Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man

AUTHOR: Porcellino, John

ARTIST: John Porcellino (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: La Mano

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1989-1999

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2005

Publication History

Each of the individual stories in Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man come from an issue of John Porcellino’s self-produced minicomic King-Cat Comics, which began in 1989. The chapters “Asparagus” (2004), “Chemical Plant/Another World” (2004), and “Death of a Mosquito Abatement Man” (2003-2004) were previously unpublished. The stories from King-Cat Comics are “The Forest” (issue 3, published in June, 1989); “Hellhole,” “Scott,” and “Sex on the Beach” (issue 6, August, 1989); “Inhuman Bastards of the Deep” and “Attacked by Wasps” (issue 7, October, 1989); “Twenty-Four Hours” (issue 22, October, 1990); “Channahon” and “Untitled Drunk Comic” (issue 23, November, 1990); “f——k” (issue 46, October, 1994); “Waukegan” (issue 48, May, 1995); “Mountain Song” (issue 49, October, 1995); and “The Owl” (issue 55, June, 1999).

Plot

Porcellino’s King-Cat Comics has been at the forefront of independent autobiography. Initially produced as a series of “minis” (small, stapled and photocopied booklets, measuring about 2 x 4 inches), they read as unprocessed memoirs, disingenuous in their effect.

The dedication to Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man is indicative of Porcellino’s Zen mind-set. It is reminiscent of the Native American belief in the living consciousness of the natural world. “This book is dedicated, with love, to mosquitoes, men, women, and all beings; grasses, rocks, fences and sky.” Porcellino places mosquitoes on the top of the list, above humans and other sentient beings. In the lines that follow, “fences,” a product of humanity, are juxtaposed with grasses and rocks, natural elements that Native Americans feel possess a life-force.

The book traces Porcellino’s would-be career as a pest exterminator. As he begins his first season on the job, he is intoxicated with the freedom to explore the marginal wooded spaces that demarcate and abut suburban housing developments, as he did in his footloose youth. As an adult, he is officially sanctioned to root around. As a new “mosquito man,” Porcellino is also charged with a mission. Nature is full of thorns and snares as well as mosquito larvae that carry disease. The two-page sequence at the top of the book illustrates the pitfalls of the forest for the defenseless worker; soaking rain, pointy branches at eye level, and tripping vines. In this sequence, only a cemetery is considered beautiful, as an example of nature with a “makeover,” improved by man.

Porcellino likes the extermination work. He is paid to make the world a safer place by forcibly changing “things that should not be.” At this point, the narrator considers nature something to master, a “festering mosquito paradise.” Using his dipper, a long-handled, spoonlike sampling tool that becomes a distinctive icon of the abatement profession, he evaluates the swarm in the stagnant puddle. Having demonstrated the presence of mosquito larvae and pupae, he returns to Site 19-01 and bombs the bugs with a half pound of pesticide.

Porcellino displays a level of formality that seems excessive for someone who spends his day hanging out in ditches in the borderlands beyond tract-house developments. The text does not initially justify the eradication of known pests. However, “Hellhole” demonstrates the extent to which humanity, abstracted, perceives threats and distances itself from the natural world.

In the next two segments, Porcellino encounters people while on his rounds. The first, a vagabond named Scott, hitches a ride. Glad for the companionship of even a misfit, Porcellino details their dialogue at length. Next, he spies on an unappealing disheveled couple, parked at the beach in Waukegan, Illinois, having sex.

In the one-page “Inhuman Bastards of the Deep,” with a logo rendered in a mock horror-film font, Porcellino composes a visual list with captions of various insect nuisances, but with a sense of humor and even affection. The next chapter, “Attacked by Wasps,” returns the narrative to nature as tormentor.

Porcellino’s second season as an exterminator begins with a lengthy assignment, driving a route at twelve miles per hour while emitting a fine spray of pesticide. Although his supervisor has conjectured that the pesticide powder was harmless to the point that it can be ingested on a peanut butter sandwich, somewhat suspiciously, the stuff is airborne and now distributed wholesale. However, doing so is Porcellino’s assignment, and he struggles to stay awake for the entire shift. This phase is marked by extreme negativity and fear; a night ride becomes a visit to an alien, terrifically uncool habitation. A key sequence follows in which Porcellino endlessly drives his route through a vast, surreal, industrial factory zone, with “belching steam,” and “unearthly light.”

