Lynda Barry, who we’ve all known was a genius, but is now officially one, posted these images on Instagram from “The Night We All Got Sick,” the first comic in The Greatest of Marlys, with the following caption:
These are the first drawings of Marlys. I didn’t know who she was or that I was about to spend the next 30 years with her. I was just making a comic strip about cousins getting sick after a parade. I didnt know who any of them where when they first showed up that day. And I was on the fence about them, wondering should I keep this drawing or not? It scares me to think how easily I could have thrown her away on this first day because I didn’t like the way she “looked”, because the drawing didn’t please me. I believe drawings have the same right to exist as I do. I’m so glad I kept the drawing. I’m so glad I didn’t throw her out.
“I believe Maryls conjures me as much as I conjure her,” Lynda writes in the book’s introduction. “The portable between her world and mine is a pen line made by the living mystery of this hand, this hand that looks like yours.”
We create our drawings and they create us.