Hi, my name is Kevin Burkhalter. I draw a journal comic. Here in a nutshell are my adventures in journal comics starting from the beginning. I don’t know what this will accomplish. If you’re not familiar with journal comics and would like to start hopefully the journal artists and art I have included will help you get a solid start in the world of journal comics. So let’s get started.

From: David Yoder's Awesome Journal #1

From: My Journal

Back when I started I had only read one journal comic, besides David Yoder’s, and that was Clutch by Greig Clutch. My friends JP and Stephen introduced me to Greig and his comics at Small Press Expo (SPX) and I was hooked. It was weird because I didn’t even know the artist and I really couldn’t relate to much in his comic. He was older than I was. He lived in Portland. He worked at an underground music label. He was thinking about buying a house. I would’ve felt like a stalker except for the events that I was reading about happened close to three years prior. But for some reason I couldn’t put it down.

From: Simple Routines #1 by JP Coovert

My first journals were heavily inspired by JP and Clutch. I started with a simple clean line like theirs and left a lot of white space. I drew it on computer paper, which later I found was a mistake because of the hassle of keeping track of all the pieces of paper that began to accumulate after about a month (I don’t really know where they are right now). During this period, as far as my drawings were concerned I thought I was kicking butt. Now, it is hard for me to look at those journals and not punch myself in the face.

From: From Clutch 12 (The resolution is much better in the book hehe)

That first period of my journals spans close to three months. I see that as a test period. I took some time off from doing a journal comic. During this break period I began experimenting with different pens and such.

I went along for a few months being remarkably faithful to my new daily drawing habit. I was feeling good about my new look of my journals. I began to think, “wow I am my own journal cartoonist.” That is, until I read my first “American Elf” strip by James Kolchalka journal strip. Then I went back to feeling like a hack. Kolchalka’s thick lines were very similar to mine except that they actually came from a brush.

From: American Elf Book 2

I continued on though. Comforted that I came upon my style on my own. I was slightly disturbed that I hadn’t done my research and read the Kolchalka strips because the daily journal strip was all his idea. I’m an idiot.

Anyway by this time, I was really feeling like a cool, hip, indie cartoonist with my journal strips which were now being drawn in a black hardcover sketchbook, which I could easily take with me to all the trendy coffee houses. Yeah, but not really.

So before I knew it SPX was creeping up again. The very comic convention, which sparked my journal comic adventure. This time, I got my hands on Drew Weing’s “The Journal Comic”. Once again my mind was blown even though I was reading Drew’s journal comics five years after they were first drawn. Drew chose to do a newspaper strip format for his. This separated his strips stylistically from Kolchalka’s, Clutch’s, JP’s and my strips. The difference when reading Drew’s, JP’s and David Yoder’s strips was I actually knew some of the people in their strips.

“Tell me more about David Yoder!” Ok, well, during this whole time he wasn’t restricting himself to a set format. A real trailblazer. If he wanted to draw his day in a 21 panel grid he would do it and not even think twice. If he wanted to draw one panel he’d do that too. The guy is insane! Plus, he even drew me in a few of his strips.

From: David Yoder's Awesome Journal #2

Being included in other peoples strips and including them in mine has to be one of my favorite parts about journal comics. The examples I’ve included in this article show the artists including other people in their strips. Yay for friendship.

So here I am writing my experiences in the world of journal comics. I am now at a point where I have found various ways of posting my journals online without having my own website (currently in the works). The more I started posting my journals online the more I was introduced to other cartoonists drawing a daily journal comic. My journal comics world is expanding.

I continue to draw my journal comic today and I post it on kar2nist/livejournal.com

So anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope you remember that this is just a rough outline of journal comics by people I have met and am friends with. If you see these comics at conventions BUY THEM!!! THEY WILL ROCK YOU!!!

Epilogue:

Since I wrote this I have read James Kolchalka’s “American Elf 2”. It was great. I also sat down with Chris Staros (Top Shelf Editor) in a portfolio review where he looked at my journal comics. He explained to me that he doesn’t read many journal comics and that their place is on the Internet, in sketchbooks and self-published comics. They publish “American Elf” because they’re friends with James Kolchalka and have published several of his other books.

I think this is fair.