Milkyboots 8

Milkyboots 8
By Virginia
milkyboots.blogspot.com

One thing I find really interesting in the world of mini comics are the sheer number of autobiographic comics that are produced. I think I have way more autobio mini comics than any other genre. At times Milkyboots seems more like illustrated prose (lots of narration), but that doesn’t mean it’s not comics, or that I didn’t enjoy it.

I read this comic the night before I went to London to go to a zine event. I’d just printed off a bunch of copies of some of the zines I’ve made recently and was having a sort of crisis. ie. I thought they were all terrible and nobody would want them. While that did continue the next today at the actual zine event (where I did eventually trade away most of my zines), at least while I was reading about Virginia’s similar crisis of self confidence in (and about) Milkyboots I felt a little better.

And I guess that’s one of the appeals of comics like this, and maybe why there are so many autobio comics. You can say “That’s just like what I did/how I am feeling,” whether it’s getting really drunk at a party, trying (and failing) to find a job, baking cookies, or continuing a relationship that you know you shouldn’t but can’t stop yourself. In fact it really takes a lot of guts to put together something like this, and even more to give it to other people.

Last year’s Portland Zine Symposium was now so long ago I don’t remember the people I got zines from. Who were you Virginia? What did we talk about? Next time we can talk about our anxieties.