coney Island, just wandering around. It was an excuse to learn how to draw multiple landscapes, it was really an experiment, an autobiographical comic gussied up in the technical stuff I wanted to do.
How did "Jam in the Band" start, what are you doing with it and what's going to happen to it in the future?
Every comic I do, I do in the same way. I serialize it a page at a time on my website, even from my earliest stuff that's not up there. I mean I don't really have a lot of traffic but it's mainly for my friends to be able to see what I'm doing and it helps me feel good about the progress I'm making. I wrote "Jam in the Band" about two years ago, even before I had written "Controller," I had the script for it. It was me trying to talk about being an artist and how it's difficult and makes you kind of weird. That's the way I feel about comics, it's like you devote a lot of your time and energy to this thing and it kind of isolates you and makes you very different from people, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has a weird effect. I didn't want to talk about comics because that's not very interesting so I kind of couched it in an analogy of a band, which is something I'm interested in, although I have no musical ability whatsoever.
I like reading about bands, I like reading band autobiographies or biographies, so it let me explore a world that I'm really not a part of and yet talk about something that I'm very intimate with. I'm about 75 pages into "Jam and the Band." The first volume is going to come out at around page 110 and it's really going to cover the first third of what the main narrative is, which is setting up the girls in the band and their relationship with this guy and taking it to a point where this guys influence, he's going to start going out with the drummer of the band, is really going to end up breaking up the band. Then second volume will delve more into the kind of tensions in the band and the third will be the breakup and the disillusion of the band as one member goes toward romance and the other sticks entirely to her art, which is the central tension of the book. You were the co-editor for the "Girls' Guide to Guys' Stuff."
Yes, I was, with MK Reed, who's actually the person who got me into comics in the first place. We finished that last year. It was really a great thing. She's a female cartoonist and coming from that I always have had an appreciation for them and I'm like, "There should be more girls doing this because that's awesome." So in doing the anthology we just wanted to put out a book that celebrated or promoted artists that we thought were really talented and hadn't gotten enough exposure. The last anthology they did, Raina Telgemeier got noticed and got her job drawing "The Baby-Sitters Club," a graphic novel. So if we can do that for someone else that we like who we think is talented, that would be awesome.
What steps should aspiring artists take to do what you do, to get themselves going?
Just do it. I know that sounds somewhat trite to say or somewhat cliché to say but I've drawn somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pages of comics. There's a Dave Sims saying on how your first 1,000 pages of comics are pretty much going to be crap and then that 1,001st page you'll finally get it and that's really all there is to it. Understand that maybe you're not going to get a lot of attention right away. Understand it's going to be stressful and will take a lot of time and energy. But, at the end of the day, I have these books, no one can ever take that away from me. I made them. They're mine. They're all me. And that's amazing. Whatever happens with it I'll always have those as a marker of what I've done in life. I've made these books out of nothing. So, if I can do it, all you have to do is be dedicated enough to get out there and do it.
And my other advice is just go to shows and be a nice person. Go to shows, talk to other cartoonists, we're all very friendly, because we're all introverts in a way. We're happy to talk to other cartoonists and see what they're doing and give them encouragement. It's a very encouraging little world because none of us are really making any money, so all we got is each other. I don't mean that as a downer, it's just that's part of it. I mean tonight I'm going to have a ton of people over for my weekly drawing night. And that's amazing that I have that. Again, just go up there and do it, find other people who do it, and just keep at it.
For more on Robin Enrico and to view more of his work, visit www.robinenrico.com .
robin-enrico
Getting To Know Your Local Zinester: Robin Enrico
December 12, 2011 | L.A. Zine Fest
Half the fun of a zine fest is meeting new people and finding new things. In an effort to jumpstart your excitement, we are bringing you brief introductions to our L.A. Zine Fest presenters. Our first is Robin Enrico.
Robin Enrico
Jam in the Band / Life of Vice
What was your first zine about and when was it made?
Back in 2003 I put together my first collection of autobiographical comics. It was shoddy, flimsy and poorly drawn, but it was a start. I still have a copy that I keep around to show people let I ever start to think I was a comics shot. Keeps me humble.
Describe your most recent zine.
Life of Vice is my most recent mini comic about sex blogger and rock and roll star Becky Vice and her journey to Las Vegas to host the American Pornography Awards. Accompanying her is naif report Shelby Ambrose sent to interview and document Becky in her triumphant moment. Over a debauched weekend the two will become fast friends and partners in crime. It’s Fear and Loathing with a dose Love and Rockets.
Name three of your influences and how they affected your work.
