[music playing] ♪ - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture".

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is cartoonist, Breena Nunez.

Breena, welcome to "Comic Culture".

- Thanks for having me, Terence.

How are you doing today?

TERENCE DOLLARD: I'm doing well.

Your comics are fun because they are autobiographical, and they are also just a great way for you to explore thoughts that you have, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your philosophy behind making comics.

- I personally have always been a very visual learner since childhood.

And lately, I've been finding more reasons as to why I'm a cartoonist, and I think it's because a lot of moments throughout my childhood I felt like-- labeled as the quiet kid-- somebody who wasn't really verbose or very vocal or heavily opinionated.

But it's because I didn't speak any language until I was around four years old, and even when I started speaking, it was really muddled English.

And I think my younger self had just a lot of things to say, and she definitely had a lot of opinions.

So the best way for me to find ways to express myself has always been through drawings and that continues to serve me today.

So I feel like, as far as philosophy, anybody who has a story, you don't have to be this masterful artist, Illustrator, or writer.

Whatever that might look like for you.

I just find it to be a very liberating experience to use your personal stories and to archive it into comics.

Because for me, reading lots of memoir and auto-bio comics has been also really cathartic as a reader, as somebody who collects a bunch of comics from childhood.

And at one point, I stopped, and then I fell in love with them again in college when I started reading things like "Love and Rockets" and "Blankets".

And I just realized, oh my God.

It's more than just comic strips.

It's like gags.

It's so much more holistic and beautiful.

- You mentioned "Love and Rockets", and that's one of my favorite books of all time.

I mean, Jaime Hernandez's artwork is just so beautiful, and there's a simplicity to it that belies all of the skill that goes in there.

And when I'm looking at your work, I think what you are so good at is capturing a spirit and an emotion.

And we talked a little bit before we started recording.

I recognized you right away from some of your biographical comic work.

So when you're sort of working on whether your own stories or a story of someone else, how do you convey that emotion in the face and in the body language?

- I think it comes from me being obsessed with watching cartoons and animation and studying the ways emotions are being evoked with just really simple-- I don't like even using the word simple because there's still a lot of thought being placed into the design of a character, but I think animation has been really helpful for me in teaching myself how to draw characters that are like really expressive.

And I love that you said that.

You felt like the emotion was conveyed because that's also another piece that I really enjoy about comics.

There's just so much I'm able to show and tell with just a few lines.

And I remember reading John Porcellino's "King Cat", and I forget the title of this comic that we were reading in my cohort.

But it was just the way he was conveying this very somber moment of his cat passing away.

It was just so methodical.

He just drew the cat panel by panel and starting to remove some of the linework, and there's just some beautiful work that's happening with minimalistic cartooning.

I'm like, oh, wow, you're capturing even like death in such a really beautifully sad approach.

And there was no dry eye in the room when we were reading that portion of the comic all together.

But yeah, there's just something beautiful about black and white comics or just black and white art in general.

I come to love-- there's just a challenge that comes with figuring out how to convey that emotion and that human quality.

Yeah, echoing what you were just saying, I think Jaime's work has been really influential in the way I want to continue to explore conveying emotion and just conveying just nuanced characters through the medium.

- Your artwork is-- there's a playfulness to it, and yet at the same time, the simplicity belies a sense of real understanding of what not to put in.

And I'm just thinking of the one story.

I think it's about your grandmother.

Her stories of growing up and going to the ocean and just kind of putting her hands in the water.

And there's just a sequence that you have.

It's a wordless sequence except for the sounds of pat, pat, pat as she's splashing the water with her hands.

And then there's one image of her sort of towering above the sea, and what I got out of it, and I'm not sure if that's what you were intending, is at that moment, she felt like she was in charge of the world.

The master of the sea as it were, and it's just interesting that you're able to take that story that she probably told you when she was growing up.

This is what she did, and you found a way to tell it in a way that showed your connection to that story.

So when you're doing something like that, how are you breaking down and saying, well, you know what?

This is how I see it, and these are the events, and now I'm going to try and put it together so you can understand it.

