Cartoonist Lawrence Lindell has always found writing graphic memoirs and respecting privacy to be something of a balancing act. “When I was younger, I was always trying to hide,” says Lindell, a soft-spoken 36-year-old California native, via Zoom from their Bay Area home. “I prefer transparency now.”
Still, the author, who lives with their spouse, cartoonist Breena Nuñez, and two-year-old daughter, understands the importance of privacy—their own and that of family and friends. “We live in a world where people are comfortable taking pictures and videos of strangers and posting them online as their own, and having access to everyone’s lives literally at their fingertips,” Lindell says. “The point of me making autobiographical comics and graphic memoirs is that I get to share what I want to share and keep what I don’t want to share. If I have that consideration for myself, then the people in my life deserve that same consideration.”
Lindell’s comics are notably plain-spoken and autobiographical, particularly about mental health issues. The titles alone often telegraph a sense of direct urgency, as with the popular zine Couldn’t Afford Therapy So I Made This (originally self-published in 2017) and its 2021 sequel, Still Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This Again.
Lindell’s latest graphic memoir, We All Got Something—out in April from Drawn & Quarterly—is no different. It takes an unflinching look at a troubled period in the author’s early life, as they struggled with a series of setbacks and tried to maintain their mental health. Lindell documents financial and romantic struggles—as well as a move back home to live with their mom and great-aunt—with black-and-white visuals that appear effortlessly drawn and work to bolster the immediacy of the narrative.
“I can look at those events and reflect on them now, as opposed to what I did when I drew the Couldn’t Afford Therapy zines,” Lindell says. “Those were drawn in the moment; this is what is happening right now. I was doing what I needed to do, which was, you know: do something!”
Born in 1988 in Southern California, Lindell spent their early years in Compton. As a kid, Lindell moved around a lot within L.A. County, particularly after their parents divorced. By middle school, they were spending weekdays at their mother’s house and weekends with their father. Lindell started drawing comics in high school; founded a comics publishing house, which they named Xtreme Comics (this, they say, they “ripped off” from Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios); and dabbled in autobiography, crafting a short-lived webcomic titled Lawrence’s World.
After high school, Lindell attended Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. They graduated in 2011 and later enrolled at California College of the Arts, where they received an MFA in comics in 2020. It was while in college that Lindell became inspired by Julia Wertz, Harvey Pekar, and Marjane Satrapi and worked on a series titled Because Life Is Random and So Am I, in which they continued to chronicle daily life. Lindell’s first graphic novel, Blackward, was published in 2023 but began five years earlier as the webcomic The Section. The lighthearted but poignant story focuses on four friends—all queer people of color—who embark on a mission to expand their social circle, hitting many roadblocks along the way.
“I got inspired to make my own fictional queer story after reading Bingo Love by Tee Franklin,” Lindell says. “I drew a page each day and put it on Instagram and Tumblr. It was all done on the fly, and I just started drawing characters that were like me and other people I knew.”
Blackward can also been seen as a synthesis of the major themes in Lindell’s work. “It’s about community, but the point was to show that there is not one way to be Black,” they say. “I added in real people to illustrate that. I also used the webcomic to explore my own gender identity. I had just come out that year, so I was reflecting on my own queer experiences as they were happening.”
Community is something that matters to Lindell. During the pandemic, they and Nuñez launched an online publishing outfit called Laneha House. And while it began as a way for the pair to create without interruption, they soon extended invitations to publish other cartoonists’ work. “We just gave them some freedom,” Lindell says, “to experience the joys of creating.”
Published last August, Lindell’s second graphic novel, Buckle Up, is aimed at middle grade readers. It follows Lonnie, a young boy whose parents have recently split up, with much of the book taking place in Lonnie’s father’s car. “When my parents got divorced, I would spend weekends with my dad, and he would cram all of our conversations into the car on the ride home to my mom’s house,” Lindell recalls. “So, Lonnie’s dad keeps trying to have these moments and lessons with him in the car.”
Growth through hard knocks and inner resiliency are common themes threaded throughout Lindell’s body of work. In addition to charting the author’s personal and professional struggles after college, We All Got Something explores the author’s experiences with PTSD after surviving a shooting. In the book, Lindell depicts the incident impressionistically—the details are purposely kept vague—focusing on the sounds of gunfire and imagery of broken glass. “Originally there was also a scene of what happened after at the emergency room, but I took it out because I don’t feel the need to depict everything, nor was it needed to express how sad and dark what happened was,” they say. “So I drew it all messed up and blurred together.”
When asked about plans for their next book, Lindell says the most important thing for them right now is concentrating on raising their daughter. “Everything is new for her,” Lindell says. “And her level of joy and excitement is something to try to rekindle and attain for myself again.”
Family life and exploring the past seem to have brought Lindell some measure of peace. “I’ve had a whole decade’s worth of time to develop a different view of that part of my life,” they say. “It’s not so raw anymore and I can have compassion for myself. I’ve moved on and am not even close to being the person that is in the book. It’s impossible to be, after so many life changes.”