There’s so many. But in keeping with my previous answers, I’d have to say Hunter S. Thompson, V. Vale and Jaime Hernandez. From Hunter comes my fascination with looking at the ugliness that bubbles just below the surface of any situation. I get my love of interviews with outsiders from reading so many of the Re/Search collections Vale put out. And whether I want to admit or not, Jaime and I so have the same obsessions with punk rock girls and pro wrestling.
What do you do when you’re not creating and how does it help or harm what you do artistically?
When I’m not working on comics I spend my time as either a free-lance video editor or a community college English professor. Both are actually great for getting ideas. I’m really into the faux documentary style and use it a lot in my book Jam in the Band, so having had the chance to work on various documentaries has only benefited my knowledge of the form. Teaching English has given me the opportunity to basically read books and talk about them for a living. And as I take much of my inspiration from books it’s nothing but a bonus.
Jam in the Band
Publishers Weekly.
264.21 (May 22, 2017): p80. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Jam in the Band
Robin Enrico. Alternative (Consortium, dist.), $19.99 trade paper (386p) ISBN 978-168148-580-5
Stardom is hard won and easily lost in this chronicle of a punk band. Pitch Girl, a trio out of Watertown, Penn., rises to prominence and acclaim on a wave of sonic girl power. But tensions run high between bandmates, and one question hangs over their triumph like a swollen thundercloud: just how much are they willing to give up in the name of success? Though this is fairly standard stuff, as far as tales from the music industry go, Enrico, who has been publishing this saga in various formats, including a webcomic, for years, has a knack for candid dialogue that enlivens the rise, plateau, and fall of Pitch Girl. That said, the book is badly in need of editing-nearly 400 pages of squabbling wears thin around the halfway mark. Visually, his blocky cartooning has charms, and the use of diary pages and other ephemera lends an unvarnished edge to the story, but nearly every panel is seen from the same angle and at the same distance. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jam in the Band." Publishers Weekly, 22 May 2017, p. 80. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494099079/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=f063ba58. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494099079
1 of 1 1/27/18, 8:55 PM
Interview: Robin Enrico, Indie Comics Artist
BY Dre Grigoropol
IN Arts
Robin Enrico is known for his quirky comic Jam In The Band, a story about a sassy all-girl band named Pitch Girl. He is a talented artist born from the multifaceted world of music and DIY culture. We yearn for more comics like Robin’s. Here is a recent interview with this indie cartoonist:
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Dre: When I first saw your comic Jam In The Band online, I was really surprised to see your characters handling a flyer for a BUST magazine party. Could you please tell me why you decided to do that?
Robin: That's actually based on a real flyer Christy Road did for Ladyfest East back in 2005. I had just moved to Brooklyn, and was walking home from work when I saw that flyer out front of Union Pool. It was probably the first show I ever went to in Brooklyn, and it was also the show where I ended up reconnecting with some super cool gals I had known in college who are now in all-female bands. Which I suppose is really the genesis of the idea of writing about an all-female band for Jam in the Band.
Dre: Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Robin: I am hesitant to call myself that. I don't think it’s a label I really get the right to apply to myself. I have predominantly female friends. I primarily make art about women. But at the same time I am a straight white male. If the work I am doing is seen as feminist, then it is because I am making art that reflects the women in my life, all of whom I would view as feminists.
There isn’t an ideology behind my actions and I feel uncomfortable proclaiming myself as feminist. If my work is seen that way, great, but I don’t make work with a feminist stance in mind. I write about women as I know them to be.
Dre: As a male author and illustrator how does it feel to compose a story that feels so feminine?
Robin: I would never actually label my art as feminine. I don't think of it as such. I make work about people: flawed, emotional, shortsighted, selfish, caring, passionate, driven and occasionally transgressive people. Those people just happen to be women in the stories I have worked on.
The other part of it is, I don't really understand the world of men. I have some pretty stereotypically male interests (video games, wrestling, bad action movies), but I always feel like an outsider. I am also not interested in talking about that world in my work. I think the plight of alienated straight white men has been represented well enough in the comics medium. I would rather step back and let other types of characters shine.
If the drawings themselves are seen as feminine, let me assure you, I literally know no other way of drawing. I put pen to paper and cutesy circle head people is what comes out.
Dre: The character I identify with the most is Bianca, the front-woman of Pitch Girl and the story’s protagonist. What is the inspiration for this character?
Robin: In many ways Bianca is my stand-in. Singing in and being in a band is a more exciting subject to write about than making comics. I get asked about this sometimes, but it never felt strange to write myself as a woman. She is a character who is driven by her desire for fame and artistic satisfaction even if it comes at the expense of her personal relationships. A scenario that I have had to play out time and again in being an artist. Is being goal driven an entirely male character trait? I don't believe it is. Not in my experience.