- Yeah, looking back at that story, it was actually just my younger self being depicted, and it was my way of wanting to build up how representational ocean is for me personally being somebody who was born and raised in California.

There's just something I wanted to personally indulge in drawing home and just how much I love being from here and how much it means to me to claim this place as a space that has been really pivotal in my personal growth.

I just wanted to show what was it like being a child for me experiencing landscape before diving into the anxiety that comes with seeing like this person from El Salvador who I had no idea who she was, and already as a child, I had all these preconceived ideas of what it means to be Salvadoran from xenophobia and just things that are being disseminated to my family on my mother's side through US media.

Especially since I believe I was born while the conflict was still happening in El Salvador but born here in the US.

There's just something I also forgot to mention.

Manga has been really influential in my pacing as well, and I just love how there's a lot of silence in a lot of-- there's a lot of moments where you just are engaging with the world.

You're engaging with the landscape, and I really feel immersed whenever I read manga.

And I am going through this like world-building experience.

So I wanted to just share that with readers and to share what does my home look like to me, and what does that feel like to me.

And I hope that it just gave people a sense of calm and peace because there's definitely something magical and just something ethereal about going to the ocean and feeling like all of your worries just literally get baptized away more or less.

And then my brother enters the scene and tells me here's this grandma lady that we don't know coming from El Salvador.

She's here, and I'm just like I don't want to talk to somebody who's Salvadorian.

They might be mean.

And part of it, I feel like, is a little bit of like method acting too.

Like I really have to kind of remove myself from my own perspective and channel in that younger self and really try to recall what was she feeling at the time.

And sometimes it just really engulfs me in.

Somehow I'm able to channel that into character design and hopefully through the language, too.

- It's fascinating because you talk about method acting, and it's interesting because we-- I guess the general audience might look at a comic, and they might have that preconceived notion that it's all superheroics because that's what we primarily would see in stores.

And we might think of comics as being a little bit simple.

Because it's simple heroic stories of Spiderman against Dark Ock or something like that.

And it's nice to see that there's this change in attitude where we're looking at comics as not just the adventure story, but it could be an autobiographical story, or it could be a way to break down a public health issue.

I know I've seen some comics that have been talking about COVID vaccinations, and you did one about-- I believe it was Afro Salvadoreans.

It's just fascinating because it's something that you were able to take a very, very specific topic and break it open in a way that is completely accessible and gets to the heart of everything.

And at the same time, as a cartoonist, you're doing something that on the surface looks simple but required a lot of research and a lot of, I guess, soul searching to have the question in the first place.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that because that one to me was just one I've never seen before.

- Thank you.

Yeah, I'm really proud of that comic.

And whenever I look back at the process, it all started with the scene that I made.

None of it was illustrated.

It was mostly just a stream of consciousness, and a little bit of me finding very little information and scholarship about Afro Salvadorans on the internet around 2013 or 2014.

And in comparison to the amount of information that's being disseminated today about Afro Salvadorans, the difference is so apparent to me, but it feels so much more telling about.

There are so many of us that have had these curiosities collectively and wondering whether or not this is something we could even claim because so many people from my generation and generations prior were told (NON-ENGLISH SPEECH) because there were laws that forbade Africans.

Not just like Black people, like Asian people and people of Middle Eastern descent.

There was like an immigration ban that happened in El Salvador.

It's interesting because I feel like the political definitely transcends into the ways people are socialized, and I just wanted to react to all of these things that I was learning on my own time and also just nodding to some of the other Afro Salvadorans I've been able to meet through the internet.

People who are really passionate about bringing more visibility to our faces, our stories, and I think what it was hoping to achieve was the fact that some of us have had that experience of wondering, again, I feel like I do have Blackness in me.

And at the same time, everyone else around me saying, no.

Yeah, there might have been Black people way back when during the transatlantic slave trade, but yeah, they just got wiped out eventually through people having lots of inter-racial marriages.

The Black people just somehow fizzled away, but it's something that I was really happy to create because I think I've always been just hungry for this type of knowledge and finding some kind of validation.

