The most spectacular breakout from the minicomics scene in recent memory belongs to Sarah Glidden. In 2007, she began a minicomics project called How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, based on a trip she'd taken to Israel to understand its political situation better. The project was snapped up by Vertigo, which will be publishing it as a full-length original graphic novel, announced at New York Comic-Con and currently tentatively scheduled for late 2010. PWCW spoke to her in her home town of New York City about the book, which she's just started drawing.
PW Comics Week: How'd the 60 Days minicomic get started?
Sarah Glidden: I started doing comics in 2006, and I thought it'd be a good idea to do daily journal comics to practice. I did that for a couple of months and got tired of it, and I wanted to do a real project; I got the idea to go to Israel on this Birthright thing, since it would be my last chance to go.
PWCW: What exactly is Birthright?
SG: Birthright Israel is a free trip for anyone who's even remotely Jewish, between the ages of 18 and 26. The only requirement is that you have to have never gone to Israel on an organized trip before. It's an all-expenses-paid ten-day tour of Israel. It's been around since the year 2000, I believe. I was in college at the time it began, and my mom said "you should go." I'd been completely against it, because in college I started to get very political, and I wanted nothing to do with Israel. I didn't want to support their policies toward the Palestinians, and I didn't want to go by myself on a tour that was going to try to make me love a place that I had so many problems with. But then, in late 2006, I was 26, and I realized that my time was running out. I was having a conversation with my mother—we were arguing about Arafat or something—and she made the good point that maybe before I started having all these very strong opinions, I should go and check it out for myself.
I figured I would try to go with an open mind and see this place for myself and give it a chance. I signed up for a trip and convinced my friend Melissa to come with me, and we left two months later. So in the time between deciding to go and going I spent all my time cramming. I wanted to get my facts straight so I could know: is Birthright a brainwashing organization, or are they just trying to take you on a tour? I figured that their whole goal was that they teach you lies and whitewash over all the bad stuff and you'll come home loving Israel and singing songs about it. I thought it would be interesting to document the process of trying to look at this place with an open mind, and that if Birthright really was like that, it could be an exposé. But it wasn't like that; it was much more nuanced. I wouldn't say that the trip really changed that much for me—it didn't change the problems that I have with Israel—but it definitely opened my eyes to the other side of the story. I realized that it was a whole lot more complicated.
PWCW: Why did you start drawing it as a minicomic?
SG: When I started doing comics, it seemed to be the thing that you did. I started getting to know other people who made minis and took a couple of classes at SVA, and I'd made 2 or 3 minis of journal comics. It didn't seem like there was any other way to do it.
PWCW: How did the project become a Vertigo book?
SG: I was at the MoCCA festival last summer, and sharing a table with the Brooklyn cartoonist collective Artists With Problems, selling the two issues I'd drawn. This guy came over—my future editor, Jonathan Vankin—and asked what they were about, and I gave my little elevator speech, and he bought them and went away. And two days later, I got an email that Vertigo was interested in publishing the book, and I fell out of my chair.
PWCW: Are you rewriting and redrawing the parts that were in the minicomics?
SG: Yeah. The book will be 200 pages, in color—I'm spending this whole year drawing it.
PWCW: What's your take on what's going on right now in the Middle East, as someone who's more informed than most Americans tend to be?
SG: The first thing that I think all of us who don't live in Israel or the occupied territories need to understand is that we don't live there. I think a lot of people have very, very strong opinions about what's going on there, and we have pretty much no right to. So this book is kind of about me trying to become comfortable with my own opinions about it. There's enough screaming from the polar ends of this issue, and I think there need to be more people expressing points of view that aren't at one end or the other.
