Artist Inspo #3

Lisa Hanawalt

Y’Har me weirdies— and welcome to my third installment of “Artist Inspo”¹ where I deep dive into artists who are so awesome, I can’t help but spew my excitement onto others!

I hope you are all emotionally prepared for some frothing, unrepentant fangirling— because I am about to share my FAVORITE CARTOONIST with y’all.

Yes, you may have guessed from the article subtitle (or if you’ve ever met me)…

It’s Lisa Hanawalt!

Who’s going to buy me this print? I’ll trade you all my inner organs for it.

If you are a creator (which I believe most people are), then you’ve likely known someone who really inspired you— Someone who showed you that there was a place for your voice in this world.

When I was growing up I didn’t know any women cartoonists. I didn’t even start reading comics until my early 20s because comic shops always seemed to showcase superhero content, which I didn’t relate to.

I just drew. I drew everywhere, all the time. I drew to entertain myself and I drew to make my friends laugh. I made comics, but I didn’t call them “comics”.

I didn’t discover Lisa Hanawalt’s art until after college.

I found her studio mate Julia Wertz² first, after finally deciding to peruse the comics section at Barnes & Noble.

I devoured Julia’s memoir, “Drinking at the Movies”, probably before even leaving the comics aisle.

I had never seen a memoir comic, let alone one by a woman my age.

So, like the obsessive creep I am, I looked her up online immediately. It turned out she was a member of a comics studio of other women cartoonists.

When I tell you I nearly lost my shit…

Here… suddenly before me, on my CRT brick of an early-aughts Dell monitor… was a collective of women cartoonists being silly as shit, calling themselves Pizza Island.

I could not. I’m telling you— I. could. not.

Banner from their original website.

This was the first time, in my entire life, I realized that I could be a cartoonist.

Hell, I was a cartoonist. It was one of the most empowering moments of my life.

Now back to Lisa!

I became a fan of all the cartoonists of Pizza Island— but I always felt an extra connection to Lisa’s art.

Her work is so many things: clever, nuanced, gross, hilarious, morbid, hopeful, honest, strange, deeply awkward, unabashedly horny, gorgeously detailed, (someone stop me)— just unique as hell.

She never seemed afraid to fully express herself and that’s something I’ve always admired in her and I’m always striving for in my own work.

(Below is a comic I made of the one time I met Lisa at Linework NW in Portland.)

Her books, “My Dirty Dumb Eyes” and “Hot Dog Taste Test” were my gateway drugs, but most people will know her for being the production designer and producer of “Bojack Horseman”, Netflix’s first original animated series.

Rafael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Bojack, was friends with Lisa in high school where they used to come up with TV shows based on Lisa’s drawings in theater class.

(I am still personally waiting for someone from my high school to ask me to be a production designer for a Netflix animated series. Anyone?… )

But with all the impressive, prolific works of Lisa Hanawalt her Series Tuca & Bertie really steals the show for me.

It’s so good it literally makes me want to cry. Especially since it was recently canceled, which breaks my heart.

Much like Lisa’s comics, Tuca & Bertie features storylines about oft-neglected subjects like women’s health, sexuality, mental health, and female friendship— all while being wildly strange and funny as shit.

“I just want to, like, write about what I’m interested in and what I feel like I haven’t quite seen before, especially in adult animation […] I don’t want to shy away from stuff just because it’s uncomfortable.” - Lisa Hanawalt, Los Angeles Times Interview

That’s my cartoonist icon!

There was a “birdsona” prompt on Twitter back when Tuca & Bertie first released, so you KNOW this dirty b participated.

I can’t tell if I should be concerned that I made myself a common pigeon.

I just love an underdog, okay?! I used to tell my husband, Mat, that I was the “pigeon representative of San Francisco” because it always bothered me how people would be mean to pigeons for no reason. Yeah, I got skin in the pigeon game (ew, sorry, that sounded grosser than I intended). But look— I live in a city, I eat food off the ground— I don’t feel like I need to explain myself any further.

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Listening to:

1. The previous two installments can be read here—> where I write about “Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi” and "Tara Booth”.

2. Artist Inspo on Julie Wertz TBD