And for a while, I felt like it was just me sitting in with these ruminations all by myself until more people just started reaching out, and I started seeing more Afro Salvadorans doing other types of thing.

There's my friend Norma who's a chef, a Salvadoran vegan chef, and Saira who actually was the one who does a lot of work for our community.

And she also identifies as an Afro Salvadoran person from California, and we've been able to meet in person, and I also just wanted to use this comic as a way to thank her and another artist, Carlos Lara, for doing all of this amazing work via the media, via their artistry.

Because I feel like this is our time now.

We're a part of this movement that is really trying to push for validation on a national scale, like an El Salvadoran, transnational scale.

- It's interesting because, again, the way comics are being presented to an audience, that's different from our expectations.

So that's just a really interesting way to do that.

You've done some other comics about life during the quarantine and teaching during the times of COVID.

Now, one of the things I've noticed on your website is that some of your work appears to be-- maybe it's digital, and some of it appears to be as if it's the traditional method of pen and ink on board.

So I'm wondering what sort of methods are you using as you create your comics?

- For a long time it's been through just pen, inks, and mostly digital color.

I really wish I was more of a painter.

I'm really envious of friends who can just get done with a wash and watercolors because I think they look so beautiful, but I've always been intimidated by color.

So flatting has just been the more accessible way to me to express myself through color, through Photoshop.

And nowadays, it's been through Procreate, and I just got an iPad last year.

And I was a little intimidated by it because I felt just overwhelmed when I saw Photoshop for the very first time as a kid.

I was anti technology for a little bit.

And I don't know.

Something about traditional mediums spoke to me a bit more clearly.

I feel like it was just nice to get that instant gratification of seeing what my ideas look like on pen and ink.

But yeah, I feel like I'm still exploring what's my preference, but I think for the most part I'm always going to enjoy doing comic strips or finished comics through pens and through inks just because that's something that I taught myself how to do and just by trying to figure out how did-- OK, how did this artist make this very minimalist but beautiful, lush-looking background.

I don't know.

There's just something kinetic about pens and things that I'll never want to divorce myself from.

- There is something organic about pen on paper or brush and ink and just getting that line just right.

But at the same time, I'm sort of a dabbler, and I have a tablet at home, and I use a Clip Studio Pro and that.

And I'm just trying to teach myself a couple of new tricks here and there, and it is interesting because you can get really into that digital side, but there is something just so satisfying about having a piece of paper or board that you've done something on, and you put in all those lines and made the page just come alive.

And someone else can look at it without turning on a computer or something like that.

And to me, that's the most satisfying piece, is that when the lights go out, and there's no electricity, I can always turn back to those pages and look at them again.

One of the things I noticed in your artwork is that you do some work-- obviously you do a lot in black and white, and I share your fear of colors.

But you do a lot of ink washes, and I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you are doing that.

Is it simply just an ink wash, or is it more of that using Procreate and your iPad?

- Some of the ink washes, some of that was just through Photoshop and just playing around, seeing what feels good, and I really enjoyed it.

Although nowadays, with some of my more recent quarantine diary comics, they've just been flat-- just a single swatch for the background.

Mostly because of time and just wanting to get the idea down as quickly as I can before I forget because lately-- I don't know about you, but I feel like I have a lot of quarantine fog.

Moments where I'm just like, what was that idea that I was going to make into a comic strip, and then it just floats away.

A little bit is just trying to capture the idea as quickly as I can before I forget.

- You don't have a monthly deadline to hit.

You're doing this because this is something you want to do.

And does that mean that you work slower or quicker than somebody who is maybe facing-- I do a gag a day strip, and I need to get so many done for the week, or a comic book artist who is doing 20 or 22 pages.

Do you have that same sort of rigor and schedule, or are you sort of, I'm waiting for the muse to hit, and then I will start creating.

- Yeah, pretty much waiting until I feel like this idea has been sitting with my head for a really long time to the point where it might just bother me.

I'm like, OK, I have to let it out.

