Julie Doucet

Julie Doucet is a Canadian cartoonist who illustrates everyday struggles to the audience. Issues between the sex's, issues with life, anxieties, dreams and frustrations with human interactions. Her comics are seen by others as grotesque, I am not sure I entirely agree. However, I understand that her mainly black and white illustrations are dark and eerie in setting, but they are of the everyday happenings that bring about the turmoil and deep- seated sadness, anger and frustrations of living within society now a days.

Her New York Diary is a direct representation of life and its ups and downs. I read the situations of this girl Jewels- and she seems to be caught in situations of school, life and relationships- how is this grotesque? She has fairly odd dreams and the images may at times are intense the people she comes across are at times extreme- even the sudden urges that she comes across on the daily are taken into consideration within her dreams.

Her comics are of both worlds- the realistic and fantasy/ grotesque. That way the reader/ viewer can feel a connection subconsciously. The understanding of real life and the crazy reactions that are thought but never acted upon- which are shown then are translated into a dream like state of this character Jewels. As stated in the packet " first our own uncertainty about what we really think and how much we actually wish to reveal." Her exaggerated figures are representative of her highly stylized eerie environments- they balance one another. The line is an important tool that she uses well, it allows her to highlight or accentuate certain features on her characters or within the atmosphere of the frames.

This comic series is her voice, a form of freedom in which she shows the life of this character as a "series of contradictions," and as the storyline continues the reader becomes engaged- and continuing to read on the ending is usually an abrupt stop and we are snapped back into reality.