A love story
My first graphic novel, my first published book of any kind, was published 30 years ago this month by Fantagraphics Books. I wrote and drew Frederick & Eloise in March and April of 1991 while crashing a friend’s living room in the Pigalle neighborhood of Paris. I’d moved there in September 1990 after graduating from Parsons School of Design, and worked as an assistant art director on a magazine for several months. That gig ended in January 1991, I got paid, and with my tourist visa period ending, I decided to stretch my time in the city until I either ran out of money, or I got kicked out of France.
The apartment belonged to bill butt, who was my design teacher at Parsons Paris while I was there as a junior in 1988-89. (bill deserves a longer post, and if anyone reading this knows what’s happened to him, please let me know. I don’t suspect he’s still with us but I didn’t think he’d make it through the 1990s either…) bill was a raconteur, an alcoholic, a terrific designer and teacher, and in many ways the inspiration for this character of Frederick.
I was spending a lot of time with my friend Carlos Castro, who drew comics and introduced me to the work of Dave McKean, Bill Sienkiewicz and Frank Miller. This got mixed with the French and European comics artists I’d become obsessed with, like Jacques Tardi and Moebius, as well as the amazing Edward Gorey whom I’d discovered a few years previously. Carlos and I would cook rice and beans, drink cheap wine, and draw for hours and hours.
We were at Hippo Grill, an American style restaurant on Boulevard Clichy one night, drawing on tablecloths as we often did. I wrote a short story on the tablecloth that began “Frederick walked out his building one morning to find Stephanie lying on the sidewalk, dead.” It continued, and I guess I liked it, because I tore it from the table and stuffed it into my sketchbook.
A few days later, I transferred this story from word to image, and drew the sequence in a beautiful little red sketchbook I’d bought. No sketching, no storyboarding. Just drew it. Like the tablecloth scrawl, it was about a man named Frederick, who stepped out of his apartment onto the sidewalk to find the body of a dead woman lying there. He half-heartedly considers his options, and in the end decides to just step over her and walk away. The story was drawn from the point-of-view of the dead woman. I suspect I was channeling some cinema here, as much as comics and illustration, being a big fan at the time of Jim Jarmusch and the Coen Brothers.
Carlos loved this little sequence, and encouraged me to continue the story. I did that by adding to the front-end of the story, with this sequence becoming the last “chapter.” I also redesigned the panels to lean into the cinema-influence.
I spent all of March and most of April 1991 drawing the 46 panels that make up the story. I remember feeling a mix of confidence and ambition and total apprehension and anxiety, going to the art supply store and purchasing what must have seemed like a fortune in nice pen nibs, ink, and especially high-quality illustration board. Those 46 drawings are in an archival box in the closet of my studio here, and I’ve often said if the place catches on fire, I might lose all the books and the computer, the art supplies, and I’d guess most of the drawings and other work from 28 years working as an illustrator. But that box, that box comes with me.
I somehow stretched my money out two more months, finally leaving Paris in July, 1991. I landed in Euless, Texas, in the Fort Worth suburbs, to live in my mom’s guest-room. I got a job waiting tables at a Bennigan’s (!) which somehow led to an art director position at a small ad agency in Arlington, right next to Six Flags. In July 1992, I flew out to California for the San Diego Comic Con with my 46 pages of Frederick & Eloise. There I met Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press and Gary Groth of Fantagraphics, both of whom wanted to publish Frederick. I remember looking at Jim Woodring’s books at the Fantagraphics table, and Dan Clowes’s Eightball, and seeing Love & Rockets for the first time, and while I loved Denis and Kitchen Sink Press, when Gary called me back in Arlington a month or two later, it was an easy decision.
The artwork for Frederick is all in black-and-white, with grey washes. The cover had to be in color, and I remember wanting to capture that blue/purple of dusk. I didn’t really know what I was doing with watercolor and ink, but I learned quickly. Everything was boxed up and shipped to Seattle by late October 1992, and I was told it would be an actual published book in June. I was startled to get a letter from Fantagraphics with two blurbs they’d got — one from Jim Woodring and one from Dave McKean. Both then and now heroes of mine, and I couldn’t ask for better.
“Sensitive, beautifully composed drawings and a disquieting curiosity of a story. A fine and delicate book to make you sleep restlessly.” –– Dave McKean
“Frederick & Eloise is an underhanded and duplicitous work of art that lovingly puts its arm around your shoulder and secretly smears mustard on the seat of your pants. Through the process of lyrical amputation, Brian Biggs stakes out an enormous territory in which the fat, feckless hero and his dead-or-alive love object don’t cavort forever. I wish I believed it stopped when I finished the book, but i know better. You can’t turn your back on something like this. Time to read it again. Time to read it again.” –– Jim Woodring
June, 1993, was also about the time I came to my senses and decided to get the hell out of Texas. I packed everything I owned into my yellow VW Beetle and drove west, leaving Texas on July 1 and, three days later, driving across the Oakland Bay Bridge into San Francisco as fireworks were going off across the bay. Some friends had an apartment on Haight at Divisadero with an extra bedroom, and I was in heaven.
It was probably the next day that i walked up Haight Street to Comic Relief, which was famous for having a bathroom stall drawn-upon and autographed by 25 years of cartoonists, and found Frederick & Eloise sitting on the shelf. This was the first time I’d seen the finished book. (I’m not sure why this was — one would think I’d have received copies in advance, but I guess with the move and resulting chaos I hadn’t seen the book yet.) I remember this funny exchange with the clerk working at the shop. When I walked in, I asked if they had a copy of Frederick & Eloise. The clerk, who was a character from central casting for an alt.comix.punk.girl from the 1990s lit up. Yes! She takes me to the shelf where the staff had it as a newly-released favorite. She held it up at me. “I love this book!” I replied, “I made that book!” Her smile faded as she looked at me, taking in my Texas Longhorns baseball cap, white t-shirt and khaki Gap shorts. “You are Brian Biggs?” I suspect she was hoping for Edward Gorey.
I got this a lot. Frederick is a dark story. It’s somewhat nihilistic, and the character of Frederick is pretty much an asshole. I didn’t fit the stereotype of the guy who would have written that. Just over a year before moving to SF, I worked at a Bennigan’s for chrissakes. What I presented outward was very much not what was going on inward. I would sign books at comic cons and expos and constantly have some gothy kid with a Cure T-shirt surprised that I was the guy who wrote that story and drew those pictures.
I suppose I was surprised too, at times. Frederick was the first thing I’d done where I felt I had some voice, something to say, and this book gave me a way to say it. All through art school, as a graphic design major, i’d thought of myself as a commercial artist who needed a client. Tell someone else’s story. I was a chameleon and could adapt to any voice, any idea. But this was mine, and it pretty much changed everything, and gave me a direction, a voice of my own. I do feel like I hung that voice up a bit while I raised kids and made a living drawing what, 70 children’s books at this point? I’ve managed to sneak in a lot of sly humor and even dark jokes at times in my work. Now the kids are 22 and 24 and not really kids. They are for the most part on their own, and between that and the forced pandemic time off from publishing work in 2020 and 2021, i’ve been able to look for and find ways to wear that voice again. Stuff in the works. Murderous wrens.
So after reading all of this, you want a copy? Well don’t call your book store, and don’t look at Amazon. But I got you. See, way back in 1992, I think I got a $1000 advance for Frederick, which at the time seemed miraculous. But I never saw a royalty or sales numbers, and I don’t think that the book sold all that well. Kim Thompson (RIP) from Fantagraphics called me in 1999 and told me they’re taking the book out of print, and he gave me the option of buying back all the remaining stock. Which I did, and, lucky for you, I still have. I’d be very very happy to sign a copy of this like-new 30-year-old first book of mine, and send one your way.
Read more about Frederick & Eloise, and see the movie! here. https://www.brianbiggs.com/frederick-eloise
Some more images of sketches from Paris 1991, some production art (totally hand-lettered copyright and credits paragraph!), and art from a postcard I designed for the book:
