{"id":980,"date":"2012-03-25T22:50:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T22:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/?page_id=980"},"modified":"2023-02-23T16:03:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T16:03:39","slug":"ken-dahl","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?page_id=980","title":{"rendered":"Gabby Schulz"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nBIO<\/span><\/p>\n

Ken Dahl<\/span> is the name Gabby Schulz used to make it harder for his relatives to connect him to the comics he draws. Born in Honolulu, Gabby has spent most of his adult life in a dreary transit about the continental United States. In May of 2007 he completed a one-year Fellowship at the Center for Cartoon Studies, which turned him into a full-time cartoonist and thus literally ruined his life. He has spent the last couple of years burrowing further into the American Midwest, in preparation for settling into an obscure yet blandly respectable death.
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\nIN PRAISE OF GABBY SCHULZ<\/span><\/p>\n

Schulz\u2019s art<\/span> is as good as any independent cartoonist working today\u2014grim and graphic, but also frank and penetrating. With plenty of anatomical details and ailments shown and described, Sick<\/i> isn\u2019t for the easily grossed-out or offended. But those looking for a vital, independent voice to follow in the footsteps of Robert Crumb and others should give it a try\u2014some of Schulz\u2019s images and ideas will linger, like a stubborn infection, long after the book\u2019s cover has been closed.<\/p>\n

– Foreword Reviews, Best Graphic Novels of Fall 2016<\/span><\/p>\n

Schulz uses the book to explore topics as broad as class inequity in the United States and as specific and personal as his own psyche.<\/p>\n

You may have seen Sick<\/i> online when it was first serialized a couple of years ago, but in this new edition, Schulz seems to have repainted the artwork to give it a more rich and visceral feel. He is probably the most inventive cartoonist working in comics that many readers still have never heard of, and this is his most masterful piece of cartooning to date.<\/p>\n

– Rich Barrett, mental_floss<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabby Schulz\u2019s unfairly overlooked and singularly upsetting Sick<\/i> (Secret Acres) deserves mention, a painful and highly intimate look at depression from the inside out.<\/p>\n

– A.V. Club, the Best Comics of 2016<\/span><\/p>\n

Schulz captures the experience of sickness with uncomfortable accuracy: the woozy slipping in and out of consciousness, the sense of health and wellness becoming but a distant memory\u2013and of pain and illness defining all of one\u2019s existence. Sick<\/i> joins other books in the growing genre of graphic memoirs dealing with health issues, among them Ellen Forney\u2019s Marbles<\/i>, John Porcellino\u2019s The Hospital Suite<\/i>, and Jennifer Haydn\u2019s The Story of My Tits<\/i>. While those books offer stories of people who navigated through their physical and mental problems to the point of reaching new possibilities for their lives, in Sick<\/i>, Schulz\u2019s illness is the avenue that leads him to simply confirm all of his worst fears about himself and the world surrounding him: \u201cThe sickness had become me.\u201d This is uncompromising work by a brave and powerful artist.<\/p>\n

– The Comics Journal<\/span><\/p>\n

He came away with a damned near irrefutable case against humanity in all its forms, unless you were willing to stick to that plan of willful ignorance, but you can read this yourself to see the case that he made. Granted, his mind was in a sick and dark place when he thought all this through, but I defy anybody to read this without agreeing with a good chunk of what he said. If you\u2019re content in the bubble that you\u2019ve made of your life and have no interest in seeing if anything could break through, stay away from this book at all costs. If you can accurately see your surroundings already and want to live as closely examined of a life as possible, there are few books better than this to help in that task.<\/p>\n

– Optical Sloth<\/span><\/p>\n

MORE PRAISE FOR GABBY SCHULZ<\/span><\/a>\n