How Peña Popo served as the ‘middleman’ to bring someone else's story to life in comic form
The Portland State University Collaborative Comics Project aims to change the narrative around homelessness through ethnographic cartooning based on the experiences of PSU students. The project will culminate into the 10 comics published as a booklet and sold by Street Roots vendors. Street Roots spoke with 8 of the artists to learn more about their process. Read all the interviews here.
During the pandemic, Arantza Pe ñ a Popo found time to create the comics she had been dreaming up for years. Primarily creating comics in vibrant colors as a vehicle for her own life stories, she found a challenge in illustrating for the Portland State University Collaborative Comics Project. Tasked with telling someone else’s story of homelessness as a PSU student, Peña Popo was pleased to collaborate with her subject to use the comic as a vessel to share their story.
Kanani Cortez : What got you into creating comics and what’s your favorite part of creating comics?
Arantza Peña Popo : Initially, I got into comics around late middle school. I had stumbled upon comics like “Smile” by Raina Telgemeier and “Anya’s Ghost.” So that’s how I got introduced to comics, just reading them and seeing them in the library and borrowing from my friends. From then on, I started to just draw little comics in my sketchbook throughout high school. I didn’t really ingrain myself into making comics and the medium of comics until the pandemic, really. I was very stressed out and I was like ‘oh gosh I have all this free time, I might as well do all of these comics I’ve wanted to do for the past five years,’ so that’s when I really started making comics – especially making zines and investigating more of the craft especially how unique it is as a medium. In terms of being able to tell narratives. Especially narratives that might not be easy to read or to create visual art, I feel like it’s a very perfect combination of both prose and pictures that just makes it a lot more easy to consume and a lot more accessible. It’s also really fun to kind of experiment and play around with.
Cortez : What kind of themes do you typically explore in your work? Have you written or created comics about homelessness previously?
Peña Popo : Right now, I’m kind of in a lull with making comics, so I’ve got to get back to that. But the stuff I’ve done in the past has been mostly autobiographical comics. So stuff about my own life and gaining closure by looking back at these separate moments and remnants of my past and trying to piece it together, kind of like puzzle pieces, trying to make sense of it. Some are also about racial identity. There’s this one comic I made, a fiction comic about a Black woman who lives in an apartment and these white neighbors move in and her apartment starts shrinking. And then most recently “Lavender Scare” was about — it’s kind of a little weird adventure story, a girl escaping a petal monster and it’s an allegory for queerness and self-acceptance. So usually (themes) looking at queerness, race and also mental illness and distilling them through comics. But I also want to look more into gender identity and gender relations and fun stuff like that. I’ve never made a comic about homelessness, especially since a lot of the stuff I made early on was autobiographical stuff. So this is kind of different because I have to focus on someone completely other than myself, and try to dissect feelings that I’ve never felt personally, or try to in that cliche way, ‘step in someone else’s shoes’ and trying to tell this narrative in my way because I just never experienced homelessness, at least to that extent.
Cortez : How did you get involved in the project? And what kind of inspired you to go for it and try to get involved?
Peña Popo : I first stumbled upon the project because I saw a post on Instagram, a call for artists about this project about homelessness and comics which I thought was really cool. I rarely see comics in relation with research. I thought that was a very cool concept and especially getting to tell other people’s stories through comics and facilitating other people’s narrative through comics seemed like a very cool thing, especially with an intense and sensitive topic like homelessness. And so that’s what initially inspired me to get in it at first. I was a bit afraid because I didn’t know if they were going to accept me because I’m not from the Portland area, I’m not from the West Coast at all. I’m all the way in the East Coast.
I guess what inspired me to be part of the project was the fact that you rarely see comics being used with research; anything artistic with researchers can seem a bit more sterile and ‘objective.’ Usually, those don’t mesh together, but seeing comics being used to reflect, not only their research but also these participants voices and participants stories when they might not have any other platform to otherwise tell their stories, especially stories that are very difficult to talk about.
Cortez : Did you have a chance to meet your subject or interviewee in person? What was that collaborative experience with the subject and yourself?
Peña Popo : I was given a bit more free will in terms of drawing the subject. I just know they really wanted braids. I had more free will in their appearance and in terms of some aspects of world-building because they want to be anonymous, but I did get to meet them. I was freewheeling and just using the information given to me and the main plot points and important aspects of the narrative to incorporate into the comic. So initially I was more independently navigating that story, but I think what really helped was later on I finally got to meet the subject virtually along with Kacy McKinney. It was nice to see a face and put this story to the face. It was very refreshing and also I was in an artistic block with the comic. I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’m telling this story right?’ I just really want to make sure I’m giving this story justice. So it was important to me to see them so I can at least put that face to the story even if I wasn’t going to draw their face. There’s this one part about the participant finally getting an apartment after two years of being homeless around Portland and I was kind of struggling with it because I remember looking at it (the comic) and it feeling kind of cluttered and rushed. It was really nice to meet with both Kacy and the participant and instead of making this dense climax with words and stuff, it became a more simple reprieve. It became a more silent relief of getting an apartment and finally having a home. So having that participant there and really honing in with that collaborative aspect really helped me hone in on the story and also add details that really breathed life into it. You know, I’m just the middleman. I’m like the vessel for the narrative, but the participant created the story and is the catalyst for the story. I’m just executing it visually. So it was nice to have them be a key component at that part, the latter end of the project.
Cortez : Yeah, the scene where they’re laying back in the bed and it’s you can see them almost exhaling, there’s a picture of relief as they lie back and it was a really beautiful frame. The comic, “Not Finishing was not an Option,” was illustrated all in black and white except for this last frame in full color. What was your thinking behind that?
Peña Popo: I’m really used to drawing in color, so having to do the whole thing in black and white was kind of a challenge. It was a fun challenge to tackle, but I’m used to leaning on the color — kind of using it as a crutch because you can use it to delineate shapes and have lots of different colors. In terms of having things in all black and white, I think it made it simpler visually, it’s more clear-cut because it’s more of a story with very clear aspects. It made it easier too because I wasn’t there, so I didn’t have to delineate what colors things were. It’s more of practicality and clarity that I chose black and white throughout the comic. It made it easier to distinguish between light and dark, there are moments of relief and moments that are heavier emotionally and darker. Towards the end I chose color, I remember throwing it out there, ‘like what if I did a full-color spread?’ as an idea, but my first draft didn’t have that. In the script, the participant talked about them going back to their family and their home country and having a big, colorful celebration. It seemed very exuberant and vibrant … that’s why I chose that and added that vibrance of their home country.
Editor’s note: Street Roots has partnered with Kacy McKinney and her team at PSU to publish the PSU Collaborative Comics project. Street Roots’ vendors will sell the publication alongside the newspaper beginning Feb. 2.
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