Gabriel Mason Howell is a trans male cartoonist, illustrator, and printmaker. Howell was born in a small rural town in northern North Carolina in 1996 and spent his childhood in Virginia, but only ever considered Chicago home. In 2018, he received his BFA from School of the Arts Institute of Chicago with a focus on comics and printmaking. While living in Chicago, he began making comics by self-publishing his work which was met with love and enthusiasm within the alternative comics community. Howell has since been published by Bred Press, Lumpin Magazine, Bad at Sports Sunday Comics, Pallor Pink, Cow House Press, the Bridgeport Lathe and others he’s tricked into thinking he is a good artist. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his well-known pop musician wife, mostly doing design and illustration work for music acts such as Phoebe Bridgers, 100 gecs, Perfect Hair Forever and PC Music, and he has an ongoing relationship working with WKND skateboards.
Like a cherished keepsake rebelling against the cruelties of an online auction, the wayward waifs of Howell’s porcelain landscape are forced to fight their way through splintered selfhood in a broken world. Vulnerable and scrappy, wistful and ferocious, Forget Me Not is a sharp pinch in a tender place
– Edie Fake, author of Gaylord Phoenix
I feel understood by Gabriel’s work. We both have lives that require us to be hyper-visible without giving away so much that we hurt ourselves. Forget Me Not captures the painful balance of nakedness, shame, dread, loneliness, and anger that drives those of us who make our living from the curiosity and hunger of the public.
– Carta Monir, author of Secure Connect
Honest, unsettling, made with a tremendous amount of skill (all the while remaining stunningly unique), this is a comic to contend with… …Themes of art, family, failure and fear all creep around the edges in a work that breathes thought and honed execution.
– Austin English, author of Gulag Casual
Soul-searing memoir, tasting of dark introspection. His hooks on the brush have quite a bite of the horror-tinged, and obsessive-yet-gestural constructions within sparse framing that stands out in the current comics scene.
– Bad at Sports
Amazingly beautiful. The drawings are fantastic… … It reminds me of a demented Precious Moments.
– Gutter Boys
This is a book that gets its hooks in you—and then pulls on them for days, weeks, maybe even years… …It’s both easy and impossible to relate to, both intimate and coolly detached…. …If you’re one of those readers who values experiences that challenge your perceptions of, quite literally, everything? This isn’t just a book for you — this is the book for you. I still can’t get it out of my head and have resigned myself to the fact that I probably never will.
– Four Color Apocalypse