Porcellino relocates to Denver, Colorado, a comfortable place within his world. However, he is still struggling with his work in pest control. He confronts and mingles with the fauna and flora; this passage features a quizzical encounter with a squirrel and an essay on wild asparagus. After some whimsy involving a lemonade stand and a bull with its head stuck in a fence, Porcellino’s health begins to decline. He develops a disabling ear condition that turns him inward, away from his hard-partying ways, and toward religion, thanks to a chance encounter with a book. He makes it through another extermination season while suffering extreme discomfort. Medical attentions are inconclusive, but, evidently, exposure to the mosquito spray is either responsible for his problem or is making a bad situation worse.

At this juncture in the novel, Porcellino’s medical problems, the Boulder County area’s progressive politics, and his own religious convictions begin to dovetail, causing him to reexamine his place in the world and his treatment of the environment. It is at this point that he renounces his former life as a mosquito abatement man.

Character

John Porcellino, the author’s persona, is the only main character in this first-person, confessional autobiography.

Artistic Style

Simplicity of expression has been Porcellino’s benchmark, but this volume is particularly interesting in that it reprints some of his earliest minicomic efforts, and the simplification and refinement of his artwork is laid out during the progression of the pages. The book includes some of his rawest punk expressions, with that movement’s “do-it-yourself” directive to create lines eschewing either premeditation or revision.

At first, the marks are clotted, rushed, and childlike. While Porcellino’s signature style has always come across as deceptively simple, even at its crudest beginnings, he has a basic consideration of placement, angle variation to enhance emphasis, and other fundamentals of composition in the service of effective storytelling.

As the episodes advance, a sense of spatial control can be observed via the line work, as the contours contain and describe the forms in an increasingly economic manner. This particular compilation of King-Cat Comics reveals the artist’s evolution as a visual designer, as it progresses from Gary Panter-esque ratty markings, to mature, essentialist shorthand.

The open quality of the artwork is what reinforces the normally meditative, calming effect of much of Porcellino’s comics work. The lettering is handwritten and lowercase, a style sometimes associated with poetry, and it can be taken as a sign of directness or sincerity. The poetic association of Porcellino’s minimalist work can fail to engage its audience at first, because it is too “quiet” to compete with more typical, flashy media. Once focus is attained, however, Porcellino is able to slow down the reader’s attention to evoke a sense of quietude. Porcellino’s work is similar to that of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai and lesser-known Asian calligraphers, who were in vogue among twentieth-century Western artists for their elegant, gestural minimalism.

Themes

Environmental awareness, and, by extension, a celebration of the sanctity and wonder of life, is the major theme of Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man. This is a notable theme to have emerged from a work featuring so many tawdry, demeaning, and painful episodes. A subtheme of self-discovery, or of a “vision quest,” appropriately played out in natural settings, can also be observed. Overall, this is a story of a person who began by believing he could control nature but, in the end, is under nature’s influence.

Impact

In terms of direct influence, King-Cat Comics, in its idiosyncrasy, is difficult to pin down. Porcellino is a unique creator and his position within even the alternative scene is too tenuous to support such a study. However, there are convergences that make it possible to see him as part of a broad artistic movement, rather than as a lone eccentric, copying his pamphlets for an indeterminate audience. His emergence on the scene was timed to coincide with the latter end of the 1980’s autobiographical comic book school and can be linked within the continuum of underground music or art “zine” production beginning in the 1960’s and running for several decades. There are a few creators whose work carries on the almost morbidly confessional tone Porcellino brings to autobiography; Jeffrey Brown is one such example.

Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor defined what autobiography, even among much younger creators, would look like. In essence, he boilerplated what should be a highly personalized mode of working. While a “warts-and-all” ethic has become the norm, attention to precise literary expression and a degree of polished visual production values still predominate.

Porcellino is a pioneer in the extreme low-tech method of minicomic production, and that form has had many exponents, though it remains an under-the-radar aesthetic. Porcellino is one of a few creators who has done enough work of consistent quality to have his work reprinted.

Further Reading

Pekar, Harvey. American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar (2003).

Porcellino, John. Map of My Heart (2009).

Thoreau, Henry David, and John Porcellino. Thoreau at Walden (2008).

Bibliography

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Northampton, Mass.: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.

Moore, Anne Elizabeth, ed. The Best American Comics 2007. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Porcellino, John. “A Comic Strip Interview with Comic Artist John Porcellino.” Interview by Noah Van Sciver. The Comics Journal 299 (August, 2009): 14-16.

Ware, Chris, ed. “King Cat.” In McSweeney’s Quarterly 13. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Quarterly, 2004.