Every year in New York City, the Javits Center hosts National Portfolio Day. If you find yourself in Hudson Yards during that time you might witness a group of oddly-sized teenagers struggling to pull leaden suitcases and jumbo folders through packed streets and dense traffic. I was no exception, an awkward seventeen-year-old with some skills in illustration but who considered himself an athlete first and foremost. With little at stake–I had no intention of going to art school–I made my way around the convention center, packing and unpacking my jumbo folder like the town peddler unloading his tchotchkes. As it turned out, I was a poor salesman who found himself in possession of some expensive goods. When it was my turn to present my work, each school, one after another, appraised my work as good and then asked me talk about it. I didn’t know what to say, so I made up a new story for each school. Each time, the portfolio reviewers were incredulous. Your work is skilled, but you don’t have anything to say about it. I remember a reviewer from Cal Arts told me confidentially, I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to approve your portfolio. However, it comes with the promise that you research how to talk about your artwork. You can use the internet, she had pleaded. I never did.

The one school that didn’t ask me to talk about my work was the University of Kansas. At all the other schools, I hadn’t bothered to show reviewers a small notebook, which took up only a fraction of the jumbo folder’s contents. He flipped through the notebook, glanced at me, and then flipped through the notebook some more. Finally, he asked me: is that the No Name mask from Spirited Away?

I nodded. He was right. My main character wore the same mask as No Name. The silent and mysterious character, that in my opinion, made Hayao Miyazaki’s movie a classic.

We might be able to offer you a full ride, he said. I never followed up.

Though I never pursued the school, that interaction left me feeling some validation. I had spent day after day crafting an apocalyptic graphic novel, replete with grotesque scenes of violence, harrowing escapes, and pages of city landscape submerged in water. Since I started working on this project, I dreamed of it appearing on bookstore shelves in some form or another. I tried writing a novel version of the story. Admittedly, it wasn’t as good as my pencil-drawn graphic novel that I wrote in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. Writing out the sprawling saga that I called Masked in Bones did help me explore the rules of my world and develop my characters. That being said, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to tell this story in the graphic form. While living in Japan, I bought mangaka art supplies, flipped through my my little notebook, and began redoing the panels with a nib pen and black ink.

I wish I could say that I was close to finishing the graphic novel, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. In my gut, I know I have to see this through. I’ll continue to post my progress here and on my social media accounts.

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