The graphic novel Map of my Heart begins with a cartoon map of Hoffman Estates: the high school, the Barrington Square Mall, a good spot to pick raspberries behind the hospital. At the bottom, everything is labeled: “Map of the Known Universe Circa 1982.”
When the first issue of King-Cat Comics and Stories came out in 1989, it cost 35 cents. Porcellino was 19 years old, drawing simple stories about his surreal dreams, suburban Chicago upbringing, and the stray cats of Dekalb, Illinois. He ran off copies to sell to his friends or drop at bookstores around town. Even from those humble beginnings, he imagined King-Cat as a long-running, all-encompassing endeavor: the record of his whole life.
That’s how he discovered Montreal cartoonist Julie Doucet, and her elaborate, raunchy zine Dirty Plotte. “I thought, ‘Wow, Julie is doing every single inch of this little zine,’” Porcellino says. “That was my direct inspiration . . . A real direct, personal way of trying to connect with the world. Shortly after I saw my first Dirty Plotte, that’s when I started King-Cat.”
Drawn & Quarterly editor in chief Tom Devlin was the first person to publish a collection of Porcellino’s work—the original run of Perfect Example, which came out under his former press Highwater Books in 2005. He recalls how, even in the early days, Porcellino’s comics felt different. “The 90s were a very sarcastic time, and John’s comics were not sarcastic at all,” Devlin says. “They did not fit in with the tenor of comics that people were making. He was celebrating small moments instead of puncturing big targets.”
“When I lived in Hoffman Estates, I saw it ten times a week,” he says. “I came back and there it was. It was there the whole time, waiting for me to recognize it.”
The zine’s final page shows two panels of a hillside in summertime, busy with Porcellino’s squiggles of grass and flowers. Under his pen, the hills seem both alive and beloved. It’s the kind of drawing that makes you want to go outside and pay attention to the world.
