Jason Bergman interviews Jeff Lemire for an extensive talk about comics and his life, upon the release of his newest book 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir. From the article:
JASON BERGMAN: What made you want to write a memoir?
JEFF LEMIRE: Well, it started on Substack. A number of comic creators back in, I guess, 2021, were approached by Substack to do newsletters for them. And I was trying to think about what [an] opportunity that would be for me to create a sense of community with fans of my work, and to be able to share a lot of process material and sketchbook stuff that I had, that I’d never really shown. And when I started doing that, I started writing these little essays. I’d kind of pick a certain project, and write an essay about what was going on in my life at the time I was doing that book, and what was going on behind the scenes with each project. I did a few of those and it started to kind of build momentum where I could see it as something bigger. I hadn’t really looked back on my career much. I’m the kind of person who’s always really focused on whatever I’m working on at the moment and then right onto the next thing. I don’t often look back. But it did feel like it was an interesting point in my life and career where it was good to look back and reassess some of the old work, and take stock of what I’ve accomplished and what I’ve done. So yeah, I think it’s probably a combination of a midlife crisis thing [laughs] and reaching a milestone in my career where a couple of my books had been adapted for the screen. It just felt like I reached, I don’t know, a midway point in my career.
Read the whole interview here.
The Toronto Comic Jam 