Under the Surface with Rick Trembles
Cartoonist and musician Rick Trembles grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, in the house his father, Canadian Golden Age cartoonist Jack Tremblay (Crash Carson), paid for as a commercial illustrator. Encouraged by his father’s cartooning, inspired by underground comic artists like Robert Crumb, and propelled by the DIY ethos of the burgeoning punk scene, Rick gave in to his own natural drive to create and built a life full of art and music.
But the comics industry had changed since Jack Tremblay found success, and Rick followed his heart into alt-comics. Mainstream cartoonists were already making less money, and alt-comic artists were making even less from their art—if anything at all. When Rick first moved out, he couch-hopped from one messy band rehearsal space to another, finally settling on a small apartment above a pool hall, where he worked on zines and wrote music—until he wasn’t able to make rent. This is just the first stop in a series of insecure housing situations made worse by gentrification.
In Gesticulating Gentrification, Trembles provides a close and honest look at the challenges faced by people living in precarious housing, the constant threat of being forced out by gentrification, and the social and health problems that result from all of it. But this graphic memoir isn’t only about social issues—it also provides a rare glimpse at a bygone version of Montreal and the DIY culture that thrived there. Dive into this Q&A with Trembles to learn more!
1. Gesticulating Gentrification is a love letter to Montreal, but also to your family. Your mother and father are featured throughout. Can you talk about the contrast in the book between your “unstable” housing situation and the “stable” housing of your childhood, and the paradox that cartooning provided both of these living conditions at different times.
I don’t know any better because I’ve never lived anywhere other than Montreal is more like what the book is a letter to. Like the unconditional love my parents projected, I’ve never been able to cut the umbilical. Growing up at my mommy and daddy’s I was pretty much playing monkey-see-monkey-do when it came to cartooning because I’d watch my commercial illustrator old man working overtime in his basement studio every night after dinner and thought that must be completely normal and fun. So once I moved out on my own I always had my trusty drafting table handy and that’s how I’d spend my free time. Pop had a bungalow in the ‘burbs and a studio downtown at the advertising agency that hired him, so he could spread his workload out whereas my cramped “offices” have always been a few feet away from my bed, which never makes for the greatest “work-life” balance. But beggars can’t be choosers.
2. You have been in punk bands and involved in the Montreal underground since the 1970s. What does punk mean to you?
More than just music, in its simplest and most lasting and utilitarian form, to me it means DIY, turning lemons into lemonade, and an outlet for outrage. Satire was also a huge factor with early punk. The book The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk even named Lenny Bruce as a founding father. History offers a wealth of other precedents too, some of which were even integral to the development of punk, like Situationist International (which I refer to a bit in my book) whose graphics the Sex Pistols drew from, Dadaism, Alfred Jarry, and even upside down art circles that comics/animation pioneer Émile Cohl was involved with in the late nineteenth century like the “Hydropathes” and the “Incohérents.” Plus underground film, like the Kuchar Bros (who were also underground cartoonists), the Warhol Superstar crowd (which morphed into proto-punk band The Velvet Underground), and early John Waters. And what spawned the OG underground comix, like EC’s Mad and the earliest comics fanzines. At 63, I’m still trying to process what led up to this zeitgeist that changed my life, even though I haven’t really identified as “punk rock” since The Sex Pistols broke up, but thankfully the turning of things upside down throughout history continues to be a bottomless pit I find worth delving into. I prefer seeing genres get turned upside down to waxing nostalgic over them (which was also an early punk credo) and consider everything that followed the “first-wave” punk explosion as “post-punk” (including hardcore) but that’s all just subjective semantics. That said, I still enjoy punk shows (especially glitchy newbies who are overreaching because I still overreach and think it’s an important aspect) and I’m still a nerdy fanboy. Case-in-point, last Sunday I went to a local “punk flea market” looking for the classic vintage button Sid Vicious wore with black letters on white simply stating, “I’m a Mess,” and also an XL black tee with nothing but the blue Germs circle logo on it (one of my fave 70s punk bands) because that stuff’s timeless IMO. No luck finding either of them though.
3. What is your housing like today? Is your new neighbourhood becoming gentrified?
By some miracle I still live in a reasonably-priced shoebox. There have been numerous protests since a new university opened up nearby that has been threatening affordable housing in my neighbourhood to accommodate the influx of affluent students. Condos have started sprouting like weeds, not to mention higher-end shops and restaurants. Botched, half-hearted attempts at building social housing have been making the news here too. I’m always prone to anxiety attacks a few months leading up to spring around lease-renewal time, dreading my possible walking papers, which I suspect will come in the form of a renoviction. I do lose sleep over this so it’s always a very unpleasant, unhealthy time of the year. Rents used to be affordable for struggling artists in Montreal but that’s ancient history now. Once I finally get the axe I envision myself being priced out and having to relocate away from the city, which would be uncharted territory for me. How do “degenerate artists” fare in the boonies? Bleakly, I would imagine. It’s much easier to get lost in the crowd of a big city and, believe it or not, I actually enjoy my anonymity.