The Filipina cartoonist who’s making a splash on the world stage
Filipina cartoonist November Garcia’s wild ride to international notice began in earnest just a few years ago — yet, it is something that she’s been working towards her entire life.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Garcia always drew and created comics for fun. However, it wasn’t until she moved to San Francisco in her early 20s to attend art school that she discovered indie and underground comics. “Reading Peter Bagge, R. Crumb and Jim Woodring is what made me want to seriously make comics.”
“I tried to avoid doing any real writing because I wasn’t confident in my abilities. Meanwhile, my professors would encourage me to enter pieces into the school’s art shows even though I never got in. I guess they always loved my funny ideas and weirdo characters but my art was lacking in execution.”
Returning home to the Philippines in 2014, she continued to make comics, persistently and diligently focusing on improving her craft, often just posting her work online to little notice. Then, in a combination of sheer luck and fortuitous timing, Matt Moses of Hic and Hoc Publications happened upon her blog and offered to publish her first comic.
In 2017, Foggy Notions was released and globally distributed. It soon garnered near-universal critical acclaim around the world. It has also been featured in The Comics Journal, Broken Frontier, High-Low, Just Indie Comics, and more.
Foggy Notions is a collection of autobiographical shorts that details November’s episodic misadventures during the many years that she spent living in San Francisco.
This year, November is the recipient of Short Run Seattle’s Dash Grant, and will be featured as a special guest at the Short Run Seattle festival, where she will be premiering Malarkey #3. Its original cover art will be featured at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery show.
She was also approached to contribute a comic to the Illustrated PEN, a prestigious American literary publication. It will feature her comic about growing up Catholic in the Philippines this November (the month, not the person). She will also be part of the Sweaty Palms 2 anthology coming out next year (which will feature a fellow Filipino cartoonist).
She is thrilled to debut Malarkey #3 at this year’s Short Run Seattle on Nov. 3 and at Komikon on Nov. 17 and 18.
Her books are distributed locally through distributors and bookstore such as the Studio Soup Zine Library, Mt. Cloud Bookstore, Buku Buku Café and Comics Odyssey. They are also available abroad through the famed Spit and a Half distributor in the US, and the Hopeless Sapling distributor in the UK.
For information, visit novembergarcia.com and on social media as @novembergarcia.