Truth is Fragmentary: Travelogues & Diaries

Autobiography as graphic record is seldom successful— except when it is. Ms. Bell's drawings fit perfectly with her totally human, convincing narrative.

Gabrielle Bell is a struggling comic book artist who puts herself on a schedule to draw every day despite her mental exhaustion. Her travels around the world give her more than enough creative fuel for an autobiography, both because of the experiences and the exhaustion. She specifically travels to places where other comic book artists meet, as a way to not only better her own style, but to market herself to the public. With a shy personality and an emotionally wrecked mind, putting herself out there becomes increasingly difficult as the graphic novel marches on.The themes of shyness, stress, and depression are all relatable topics that most readers can get behind. The ways in which Miss Bell shows them are creative and razor-sharp, to say the least. For example, when asked about her shyness, the next panel shows Miss Bell morphing into a two-headed creature as she wracks her brain thinking of an answer. Being stressed out also takes its toll on her as evidenced by her sarcastic “cat riding” vacation photos. It gets so maddening at times for her that she pops Xanax on airplane rides and chews cocaine leaves just to numb the pain. While I don’t recommend going too hardcore with the medication you take, it’s certainly understandable.Of all the places Gabrielle has traveled to, her visit to Columbia has to be the most eye-opening. We all have this image of Columbia being a corrupt place where guys like Pablo Escobar can run roughshod over everyone while the police do nothing about it. To some extent, that could very well be the case. But Gabrielle also knows that beneath all the violence and drugs, there’s a spark of humanity and a cry for help. As an open-minded liberal, she knows not to judge an entire culture based on the actions of a few people. That’s a lesson we all need to understand at some point, especially with our current politics the way they are now with the Donald in charge.If there’s one complaint I have about this graphic novel, it’s that the themes I care about the most took too long to kick in. At first it seemed like Gabrielle was having a good time with all the traveling she did. Then you scratch beneath the surface and find that nothing is okay and she needs help. I wish that was more prevalent in the opening chapters of the book. Maybe it was already there and I missed it, but it just seemed to be a deviation from the near end of the story. If you don’t have a lot of patience as a reader, I can see how this would be a turn-off. But I must advise you to keep going until the very end. I did and I’m grateful for it.It’s easy to tell that Truth Is Fragmentary was a labor of love for Gabrielle Bell and she should be rewarded for soldiering through the stress and depression. Buy a copy of her book and give her your undivided attention. If you like what you see, keep buying her works. She’ll be grateful for any attention she gets, as are many up-and-coming writers and artists. That’s what you have to remember as you go through this book: everybody starts somewhere and it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters the most. Thank you, Gabrielle Bell, for giving me something worthwhile to read! A passing grade for you, my dear!

fun

Gabrielle Bell has a wonderful way of making the mundane entertaining. It's fun to get to live in her head for a bit.

'Truth Is Fragmentary' is based in part on a collection of Gabrielle Bell's 'Diary Comics' - the collection reveals a lot more about the artist and writer whose hilarious views on life and living become more impressive as time marches on. She also includes work based on travels to Comic-Cons [huge events in Europe and America that she visits and sells her comics at]. Although brief in it's design, this is a wonderful book - full of insights and beautifully capturing some of her strongest work. It would seem that Ms Bell's approach to writing and drawing is staggering. If you are looking for a very funny and often hilarious comic collection, then just about everything that Ms Bell has produced is worth getting. This is just one of six books published that are highly original and captivating. Highly recommended.

I was doing research on auto-biographical style comics by women and bought this thinking it would be perfect - well, it is auto-biographical, but totally dull/boring/put me to sleep. Usually with graphic novels i can't wait to pick them up and keep reading, but this was so dull in the story lines. Literally it is like in each comic the author writes very self indulgent mundane blather about not knowing what to write or make comics about - it could be an interesting topic, but sadly ends up repetitive and annoying and i couldn't finish the book. Sorry!