The Waiting Room on Cartoon Movement

I just posted a 20 page comic about Iraqi refugees living in Damascus on the Cartoon Movement. Here’s a little background into how and why the piece was made:

Last November and December, I shadowed the Common Language Project (CLP)–a multimedia journalism collective based out of Seattle–on a reporting trip to Syria, Northern Iraq, Southeastern Turkey and Lebanon for my next book-length work. My aim for that project is to make graphic journalism on journalists and to lift the curtain a bit on a profession that is mysterious to most laypeople.

Count me as one of those laypeople. I have no formal training in journalism at all, and though I am a bit of a news junkie, theres a big difference between knowing how to spot quality reporting and knowing how it’s made. Who do you interview and how do you get in touch with them? How do you know what to ask? What about ethics? There are plenty books on all of this. But I thought maybe it would be better to learn by doing, submersion journalism style.

I’ve been friends with the three founders of the CLP for almost a decade and we had been talking for a long time about doing a collaboration. Last winter seemed like perfect timing. The CLP does lots of local reporting in the Seattle area on human rights and environmental issues, but they also schedule international reporting trips which spotlight particular issues which they feel are underreported. This time around, they wanted to look into the effects of ten years of War on Terror and what has been left in its wake. As the US draws down troops and people have turned their attention either inward (the economy, stupid) or elsewhere (Afghanistan, Pakistan), Iraq has become yesterdays news. Foreign media bureaus are moving out of Baghdad and into Kabul and whatever attention we still pay to the region seems only to be how many people died today in a bombing. What about all the people who have to live with the aftermath of a war which is still far from over?

Sarah Stuteville lead the interview process on most of the pieces we did, with additional reporting and photo/video journalism by Alex Stonehill. I would accompany them on the interviews and take my own notes but stay mute. My own interviews–of Sarah and Alex themselves–would begin when their cameras and recorders turned off. I dont think poor Sarah got to eat a single meal without me being across from her with my recorder on and notebook out. But as a journalist who is concerned that her field is misunderstood by the general public, I don’t think she minded. People don’t usually talk to journalists because they want something in return–they talk because they want their story to be told.

In the end, that’s the challenge facing a journalist: you are entrusted with someone’s story and now you have to find a way to present it in such a way that people will listen to it and get engaged. And if there’s one thing I learned from my time embedded with these journalists, it’s that it’s not easy.

When the Cartoon Movement asked me if I would do a comic for the site on an issue I had looked into with the CLP during our stay in the Middle East, I didn’t have to think twice about what to focus the piece on. The situation facing Iraqi refugees is critical right now and it’s something that is incredibly underreported. Part of this is due to the fact that most of these refugees are in Syria, which is a very difficult country to be a journalist in. With permission from the CLP (who I really see as partners in this piece) I began work on the piece using the interviews they had conducted and I had been tagging along for.

Reporting on an issue like this challenging, but the work doesn’t end once you’re back at your desk. It took several weeks to transcribe the seven or so hours of audio interviews into text. After that, I thought I would be in the clear. After all, the information and quotes I needed for the piece were all right there in the transcript. But organizing all of that into a structure that worked was incredibly difficult. I can safely say that writing this piece took me longer than drawing and painting it.

If the writing part of this made me anxious and tormented (see, I am learning how to be a journalist by doing), the art-making part of it was pure enjoyment. With this piece I wanted to try some new watercolor techniques that I hadn’t been able to experiment with while working on a long book for the previous two years. Being able to try new things with the paint was like stretching my legs after being on a 12 hour flight. I use a lot of reference photos because I want to be as accurate as possible when portraying settings, but I also want the work to be expressive and for the human-ness of the characters to come through as much as possible.

I owe special thanks to the CLP for giving this rookie the opportunity to watch and learn from some of the best out there. And as for the peek into their process and the stories that unfolded while we were out there, there’s going to be a bit of a wait before I’ll be able to put that out. In the meantime, I’m starting to work on new graphic journalism projects which use my own reporting both locally and abroad.