Tag Archives: 2015 Brian Lee Klueter

Brian Lee Klueter: Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man by John Porcellino

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The main thing I was worried about going into this course was my artwork. I don’t think it’s very good. I can’t draw backgrounds with vast detail, or characters with strong facial expressions, or even cars without making them look distorted. Drawing comics is an uphill, uncomfortable battle for me. Reading John Porcellino’s Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man changed the way I look at my drawing abilities. It made me realize that I could have a raw drawing style and still make it work and be effective.

The story (which I believe was serialized in King-Cat) is given context through the introduction. The main character finds himself working as a mosquito abatement man, and falls into this weird “human vs. nature” realm that eventually overcomes him. He spends years in different aspects of this business, meeting interesting people, and experiencing shocking events, from witnessing car sex to being literally sucked to sickness. He goes insane driving a fog truck 12 miles an hour for 12 hours a day. He becomes sick of his job, killing mosquito after mosquito, until he finally quits for good.

There’s a clear change in art throughout the book. I can see Porcellino’s style shift from a more raw style, to a more crisp and clean one. This gives me hope that my own artwork will continue to improve, assuming I will continue to draw and make comics (I will). I kind of liked how the raw art reflected the main character’s raw experience in dealing with the mosquitos. The longer the main character stayed as a mosquito abatement man, the cleaner and more refined the art became. The connection seemed important to Porcellino’s character’s mental stability.

The main character begins to feel guilty about killing the mosquitos. Well, less guilty about killing the mosquitos and more guilty about spreading poison into the air and water. But when his boss gives him a logical explanation for why they kill the mosquitos, the main character doesn’t feel any better about this. This was very interesting to me. It was like he was finally siding with nature over humans. Even more, it was like he finally understood his place in nature, and acted accordingly.

This book provided insight into a world and process that few know. I hate mosquitos, and have never considered anything from their point of view before, until I read this book. For the record, I still hate mosquitos, they’re awful, but I’ve learned about an aspect of nature I had never even thought about before, with artwork similar to my own.

Brian Lee Kleuter

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I think people are introduced to the integration of words and pictures at an early age, through baby books and picture books. For me, there was Richard Scarry, Mercer Mayer, The Berenstain Bears, Eric Carle, Arnold Lobel’s Fables, and of course, Marc Brown’s Arthur books. These aren’t comics, per se, but they’re integral to my love of the medium. There was this bible comic my mom used to read to me, but looking back, it was kind of fucked up.

My big connection to comics comes from my extensive reading of Star Wars comics. I estimate that I’ve read roughly 90 percent of them, thousands of issues, over 18 years. They were published by Dark Horse, my favorite comic publisher. Recently, they have lost the rights to produce Star Wars comics to Marvel. I was also attracted to several DC titles, like Batman and The Flash, which I still read on a monthly basis to this day. A lot of my friends read those titles, so it makes sense that I would, too.

Marvel’s Moon Knight is another one of my favorite comics. The character is kind of Marvel’s take on the Batman mythos. He’s extremely similar to Batman, but wears a bright white outfit, has multiple personalities, and is more of a revenge-ridden sociopath than a non-killing detective. The most recent graphic novel, penned by the great Warren Ellis, had an interesting artistic choice with illustrating the character. Instead of coloring Moon Knight’s suit with white ink, they merely didn’t color it in at all, creating a unique, almost empty color for the character’s presence, and one of the coolest new visual takes I’ve seen in years.

I’ve given graphic novel panels at Winter Wheat, Animarathon, and Spring Harvest at BGSU over the past couple years, dealing specifically with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, and how graphic novels deserve to be analyzed as literature. I consider Watchmen to be one of the greatest books ever written/illustrated.

My favorite current series are Saga, written by Brian K. Vaughn (one of my favorite authors, who wrote Pride of Baghdad, one of the best comics I’ve ever read) and illustrated by Fiona Staples, and X, written by Duane Swierczynski and illustrated by Eric Nguyen. These are adult themed comics, with sex and violence, but also contain amazing stories, which provide the backbone for the graphic novel medium.

I feel like this class will give me a look at indie comics, and introduce me to lesser known titles. I’ve been in the mainstream reading audience for some time, and branching out. I can’t draw or illustrate very well, so this class and its process should be interesting. It’s fun to explore new art forms, especially ones that make you work. I look forward to the opportunities it brings.