What Comics Can Do When the News Is Your Neighborhood

Minneapolis in the face of I.C.E.

It has been a truly wild last two weeks and I feel like I’m living in an alternate reality here in Minneapolis.

We’ve been facing a huge surge of I.C.E. immigration officers in the Twin Cities area, with more agents than there are local police. So much of I.C.E.’s behavior has been deeply disturbing and on January 7, an I.C.E. agent shot and killed activist Renee Good 2.5 miles from where I live.

The next day, a journalist friend of mine at a national publication asked if I was interested in writing an op-ed about my experience on the ground in Minneapolis. Since I’m not a particularly political person, especially online, I hesitated at first. I also wasn’t sure I had enough to say on what was going on since I spend so much time at home in my studio.

But this was an opportunity to reach a lot of people. And what’s going on with I.C.E. doesn’t feel political to me, it feels like a human rights issue. I believe everyone should be held accountable for their actions.

I thought it over and decided I had an opinion worth sharing. I pitched two ideas for editorial comics—one about a Hispanic man shoveling snow three blocks from my house who was tackled by two I.C.E. agents and whisked away in a car. And the other was a comic about my complex feelings about Minneapolis, both the good and the bad. They preferred the latter, but ended up passing on it since they weren’t technically set up to publish comics. I ended up pitching it to the Washington Post who bought it on Saturday morning. I worked intensely on it all on it all weekend and it went live on Monday:

My editorial comic published in the Washington Post

This comic received far more attention than I normally get for my posts—over 50,000 views on my Instagram and 27,000 on the Washington Post’s Instagram—which was unheard of for me.

Although most of the reactions were positive or thoughtful, I also got my first hate emails, DMs, and nasty messages in the comments. I knew that was to be expected, but I’m a sensitive person so it was still hard. Here’s a diary comic I made about it:

Diary comic

After the Washington Post comic went out, I had to step back from social media for a few days to recover both from the vitriol and exhaustion of creating the piece in such a short period of time.

The situation in my city continued to deteriorate with a Venezuelan man shot in the leg by I.C.E. on Wednesday night, and I felt like I needed to do something.

However, I’m not particularly well suited to a lot of traditional forms of protest or aid. My main skill is making comics which felt so ineffectual in the face of everything.

But then I thought back to the Washington Post piece which so many people saw. I realized: I have the power to reach people through my comics, more power than I ever realized.

I saw that my friends in other states didn’t know the severity of the situation here. I thought of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and what an impact it had in depicting something incredibly painful—the Holocaust—but still people read it and the comics format has a lot to do with that.

There’s a long history of comics as a form of resistance. They’re powerful communicators of experience, emotions, and humanity. Comics impact people in a different way than photos, videos, or writing can.

I thought to myself, Minneapolis has a big comics community. We need to share what we’re seeing through comics and do it in some unified way.

But I wondered if I was brave enough to take action? Was I strong enough to face more hatred online? And was my mental health good enough to handle all that? I decided to sleep on it on on Wednesday night and see how I felt in the morning.

Upon waking up this Thursday morning, I still felt like I needed to do something. And I realized that I could handle whatever came from it. I also had the skills both as an artist, activator, and connector to get something started.

So on Thursday, I called up my friend, cartoonist Jason Walz (The Flip Side), and he agreed we needed to take action. He was even more disturbed than I was with what he was seeing as a public school special ed teacher. Jason wrote:

Just this week, I witnessed two children taken away by ICE a block from where I teach. Everyday, from my classroom window, I see people violently and dramatically pulled into vehicles. Only 40 percent of our students are now attending classes because they are afraid to leave their homes, which means we now collect donations all day long to deliver money and goods to their families… I attended a protest planning session in a church basement only for us to discover that someone from ICE was there.

We knew we needed to get more cartoonists involved so we reached out to Trung Le Nguyen, another Minneapolis cartoonist (The Magic Fish), and Nate Powell (March, a graphic novel about civil rights icon Senator John Lewis). They both swiftly agreed to be involved. Nate stressed the importance of getting this out fast so people could see these stories before it was too late.

Trung, Jason, and I rapidly brainstormed ways to get the word out in flexible and effective way. We came up with the idea to put a call out to cartoonists and artists to make four-panel comics about the personal impact I.C.E. is having on their lives. We realized we needed to make the request flexible so everyone could create in their own way, on their own timeline, and reach the widest amount of people quickly, and do it all without needing permission or oversight.

We created some constraints to cut down on the decision making an artist would need to make, and to make it cohesive and readily identifiable: Four panels, use the same blue color, use certain hashtags like #iceoutcomics, and 3:4 dimensions.

Trung created this graphic about it to include at the end of any comic to explain the project:

And on Friday, we started releasing comics on it, including my post which has gotten 222,000 views thus far and an outpouring of interest:

Here’s cartoonist Jason Walz’s comic:

It’s only been two days, but the comics are already starting to come in from strangers (find them by using #ICEoutcomics on Instagram). Cartoonists from around the world are offering to make comics with other people’s stories since they haven’t personally experienced this. It’s been overwhelming and heartwarming to see the outpouring of the community.

I never expected to do something like this, but I felt a moral imperative to do it.

Now we’ll see where it goes!

If you are interested in donating to help immigrants in Minnesota, here are two organizations doing good work in the area: Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and Monarca.

Of course, we’d appreciate any help spreading the word of #ICEoutcomics.

I.C.E. Out Comics Posts:

• Week 1: What Comics Can Do When the News Is Your Neighborhood (this post)

• Week 2: The Power of Community—and Cartoonists

• Week 3: A Week in Minneapolis in Comics

• Week 4: What 200 Four-Panel Comics Taught Me About Storytelling

• Week 5: How to End a Project When the Story Isn’t Over

K’s Kettle

It seems strange to be hosting a Zoom workshop during this time, but I love my K’s Kettle, my monthly art-making session for paid subscribers. We’ll be making short comics about pets. I need something light and fun during this hard time.

No experience necessary to join—just bring yourself and something to draw with. It’s a low-pressure space to experiment, play, and connect. The live hour-long Zoom session is on Tuesday, January 20 at 2pm CST/3pm EST. This session is only for paid subscribers who can sign up using the link found in this post.

Leif Love

Since it’s been tough here, and in many parts of the world, here’s an older picture of Leif—basically the cutest puppy ever:

Take care and keep creating!

-Katharine