We were lucky to catch up with Katie Starr & Matt Haberbusch recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katie, Matt, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Katie: I created three children’s book stories as a coloring book about my nephew as a fish (his life-long obsession). It took me about a month from idea to complete book, and it’s one of the few projects I have actually managed to finish and be proud of. It took an enormous amount of willpower to be satisfied with exactly what I could offer, to be kind to myself as I learned by doing, and to embrace the ‘mistakes’ as working knowledge. It was wonderful to tap into what I felt was flow, and to be singularly focused on creating a working piece of art for someone so dear to me. I still don’t know if he’s read it yet (he’s 4).

Matt: In spring 2019, I was finishing up my senior year of engineering, and the classes and engineering students were making me miserable. But making comics was also making me miserable. I was scheming to use cartooning to escape engineering, doing math and researching the industry and trying to brand myself. Then I found Syllabus by Lynda Barry, and I started a comics diary for myself and only myself. It was like night and day. It was this whole world of drawing I had left in middle school. Lynda Barry showed me the road back with a book she published. To this day, my favorite work is work in my composition notebook, the stuff where I really let loose, the stuff that is too personal to show anybody! (Though, every once and a while I send a Snapchat snap of a drawing or two to my friends, lol.)

Katie, Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Matt: I still think of myself as an amateur cartoonist, but I also see myself as a core member of the local comics scene. I got into it like many do, drawing comics and photocopying them in middle school. I owe my entry to Mike Leuszler who taught a free library workshop. He passed away in 2020. I am most proud of founding Comics in the Circle, which is the most activity and game based comics making group I’ve ever heard of. Rather than skill building and career building, our main focus is games and situations that cause us to write and draw comics, which is an incredibly hard thing for adults. I want you to know that I draw for myself about 90% of the time, and that you can do it too, and that there’s a whole world of drawing outside of publishing and posting. I’ve made a home there, and it’s a life goal for me to build as many good roads there as possible. Of course, publishing is lovely too.

Katie: I got into making comics by reading manga and watching anime as a kid. Manga was extremely accessible at the library, and if I picked up volume 1 of a manga, I knew I could start there, instead of having to jump between huge libraries of back issues and other series as with comics. And manga was so damn beautiful; I immersed myself in the art daily, staring at individual panels and lines for hours, recapturing the story endlessly in all its details. Reading manga made me feel a part of their community of readers, even when I didn’t know others who read the same series. I wanted to replicate the beauty and action of some of my favorite manga, and my middle and high school character designs and stories are direct rips from my favorite series. I’d like to say that I’ve been able to pay homage to my influences in my art, but self-teaching and my own insecurities have held me back in many ways. As a reader, simply enjoying the work makes one feel a part of the community, as if the mangaka is creating it just for them, but as a creator, you feel completely alone, drowning in an ocean of far more talented artists, all vying for the same attention and love they themselves have given to other mangaka. Through the supportive environment of Comics in the Circle, I’ve been able to break down some of my own insecurities, so I can create comics in the spirit of those mangaka that helped me so long ago. Their stories were beautiful, funny, intelligent, compelling, and I hope that by putting out my own comics, I can reach someone else’s heart too, and enrich their life ever so slightly. I love making people laugh, and I’m hoping that I can also connect with others through our shared insecurities and fears of the future, with a dab of humor.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Matt: My mission is to create structures, situations, and bodies of work that help people write and draw without suffering so much. I want to be in Lynda Barry’s lineage in that way.

Katie: To get it out there. Too many ideas have come and gone, and letting them go is one of the most difficult things for me. If I don’t get ‘it’ out there, then I don’t know why I’m here.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Katie: For me to create and finish a piece, for someone to read it, and then for them to get something, anything, out of it. Did they hear me, see me, understand me? It’s what we all want: to be understood.

Matt: Three related things: Reviewing my own personal composition notebook comics diary, the joy and magic of transmitting an image through a little piece of paper and a few panels and the receiver FREAKING out, and the visceral vibe change of a table full of anxious and exhausted comics makers when they go from casual discussion to three minutes of timed focused drawing to sharing the drawings with each other. It’s almost insane how these simple things change us!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sites.google.com/view/comicsinthecircle
• Other: linktr.ee/haberfish linktr.ee/starrkd