Also, I am interested in tragic and flawed characters. Characters whose greatest strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. I feel like this is a role that usually gets assigned to the super heroic or noble male character. Again, it was much more interesting for me to write this archetype as a woman.
Dre: I heard through the grapevine that you are the head librarian of the zine library at the DIY space The Silent Barn. What is that like?
Robin: I feel like, as you get older in youth-culture scenes (I'm 32), you become subject to a certain scrutiny about your place therein. If you are a lifer, it becomes vital that you give back to the scene that nurtured you. Music and zines and DIY culture in general have been so important to my survival in my 20's that anything I can do to ensure there is a place for these things in the future is high holy work for me. The 'zine library has been a nice outlet for a more bookish type like myself to stay connected with and to share ideas and information with a place that has as vital and energetic an artistic culture as The Silent Barn.
Dre: Which artists have had an impact on your work?
Robin: Rodney Greenblat is probably the initial kernel of all this. I certainly remember having my mind blown by the art and character design he did for the Um Jammer Lammy game back in the 90's. I think a lot of the look of my art can be traced back to him and to Junko Mizuno. Who, funnily enough, I believe I learned about through an issue of Bust in the early 2000's. I tend to respond to imagery that is not, say, "edgy-cute” but more cute with an "otherness" or "strangeness" to it that is not put there in a cynical way. Beyond that, V.Vale's RE / Search books are pretty huge for me in terms of showing the very human side to people who could be seen as outsiders or transgressive. It made people like that near and dear to my heart and exactly the type of people I wanted to write about.
Dre: Where and when can people see your work in person in the future?
Robin: I will be at the Brooklyn Zine Fest in Williamsburg on April 21st, The Purchase Zine Feast at SUNY Purchase on May 5th, and the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD in September.
Images via Robin’s Jam In The Band at RobinEnrico.com Follow him on Twitter: @Robinhoodie
Photos by Dre Grigoropol (Dretime.org, @DretimeComics)
Tags: DIY , comics , interview , girl bands , Robin Enrico , Jam in the Band , Christy Road , Brooklyn Zine Fest , Purchase Zine Feast , Small Press Expo , Um Jammer Lammy , Junko Mizuno , Rodney Greenblat , The Silent Barn
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Review: Jam in the Band
March 29, 2017
By Sarah Miller
Jam in the Band is the story of Pitch Girl, a band that makes it semi-big before imploding under the weight of different personalities and different desires. The band is headed up by Bianca, an intense young woman who lives for the music and the road and not much else. The other characters seem more well-rounded, with desires that reach beyond the success of the band. Tiara is more interested in love and settling down than touring for months on end, and Corbin admits that she joined the band to meet girls. When that doesn’t seem to pan out as well as she’d hoped—being part of a band is more work than any of them suspected—she too eventually tires of the work involved in touring.
The band is the brainchild of Bianca, whose main goal at the beginning of the graphic novel is to get out of Watertown, the small town she grew up in, preferably through achieving success with the band that she forms with Tiara and Corbin. In the introduction to the graphic novel, Robin Enrico admits that she feels like even she knows Bianca less than any of the other characters. In almost 400 pages of graphic storytelling, I would have liked to see more insight into Bianca’s personality, more insight into her mental health issues, more insight into what exactly she wants out of life, if she wants anything other than success for Pitch Girl. In some ways, it seems like that’s all she wants, to the detriment of her relationships and her mental health, though Bianca herself questions her desires. “Is this really what you want to do with your life?” her alter ego asks, but Bianca doesn’t provide a clear answer. When Pitch Girl disbands, that is the perfect opportunity to explore the other sides of Bianca’s personality, but Enrico doesn’t take full advantage of it. Perhaps the most succinct summation of Bianca’s personality is spoken by Nathan, Bianca’s close friend from college. He says, “When I really knew Bianca, she only had time for one person. Bianca.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell us that much about Bianca at all—but maybe it tells us all we need to know.
The format of the story is rather interesting, as it makes use of several different methods of storytelling. There are postcards, journal entries, and scrapbook items acting as artifacts of Pitch Girl’s rise to fame and Bianca’s response in particular to this rise. Enrico also imitates a documentary style, showing interviews with those close to and surrounding Bianca and Pitch Girl, with reminiscing about the early days. These are all interspersed with the straightforward narrative of the Pitch Girl story, providing insight into and perspective on the events that are depicted.
