Going to Print with Rick Trembles
Rick Trembles’ latest collection…
…is almost ready to be shared with the world! In The Weakly Dispatch, the follow-up to Trembles’ Represented Immobilized, he shares his personal perspective on pandemic life.
Trembles’ asthma put him at risk of a serious infection so, like many people, he took careful measures to avoid coming into contact with the virus. He self-isolated for months, surviving on grocery deliveries from friends, DIY workouts (to prevent muscle atrophy), and of course, comics.
Read on to learn more.
4 Questions with Rick Trembles
1. The Weakly Dispatch is kind of a pandemic diary. How did keeping this record impact how you experienced the pandemic?
Before the vaccines came into being I was pretty much in complete isolation since I work from home and had no bubble, so posting each strip online on my social media platforms felt like my only contact with the outside world, as if to let people know I was still kicking.
2. Represented Immobilized was about holding onto memories that might fade away or evolve over time. Is this what drove this project as well? If not, what did?
They were memories so fresh I had to date the strips right down to the day, since breaking news changed on a daily, sometimes even hourly basis. Some topics were so depressing it’d take forever to initiate, but once the ball got rolling I could find humour in it and it became worth it.
3. Which story still resonates with you most?
I’m partial to the one about beating the cockroach problem in my apartment building. They thankfully got exterminated just before lockdown. I also really like the fantasy scenario lifestyle I portrayed in a building cross-section, as if I had a “media empire” I was able to get back to post-vaccination.
4. Did your process change over the course of the pandemic?
Lotsa speculative stuff went on in the earlier strips that resembled and even parodied post-apocalyptic, dystopian sci-fi. By the second year, everybody kinda knew what was what with the pandemic and what the path forward seemed to be, so it became more of a log. The art also got increasingly more detailed.