Let this beast be unleashed on Procreate or on a piece of paper.

But yeah, I definitely don't have a set schedule, and it's personally because I also freelance besides I'm teaching.

And I often prioritize some of the work that I have to complete.

And lately, whenever I feel like there's a lull in the freelance side of things, like oh, I'll get to working on just mostly writing ideas.

I mostly have like a really long list of ideas for quarantine diaries that I'll eventually get to.

But in most cases, a lot of them don't get used up.

They don't transition into a comic strip because I realize, oh, yeah, this is going to sound only funny to me, not to anybody else.

There's just no way I could think of anything hilarious for-- I don't know.

I'm trying to think of an example, but again, all of these ideas are slipping as I speak right now.

So it was really serendipitous.

- This is something that you do.

You teach.

You are part of that, I guess, the newer generation of comic readers.

We talked a little bit about this.

How comics have taken on an air of respectability.

Something that when I was in high school was, you kept very quiet because nerds read comics, and I'm a nerd.

But comics now, you have a master of Fine Arts degree in comics.

And I think that's just a great next step in the world of comics.

So can you talk a little bit about your academic side?

We have about five minutes or so left, and I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you are balancing your creative ventures with your academic ventures.

- It's still pretty messy, I would say.

For teaching, I feel like I've always put that as a labor of love.

Something I really needed to prioritize.

Mostly because I have anxiety with performing well, and I'm like a relatively newish adjunct, but I've been teaching youth for approximately about two to two and a half years in San Francisco.

And if it wasn't for having those teaching gigs specifically, having this opportunity to teach and lead a comic workshop to some kids in San Francisco during the summer, I don't think I would have actually felt more prompted to make comics and to make and draw lessons and a little syllabus for my students.

It's funny because I feel like I was learning how to make comics along with them, these fourth and fifth graders.

I was really just interested in wondering like, OK, I love teaching.

I also just need to find a way to make more money out of this because, yeah, there's only so much I could live off of from a teaching artist salary where we were getting paid mostly hourly.

But I loved being in school, and I loved learning.

And I realized I was participating in this self education of comics for as long as I could remember and wanting to be in a space that has people that are very excitable about comics.

Who just want to talk about why does this comic use a very silent approach to telling story and mood.

And I was really interested in learning about theory, and how can I share that with people and make it accessible for people who might not be really familiar with comics at all.

So the MFA comics program just sounded like an amazing opportunity, and I definitely wanted to stay home in the Bay Area, and I was just so happy that this was happening here because there's also so much comic history that has happened in San Francisco.

And I think it's just amazing to see that the comics culture is very much alive, and we had so many professors who I've actually been able to run into in other events like a Zine fest.

And to see them as professors just was inspiring and just to feel their excitement for comics history or graphic design or inking, it just made me feel, I guess, less alone in these personal pursuits I wanted to see myself.

- It's fascinating because you share a point of view that I share.

I teach television production here at UNC Pembroke, and what I really enjoy most about my job is the look on students' faces when they get a concept, when they start to own it, and when that excitement translates into the projects that they're doing.

It reminds me of why I love what I do, and it brings out that energy, and I can share that with them.

And it's great to see that in an affiliated field you're finding the same sort of energy.

Now, they're telling me that we have about a minute or so left in our show, and I wanted to ask you if people at home watching wanted to find out more about you, more about your comics, where can they find you on the web?

- You can find me on Instagram or Twitter, @breenache, which is b, r, e, e, n, a, c, h, e. You can also find me at breenache.com.

My husband and I also have a small press called Laneha House.

It's l, a, n, e, h, a, house.com.

And that's where we both showcase and sell some of our self-published works.

Yeah.

- Breena, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a fun and fast half an hour.

- Yes, thank you for the conversation, and I just wanted to give props to whoever did the background set for your studio.

It looks amazing.

I love this.

- That's a lifetime of collecting on those walls right there.

I want to thank you again.

I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture".

We will see you again soon.

[music playing] ♪ TERENCE DOLLARD (VOICEOVER): "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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