However, the black-and-white artwork seems rather stiff, in the same way that the story is somewhat stiff. There is a lack of movement that stunts the dynamics of the story. Each character has the same body type and posture, no matter what they’re doing at the time, with only the arms moving. The characters’ line work is thick and bold, adding a weight to the story that would otherwise be absent, and which I enjoyed; it contrasts nicely with the more detailed background work. It would have been nice to see the characters’ line weight combined with the dynamism of implied movement.
In spite of the somewhat plodding artwork and a lack of insight into the main character’s motivations, there is an enthusiasm for the art of storytelling that shines through and saves the work from tedium. And in spite of its intimidating length, I recommend this work for anyone who has tried to follow their dreams, whether they have failed or succeeded—if they are patient with indie comics that aren’t perfect.
Score: 3/5
Jam in the Band
Writer/Artist: Robin Enrico
Publisher: Alternative Comics
Review: ‘Jam In The Band’ depicts aging as an artistic process
08/29/2017 5:00 pm by John Seven
At its most basic Jam In The Band is a pretty insightful and — just from my small knowledge on the subject — a realistic portrayal of the life of an indie band working its way through the levels to try and make something of itself, and just for that alone, it’s a winning comic. But Robin Enrico’s story goes a step further. It sends you plunging into the moment and then grabs you and pulls you outside of it in an amiable, on-target examination of the tug-of-war between nostalgia and change, and how the eternal quality of a youthful experience becomes just a dot on a timeline — and that’s okay.
Bianca is the driving force behind Pitch Girl, a trio from Watertown, Pennsylvania who might have differing goals in what exactly they want in the band, but are united in one important one — they want a way out of their lives. For Bianca, this specifically means a straight path out of Watertown, and her ego is manifest in such a way that she commandeers the desires of her bandmates to align with her own. That’s the way life sometimes works, though, and Bianca’s egotistical pursuit of escape and also revenge against the town that held her down may yet prove to be the turning point for Tiara and Corbin, the other members. And so they go on a tour that never ends.
Enrico does well in documenting the personal drama of the band as it winds its way through the indie circuit and makes a name for itself. She also well knows that, especially on that level, music is a network, and no band exists as an island, so gives space to the people floating around Pitch Girl who help make it happen. Each of these players gives an extra dimension to our understanding of the band as a whole and as individuals and also provides another way of looking at Pitch Girl that we might not encounter as readers taking in their drama.
I think one of the things that is fascinating about bands is the idea that people come together creatively in a way that impacts the lives of their listeners, but the listeners are very seldom privy to the circumstances that maintain or destroy the dynamic that they find so alluring. And the emotional impact of the first encounter with any given artist, so often during the teen years when we collate our taste through intense emotional need and defiance as a means to define ourselves, makes it hard to separate the individual players from the band identity that they worked for and we, as young fans, have attached to them. Band members aren’t necessarily any closer than any other manufactured group of friends, say like old roommates or co-workers, but fans attach a lot more personal importance to the grouping, and sometimes band members, as they move on, find themselves burdened by the existence of their younger selves within the band context.
Enrico plays with the linear presentation a little bit, bringing the reader through the general larger story of the band members and various other players, while occasionally cutting the action and backtracking to give more context to what we’re seeing. It’s a great narrative choice in that it mirrors the emotional complications of the way real life works but also plays into the ways we try to make some sense of the inner-workings of bands from the outside. “Why did they split up?” is one of the most complicated questions any given fan can ask and Enrico understands that, choosing an appropriate depiction of that answer, as well as a million other little questions that fans ask along the way.
I would hesitate to say that this is a story of growing up, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s one about aging. Not getting old, but the process of moving along in age, the inevitability of change, and what we all do in the struggle to both maintain who we were, to stay true to that, while still embracing the new opportunities that keep us from remaining in that stagnant state. Enrico is skilled at depicting this in a fluid, very human way, providing an emotional map that any person of a certain age can not only recognize but appreciate as reflective of any of our experiences.
And the dramatic conclusions Enrico comes to aren’t necessarily the end, as she has demonstrated herself. There is more change to come. Imagine these characters in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. Who you are becomes something determined by wider expanses of experience over greater stretches of time, as well as the moment. And so you can never be quite the same person at 50 that you were at 20 — and yet, there you are.
John Seven
Journalist and children's book writer living in North Adams, Massachusetts. Author of 'A Rule Is To Break: A Child's Guide To Anarchy,' 'Happy Punks 1-2-3,' 'Frankie Liked To Sing,' and others. My latest children's books are 'Gorilla Gardener: How To Help Nature Take Over The World' and 'We Say NO: A Child's Guide To Resistance.'