JESSE REKLAW DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK LOVF

LOVF (Fantagraphics)

LOVF is the sketchbook companion of a man literally losing his mind. Homeless and broke after giving all his stuff to punk rock heroin dealers, he ends up off his meds and on a secret quest from Portland to Brooklyn, DC, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle. He throws himself into every experience like it was his last; like it should be his last. With wild energy, promiscuity, criminal activity, and substance abuse, this becomes a full-blown manic episode... all of it captured by LOVF, the trusty sidekick. Jammed with cartoons, mad schemes, psychedelic portraits, and notes from the road, LOVF is a travel journal, and a mirror of the post-traumatic dreamworld its author can’t escape from. After losing his house, his job, his partner, and his best friend, he is triple-diagnosed with bipolar mood disorder, PTSD, and crippling chronic pain. As a self-professed over-achiever, he made sure things only got worse from there. Getting beat up in the street, running from the law, getting dragged out of a creek and into a mental hospital… it’s a Kerouacian meltdown of cross-hatching, spattered marker, crayons, glitter, tape, nail polish, white-out, fingerpainting, rain, wine, stickers, and word balloons, like the found diary of a homeless crazyman, turned into a comic book.

"Equal parts confounding, bleak, psychedelic, and beautiful. I'm ever grateful to Jesse and Fantagraphics for preserving and sharing such intimate vulnerabilities with the world."
--Craig Thompson [Blankets, Habibi]

Jesse Reklaw grew up in Sacramento, studied at UC Santa Cruz, and completed a master’s degree in computer science at Yale University. In 1995, while pursuing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, he began self-publishing comics and dropped out of Yale to be a cartoonist. His other books includeCouch Tag, Applicant, and The Night of Your Life.