List of autobiographical comics


An autobiographical comic is an autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comix movement and has since become more widespread. It is currently most popular in Canadian, American and French comics; all artists listed below are from the U.S. unless otherwise specified.
Autobiographical comics are a form of biographical comics.

1880s

  • Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro "made an attempt of an autobiographical comics exercise" in his 1881 graphic reportage book No Lazareto de Lisboa, by including himself and personal thoughts. Some of Bordalo Pinheiro's panels and strips were also autobiographical, such as self-caricatures of personal anecdotes from his travel in Brazil.

    1910s

  • Fay King drew herself as a character later used as Olive Oyl in autobiographical strips portraying her reportages, opinions, and personal life.
  • Hinko Smrekar drew and wrote a 24-page booklet Črnovojnik about his experience in the army and army prisons. This self-ironical proto comic has been published in 1919 – two years after he finished it. All of the pages have up to four illustrations, some include typical comic book balloons. The complete text was handwritten.

    1920s

  • Carlos Botelho had a weekly comic page in a "style that mixed up chronicle, autobiography, journalism, and satire" running from 1928 to 1950 in the Portuguese magazine Sempre Fixe.

    1930s

  • Henry Kiyama's The Four Immigrants Manga. These 52 two-page strips drew from the experiences of Kiyama and three friends, mostly as Japanese student immigrants to San Francisco between 1904 and 1907, plus material up to 1924.

    1940s

  • The artist Taro Yashima published his autobiographical graphic works The New Sun in 1943 and The New Horizon in 1947. The first book describes his early life as well his as his wife Mitsu Yashima's imprisonment and brutalization by the Tokkō in response to their antiwar, anti-Imperialist, and anti-militarist stance in the 1930s. The second book describes their post-prison life in Japan under militarist rule up until the time they emigrated to the United States in 1939.
  • Miné Okubo published Citizen 13660, a collection of 198 drawings and accompanying text chronicling the author's experiences in Japanese American internment camps during World War II. Named after the number assigned to her family unit, the book contains almost two hundred of Okubo's pen-and-ink sketches accompanied by explanatory text. Published in 1946, the book has been in print for more than 75 years.

    1960s

1960s in Japan

  • Shinji Nagashima created Mangaka Zankoku Monogatari in 1961.
  • Yoshiharu Tsuge published in 1966 his autobiographical story "Chiko", depicting his daily life as a struggling manga artist living with a bar hostess making most of their money. Published in the seminal magazine Garo, it started the movement of Watakushi manga. These short graphic nonfictions were also represented by Yu Takita, Tadao Tsuge, and Shinichi Abe.
  • Yu Takita started in 1968 his Terajima-cho stories. They were series of vignettes about 1930s life in this Tokyo district where his parents ran a tavern.
  • Tadao Tsuge started in 1968 his personal stories, later collected in Trash Market.

    USA

  • In 1969, Justin Green published his first autobiographical comic strip in Gothic Blimp Works #3 titled, "When I Was Sixteen 'Twas a Very Bad Year."

    1970s

  • Justin Green, Binky Brown Makes Up His Own Puberty Rites published in Yellow Dog #17, March 1970
  • Sam Glanzman started in April 1970 his U.S.S. Stevens autobio stories about his war service, as 4-pagers in DC Comics's title Our Army at War. Beside memoirs of war actions he witnessed, many are personal vignettes of embarrassing moments, including as an artist. As comics historian John B. Cooke noted, those "autobiographical tales about the sometimes mundane, frequently horrifying experiences aboard a Fletcher-class U.S. navy destroyer during World War II were beginning to appear regularly, debuting two years before Binky Brown."
  • Shinichi Abe started in 1971 his autobiographical series Miyoko Asagaya kibun for Garo magazine. It chronicled his 1970s bohemian life with his model girlfriend Miyoko in the Asagaya district of Tokyo.
  • Justin Green, though not the first author of autobio comics, is generally acknowledged to have pioneered the confessional genre in English-language comics, because of the immediate influence of his "highly personal autobiographical comics" on other creators. This was done through the veiled autobio of his alter ego's "Binky Brown" stories, notably the March 1972 comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, an extremely personal work dealing with Green's Catholic and Jewish background and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Binky Brown continued his adventures in "Sacred and Profane" with a story called Sweet Void of Youth.
  • In October 1972, Japanese manga artist Keiji Nakazawa created the 48-page story "I Saw It", which told of his firsthand experience of the bombing of Hiroshima.
  • Aline Kominsky followed Green in November 1972 with her veiled autobio 5-pager "Goldie, a Neurotic Woman".
  • Art Spiegelman followed Green in 1973 with his 4-page "Prisoner on the Hell Planet", about his feelings after the suicide of his Holocaust-survivor mother.
  • Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky released in 1974 Dirty Laundry Comics #1, a joint confessional comic book documenting their budding romance, though depicted aboard a fantasy spaceship.
  • In 1976, Harvey Pekar began his long-running self-published series American Splendor, which collected short stories written by Pekar, usually about his daily life as a file clerk, and illustrated by a variety of artists. The series led to Pekar meeting his wife Joyce Brabner, who later co-wrote their graphic novel Our Cancer Year about his battle with lymphoma.
  • In 1977, the Italian magazine Alter Alter starts publishing Andrea Pazienza's Le straordinarie avventure di Pentothal, in which the author details in a stream of consciousness his own experiences with drugs, arts, politics, counterculture, and the Movement of 1977, through a thinly veiled alter ego.
  • In 1978, Eddie Campbell started his autobio strip "In the Days of the Ace Rock 'n' Roll Club".
  • In 1979, Malaysian cartoonist Lat published his childhood memoir The Kampung Boy.
  • In the late 1970s, Jim Valentino began his career with some autobio minicomics, released in the early 1980s. In 1985, he published his autobio series Valentino. In 1997, he created the semi-autobio series A Touch of Silver about a boy coming of age in the 1960s. In 2007, he revisited autobio with Drawings from Life.
  • Throughout the 1970s, autobiographical writing was prominent in the work of many female underground cartoonists, in anthologies such as Wimmen's Comix, ranging from comical anecdotes to feminist commentary based on the artists' lives.

