MBDL, My Badly Drawn Life - Gipi

You don't need to think too hard to figure out that a semi-autobiography by an artist called My Badly Drawn Life has a fair degree of self-deprecation. And bad drawings. The intention, from the random manner that the stories in the book are related, is almost as if Gipi feels embarrassed to give the stories and his life the respectability of beautiful drawings. Although unconventional, he is certainly capable of that - and there are examples of that in the book, mostly in the colour sections - but when it comes to speaking about what a dork he was as a youth, he prefers to leave it sketchy and a bit of a mess. Which sums up those events perfectly.

Published in English translation by Fantagraphics, its ideal home, the US publisher often publishing international foreign language translations of works equivalent of the Drawn & Quarterly sad sack loser indies of Joe Matt, Julie Doucet and Chester Brown. Written and drawn between 2006 and 2007, what is special about Gipi is (much like the others mentioned above actually) he has his own very distinctive approach to detailing personal material. It's almost an insight into his approach overall, relating personal episodes and misadventures from his youth, but developing them and illustrating them in a way that blends reality with fantasy, impressions and feelings.

Rather even than present them as directly narrated to the reader, Gipi's main self-character often bounces the ideas irreverently off another imaginary figure: rambling on about his random observations and mishaps to a disinterested doctor or dentist. There is almost a stream of consciousness to the way it's told, digressive, patching the story into other random characters like 'The Bear who likes to say Fuck’ who turns into a bullying American sergeant directing the author on a new direction to take. There's a pirate story interspersed into the narrative in painted colour episodes where another similar figure is forced to confront his own cowardliness, failings and weaknesses on troubled seas with danger everywhere.

Ambiguously then, "badly drawn" might be more a reflection of the way the narrator views himself rather than it being any indication into the character of his artwork, which is typically varied and wonderfully expressive. The opening and the closing sections where he speaks to the doctor vary greatly in quality, the opening section indeed appearing very rough and loosely drawn compared to the (relatively) more refined latter pages, reflecting the narrator's ability to process the experiences from the beginning to the end. In between we get all sorts of variations of style to suit the content. It seems an odd way to process autobiographical material, but in a way it also represents how Gipi takes the autobiographical elements from his own life and transforms those experiences into fiction. The discovery of this process could be key to the change the narrator undergoes over the course of the book from dork to creative artist.

All of the outside characters in fact - the doctor, the psychologist, the pirate, the bear, his confrontation with the shadow man - have a part to play in defining and dealing with various issues that arise, but it's in his own way of processing those issues through his art, his writing and drawing, that is perhaps the decisive factor that is life saving. Whether they are familiar with the artist's other graphic novels or not, MBDL takes the reader on a remarkable and fascinating journey, told in a unique way from an original and immensely creative storyteller.

Reading notes: Originally published in 2008, 'LMVDM (La mia vita disegnata male)' by Gipi is published in Italy by Coconino Press. I read the new deluxe hardcover edition published by Coconino under the Fandango imprint. There is an English language edition 'MBDL (My Badly Drawn Life)' published by Fantagraphics in 2022, which I also have in hardcover. It's fractionally smaller in dimensions, but not significantly as to make any noticeable impact. The Fantagraphics edition papers are off-white while the Coconino is bright white, which does has more of an impact - even the painted colour sections are toned differently - but I couldn't say I prefer one over the other.