Graphics 2024

In the woods of Nova Scotia, Drew is building a cabin. Save for the company of their dog, Pony, Drew is alone—a fact that everyone seems to have an opinion or an assumption about, much to Drew’s exasperation. But Drew is determined to live their dream life in their cabin, so they go to work, accepting help from local men to chain saw the trees on their property.

Sans chain saw, Drew is unassuming and a little awkward. But rev the engine, and they become the fiery Vera Bushwack, resplendent in assless chaps astride a noble steed, chain saw brandished like a sword. Drew can’t always be Vera, though, and when they aren’t working, they cycle through memories—some of kindness, some uglier.

Sig Burwash’s debut graphic novel, Vera Bushwack, is about self-love, queer comfort and the importance of learning to trust again after trauma. Despite its vibrant cover image, Vera Bushwack is a quiet book. Much of the story is relayed without dialogue, through surreal memory reels and montages of Drew and Pony’s new life, which are at turns hilarious and heartbreaking.

Burwash’s illustrations are endearing and strange, even off-putting at times, which complements Drew’s story perfectly. Sparse black sketches over muted, monochromatic backgrounds capture a sense of space and isolation while also telling an incredibly intimate story. One of Burwash’s biggest strengths as an artist is facial expressions; Pony, who is all ears and tongue, is simply a delight, while Drew’s emotional range, from blasé to maniacally gleeful, is something to behold.

Readers may be surprised to learn that the book is a debut, not only because of the clear skill it displays, but also because it feels so lived in. That’s a testament to Burwash’s talent. Vera Bushwack is sure to be a meditative balm for any queer person who sees themself in Drew—or in Vera.

Julie Heffernan is predominantly known as a self-portraitist. Her astounding large-scale oil paintings are baroque, surrealist, highly staged and detailed, and often feature a woman—herself, bare-breasted, surrounded by a riot of flora and fauna. She frequently toys with traditional representations of women in art, depicting herself in big headpieces and bigger skirts, and using titles like “Self-Portrait as Gorgeous Tumor” and “Self-Portrait as Tree House.”

Many of Heffernan’s self-portraits are reproduced in Babe in the Woods: Or, the Art of Getting Lost, her first graphic novel and a mesmeric work of autofiction. It is a loose retelling of how she became an artist, leaving a Catholic home where art didn’t exist and meeting people who helped her to discover the world of art history and her own fierce opinion and creative voice. A version of Heffernan recounts these events—often in the form of a one-sided conversation with her mother—while hiking deeper into the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child. We know from the outset that she’s getting herself lost, and as her mind whirls through her memories, examining traumas and questioning everything with a furious intensity, it is clear that she is making a dangerous, terrible choice. She is being a bad mother, and she says so.

Throughout Heffernan’s labyrinthine walk in the woods, we are treated to “revelations,” each centered on a work of classic art. Heffernan is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University, and here she delivers brief lessons on famous paintings such as “Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus” by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Wildens, which is accompanied by Heffernan’s revelation, “DON’T GIVE UP no matter WHAT!” as she shows how the painting uses two women’s naked bodies to create the shape of a pinwheel, whirling like blades in the center of the scene. The women are about to be raped, but they still have “ACTION! MOTION!! AGENCY!!!”

Much of the illustration for the novel was done in Microsoft Paint, which gives the book a sketchy, glitchy quality, completely in opposition to her oil paintings. Many scenes, as well as some reproductions of her self-portraits, are pixelated, the color appearing to malfunction and separate. Details become difficult to see, and the viewer is forced into the same frustrating brain-fuzziness as Heffernan’s character. 

The varying styles, the collapsing of clarity, the tremendous rage and continual turning-over of past traumas—all these elements combine in Babe in the Woods to illuminate the mysteries of the creative process. It is a staggering work of graphic literature, strange and enraged, carnal and emotional, encompassing the terrific force that keeps an artist moving forward. Reading it doesn’t feel like moving in a straight line, but rather a spiral, and as Heffernan writes, “a spiral always brings us back to a center, no matter how far we travel away from it.”