March/April 2024 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest

Come Home, Indio by Jim Terry

Hello, everyone! Due to several scheduling conflicts at once, this was our smallest group in quite some time. We still had fun, of course, and pointed out Chicago locales in the narrative. I promise if only one other person ever shows up, we’ll just bump the schedule by a month! It’ll be fun figuring out what to write about in this space if that ever happens. Lol

Despite the low turnout, we talked about several topics that were touched on by this month’s comic. A couple of people who couldn’t make it shared their thoughts via email. One email expressed love that more Native stories are being told by Native people and related a recent trip to the Field Museum that was affected by NAGPRA finally (finally!) being enforced. One person marveled at the memory of people who write memoir comics, unsure if they would be able to recall enough of their childhood with such detail. Then again, some of the most compelling parts of Come Home, Indio were the depictions of piecing together incomplete memories from being blackout drunk. This comic was not always an easy read, but it was honest. The chapter about the Dakota Access Pipeline protest was more of an illustrated narrative than a comic, but it served the subject matter well. The art style was universally praised; detailed and textured when it needed to be, but sketchy when it served the story. This was a “text-heavy” comic in the words of one email, and that was seen as necessary given its interiority, though that person still felt some judicious edits would have helped. This is the rare book that inspired an additional reading list, not just the creator’s other works, but also comics by Will Eisner and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 17 to discuss The Incal.

What We're Reading

April 17 - The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius

May 15 - Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

June 19 - Bitter Root, Volume 1: Family Business by David F. Walker and Sanford Greene

July 17 - It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood

August 21 - The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

Next month’s selection is mainly available on hoopla, but make sure to borrow the correct version. We’ll be reading the collected edition from 2020 that’s 302 pages long. It has the same cover as Volume 1: The Black Incal, but that’s a single issue and only 47 pages. Definitely not as much to discuss there. Lol There are physical copies available, but they’re a bit limited.

Shameless Self-Promotion

CyberSync is available for purchase! To say I’m excited to see my name in print for the first time is a gross understatement. I’ve already ordered several copies for myself in addition to the comped copies I’ll be receiving as a contributor.

There’s not much time left in the SMASH Quarterly Anthology, Volume 1 campaign from Foreign Press Comics! I’ll have a four-page comic in Volume 2 with art by David Escobar and letters by Buddy Beaudoin. The better Volume 1 does, the better Volume 2’s chances will be, so please contribute something. Even a dollar will help! :)

I was so excited last month about comics I’ve written appearing in The Comic Jam, I completely neglected to share the episode of Superhero Cinephiles I recorded with host

Percival Constantine

that dropped on February 4th! We discussed the 2022 movie Samaritan, which I don’t recommend watching. Lol

I also recorded an episode for Comic Chat Authority. We discussed this newsletter and the start of my comics career, and it was a very fun conversation. I hope to return to both shows someday!

About What We’ve Read

We first decided to read Come Home, Indio thanks to this local news spotlight on Jim Terry. It was a finalist for the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize for graphic novel/comics and was nominated for the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel in 2021. Book Riot included it on this list of YA and Middle Grade Native and Indigenous Graphic Novels and Comics, though I feel like the audience for this book skews a bit more mature.

Jim Terry was interviewed by Publishers Weekly about Come Home, Indio, mostly about his childhood experiences and spirituality. That interview also touched on his experience at Standing Rock, which is part of why the New York Times mentioned it with David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s The Black Panther Party to discuss comics and depictions of activism.

Elena Terry, the creator’s sister who featured heavily in the narrative, is a chef of some renown. She was also a contestant on Chopped! I thought that was cool, so I’m including it.

You can find the latest NEWS digest here. Substack warned me that not emailing it would result in less than one percent of readers seeing it, and sure enough it barely scratched double digits. If there’s no objection, I’ll be emailing everyone the next NEWS digest in two weeks. :)

Some Thoughts on Alcoholics Anonymous

I struggled to come up with a topic for this month. Many that came to mind were ones I was either too ill-equipped or ashamed to cover. I didn’t have the stomach to go into detail about some of the racist attitudes I held or was associated with as an evangelical; for example, one of my church elders described the genocide of Native Americans as “a moral reckoning for paganism.” That did get me closer to something evil and stupid that I could write about easier, though.

Jim Terry made sure not to name the specific group that aided his recovery, and in his Author’s Note he explains that he “take[s] great care… not to advertise or represent the specific program by which [he] got sober.” But he does quote an unnamed horror author that “‘it’ll probably be at the very front of the alphabet.’”

Alcoholics Anonymous is a recovery group that has helped millions of people. Sure, they’re not perfect, but the last church I belonged to saw it as downright insidious. In what I can only see now as a prelude to the growing fascist bend of the white evangelical Christian church, my last church saw Alcoholics Anonymous as both incredibly threatening and incredibly weak. They said it undermined the church’s teachings on sin while simultaneously coddled people into having “weak mindsets.”

Yes, that’s right! In addition to being against homosexuality, abortion, evolution, smoking, an effective social safety net, and divorce, they had issues with Alcoholics Anonymous. Some of them would even ridicule AA members. When passing another church that hosted meetings, a leader of my Bible study would point out alcoholics who had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and deride them for having “traded one addiction for another.”

“But one of the 12 steps is acknowledging a higher power!” you might object. “Surely they’d want to encourage that?” You would be wrong, partly because the “higher power” is left up to the alcoholic. Higher powers include Islam, unitarianism, or something more akin to Jim Terry’s “smoothing of a rock by the water.” They can be glass doorknobs, upstairs neighbors, or nebulous concepts. And if someone believes in a higher power that is anything other than a trinitarian god who created the Earth six thousand years ago and hates women and queer people, that person is going to Hell when they die. For this reason, AA is seen as encouraging heresy and paganism.

I sometimes worry about describing my former religious beliefs. It’s not that I mind writing about myself and my old friends as raving religious extremists, but I don’t want that to lead to those people being dismissed or underestimated. In reality, they pose a threat to the lives of my current friends and democracy itself. It is impossible for me to understate how insane some of their beliefs are, and yet those beliefs are shared by the former Vice President and current Speaker of the House of the United States.

AA was seen as a way of shifting blame. People were no longer “sinners in need of saving,” but addicts in need of recovery. This assertion is laughable on its face, since so much of recovery is about making amends and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Their biggest complaint with Alcoholics Anonymous was that it was the Church’s job to help people with their “sin.” In short, AA was seen as competition. I think this gives a lot of the game away. If the church was really about helping people, I doubt they’d have much to complain about because of the efficacy of AA and programs like it. Instead, the Church wants to be the ones in charge. It’s why they object to social safety nets and raising people out of poverty. They object that they should be the ones to help people, but only on their terms. Anyone who’s ever been to a Salvation Army can attest to how that kind of help comes with heavy strings attached.

Like I mentioned earlier, AA isn’t perfect. I’ve had atheist, Orthodox Jewish, and even gay Christian friends say it can make them uncomfortable. But it’s literally saved the lives of several people I know, and it clearly helped Jim Terry a lot (or whatever program he attended wink wink). Objecting to it and even subverting it is one more way religious extremists in this country seek to make life worse for others because they think that will make life better for themselves.

Anyway, if you or someone you know has been struggling with alcoholism or addiction, please check out these resources. And avoid any churches that undermine or ridicule recovery.

Please rest assured that I have repudiated all of my former beliefs. Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below! Do you have a favorite autobiographical or memoir comic? Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks for reading. See you next month for The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius!