Alex Heberling

The complex nature of human relationships is something that transcends every genre and medium.  There have been songs about love since the invention of music, just as there have been paintings about war ever since the first cave drawing.  As humans we’ve spent much of our existence, when not pursuing survival and propagation of the species, recording evidence of our interpersonal relationships.  It’s an amorphous, ever-changing object; people enter and exit your life, and they ultimately shape you into the person you are today.

I’ve often thought that if I wasn’t any good at visual art, I probably would’ve ended up in creative writing.  I have stories to tell; I have characters that have taken on lives of their own as their personalities are refined, little by little.  Being able to give them faces is certainly a positive, but the real works of art I create are the stories populated by the intangible beings I create.  They’re stories about people with thoughts and feelings, and how they impact and are impacted by those around them, whether in large or small ways.

My own experiences are what fuel these explorations.  By putting pencil to paper and making my comics, I often seek to answer a question within myself about human nature.  In the course of working on one comic in particular, Garanos, I met someone who eloquently verbalized a concept that I’d been trying to articulate within myself:  that any given person can fall in love with anyone else, given the right combination of circumstances.  Two people can love each other and be perfectly happy the rest of their lives, but the age-old notion of one absolute soulmate isn’t something I believe in.  I didn’t consciously intend to express this when I began Garanos, but as soon as I heard it, I realized it fit perfectly.  When all is said and done, it is what her story is about.

In using comics to explore these questions of mine, I’m really examining my own origins.  In this medium, I can easily set up a scene from my past and see what would happen if it had gone in a different direction; even with mundane things like wording something differently during a conversation, or taking a different route to the grocery store.  When I think of all the small occurrences that have eventually lead up to life-altering events for me, I can’t even fathom what would have come to pass if those small things hadn’t been there to set off the chain reaction.  It’s like someone is writing the book (or comic) of my life, and leaving tiny morsels of foreshadowing for me to consider.

Even if none of that is actually true, I rather enjoy seeing how the events of my life unfold.  The people in and out of my life are impacting me and giving my creativity new means of expression, and new things for me to think about and explore.  Every new experience has the potential to become my art.