    1980s

  • In 1980, Art Spiegelman combined biography and autobiography in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, about his father's Holocaust experiences, his own relationship with his father, and the process of interviewing him for the book. This work had a major effect on the reception of comics in general upon the world of mainstream prose literature, awakening many to the potential of comics as a medium for stories other than adventure fantasy.
  • In 1982, Eddie Campbell's Alec stories started with the Scottish/Australian artist as a young man drifting through life with his friends, and followed him through marriage, parenthood, and a successful artistic career.
  • Campbell's English colleague Glenn Dakin created the Abraham Rat stories, which began as fantasy and became more contemplative and autobiographical.
  • Spain Rodriguez drew a number of stories, collected in My True Story, about being a motorcycle gang member in the 1950s.
  • In the mid 1980s, Carol Tyler shifted from making paintings to autobiographical comics. Her first published comics piece appeared in Weirdo in 1986.
  • Underground legend Robert Crumb focused increasingly on autobiography in his 1980s stories in Weirdo magazine. Many other autobiographical shorts would appear in Weirdo by other artists, including his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Carol Tyler, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Dori Seda.
  • In 1987, Sam Glanzman released his WWII graphic memoir A Sailor's Story, a more personal extension of his 1970s U.S.S. Stevens war stories.
  • In 1988, Andrea Pazienza releases Pompeo, his last graphic novel, depicting the gradual downfall of a heroin addict, up to his eventual suicide.
  • Jim Woodring's unusual "autojournal" Jim combined dream art with occasional episodes of realistic autobiography.
  • David Collier, a Canadian ex-soldier, published autobiographical and historical comics in Weirdo and later in his series Collier's.
  • In 1987, DC Comics' anthology Wasteland featured, unusually for a mainstream title, as well as more conventional forms of black comedy and horror, semi-autobiographical stories based on the life of co-writer Del Close. One of the stories also parodied the autobiographical stories of Harvey Pekar, portraying a version of Pekar's famous appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, in which Pekar's vehement critique of General Electric had earned him a longtime ban from the program.
  • In 1989, John Porcellino started in his long-running autobio series King-Cat Comics.

    1990s

Autobiographical work took the English-speaking alternative comics scene by storm during this period, becoming a "signature genre" in much the way that superhero stories dominated American mainstream comic books. Slice of life comics and comics strips gained popularity during this period as well. However, many artists pursued broader themes.
This period also saw a rapid expansion of the French small-press comics scene, including a new emphasis on autobiographical work:
  • Fabrice Neaud's acclaimed Journal was the first lengthy autobiographical series in French comics.
  • David B., another artist who had first published fantasy comics stories, produced the graphic novel L'ascension du haut mal applied B.'s distinctive non-realistic style to the story of his equally unusual upbringing, in which his family moved to a macrobiotic commune and sought many other cure's for B.'s brother's grand mal seizures.
  • Lewis Trondheim portrayed himself and his friends, albeit with animal heads, in Approximative continuum comics, some of which was later published in English as The Nimrod.
  • Much of Edmond Baudoin's later work is based on his personal and family history.
  • Dupuy and Berberain's "Journal d'un album" and Jean-Christophe Menu's "Livre de Phamille" also had a significant influence on the French autobiographic graphic novel scene.

    2000s

  • Iranian exile Marjane Satrapi created the multi-volume Persepolis, originally published as a newspaper serial in France, about her childhood during the Iranian Revolution.
  • Canadian animator Guy Delisle published several travelogues such as Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, Burma Chronicles, and Jerusalem.
  • The Spiral Cage, by English artist Al Davison, is about Davison's experience of living with spina bifida.
  • Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy and Unlikely told the story of two failed relationships using hundreds of single-page stories.
  • Blue Pills is a 2001 Swiss-French autobiographical comic written and illustrated by Frederik Peeters. The comic tells the story of a man falling in love with an HIV-positive woman.
  • Lynda Barry's One! Hundred! Demons! features Barry wrestling with the "demons" of regret, abusive relationships, self-consciousness, the prohibition against feeling hate, and her response to the results of the 2000 United States presidential election.
  • Craig Thompson releases Blankets, an award-winning graphic memoir of first love, religious identity, and coming of age.
  • Marzena Sowa wrote Marzi, a series of comics about her childhood in 1980s-era Poland.
  • Art Spiegelman wrote In the Shadow of No Towers, an oversize graphic memoir about his experiences during the 9/11 attacks.
  • Josh Neufeld published his Xeric Award-winning A Few Perfect Hours, documenting his and his girlfriend's backpacking adventures through Southeast Asia, Central Europe, and Turkey.
  • Joe Kubert published Yossel April 14, 1943, a "fake autobiographical graphic novel" about what would have happened if his parents hadn't moved from Poland to the U.S. and they would have been there during the Holocaust.
  • Carol Tyler published Late Bloomer, which features all the collected works from Weirdo and other publications.
  • Italian comic book artist Gipi releases several graphic novels inspired by his own life experiences: Appunti per una storia di guerra, S., La mia vita disegnata male.
  • Xeric Award-winner Steve Peters wrote and illustrated Chemistry about a failed relationship. He drew one panel a day for a year; the entire comic is 32 pages long with a total of 365 panels. Each panel's date is hidden somewhere inside it. Chemistry won the 2006 Howard Eugene Day Memorial Prize.
  • Mom's Cancer is an autobiographical webcomic by Brian Fies which describes his mother's fight against metastatic lung cancer, as well as his family's reactions to it. Mom's Cancer was the first webcomic to win an Eisner Award, winning in 2005. Its print collection, published in 2006, won a Harvey Award and a Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
  • Alison Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home, about her relationship with her father, and it was named by Time magazine as number one of its "10 Best Books of the Year."
  • Martin Lemelman wrote Mendel's Daughter, based on his mother's recorded confessions of her life during the Holocaust. He inserts a lot of family pictures as well.
  • Miriam Katin wrote We Are on Our Own: A Memoir, a graphic memoir about her survival, with her mother, of the Holocaust.
  • Danny Gregory wrote Everyday Matters, after he taught himself to draw following a traumatic moment in his life: his wife was hit by a train and became paralyzed.
  • Anders Nilsen won an Ignatz Award for his graphic memoir, Don't Go Where I Can't Follow
  • In April 2007, Ype Driessen, a Dutch comic artist, published the first autobiographical photo comic called Ype+Willem. With photos he showed everyday happenings in his life with his former boyfriend Willem. He still publishes his comic at .
  • Aline Kominsky-Crumb published Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir, her life story, with inserted photographs.
  • A Drifting Life is a thinly veiled autobiographical Japanese manga written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Tatsumi that chronicles his life from 1945 to 1960, the early stages of his career as a cartoonist. The book earned Tatsumi the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, and won two Eisner Awards.
  • Carol Lay wrote and illustrated The Big Skinny about her experiences with weight loss.
  • American Widow, written by Alissa Torres and drawn by Sungyoon Choi, is a graphic memoir about Torres's experience as a widow of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
  • Stitches: A Memoir is a 2009 graphic memoir written and illustrated by David Small. It tells the story of Small's journey from sickly child to cancer patient, to the troubled teen who made a risky decision to run away from home at sixteen — with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist. Stitches was a #1 New York Times Best Seller, and was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com. It was also a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Stitches was a 2010 Alex Awards recipient. Stitches has been translated into seven different languages and published in nine different countries.
  • 2009 through 2012, the You'll Never Know trilogy was published. The 11-time Eisner-nominated series is about the lifetime damage her father's PTSD from World War II had on the artist/author, Carol Tyler, and her family.

    2010s

The "graphic memoir" really came into its own this decade, with many of the books by female authors. Lucy Knisley and MariNaomi each published a number of full-length autobiographical comics in the 2010s. The market expanded into middle grade as well, witnessed by such well-received examples as Raina Telgemeier's books, the March series, and Cece Bell's El Deafo.
The autobiographical graphic novel started to bloom to the point, where it is hard to follow the constant production.