Bringing Environment & Comics Together: Interview with Aidan Koch

by Max Barnewitz

Comics readers and creators can agree that there is a magic that happens when we combine images and words. The relationship between these two elements, organized in sequence to create meaning, gives comics a unique power to create narrative. Moreover, sequential art puts readers in relationship with a story in a completely different way than other mediums. It is this relational quality that, for cartoonist and artist Aidan Koch, makes comics so ideal for telling stories about our environment. 

Aidan is a cartoonist, illustrator, and educator who has authored numerous books and comics that engage with environmental themes. She is also an animator and the creator of the Institute for Interspecies Arts and Relations. While comics can be a useful pedagogical tool for discussing climate change, drawing environmental themes into comics - both fictional and non-fictional - is a challenge that Aidan enjoys grappling with. She described her work, expressing “I’ve really been trying to find a way to carve out a reconciliation of these practices.” Comics present a particularly useful medium. “Part of what really drew me to comics was the difference between single image art versus sequential art. Illustration is limited by trying to tell a whole story in one place….Sequential art can be more subtle, more contradictory, and you can be in a more amorphous space with your message. I love ambiguity.” 

Sequential art provides an outlet to layer complex and contradictory ideas together in a space. It also brings readers into that environment with the requirement that readers move across the page at their own pace. Aidan talked about the power of sequential art to engage readers in these complex environments, saying that comics is “a relational medium.”  She explained that “thinking about the natural world: we’re transforming how we think about it from traditional zoological and biological systems. I think now we’re looking at animals and plants and other species as part of systems and relations. Ecology is all relational. Everything only exists because of its habitat and everything around it. To me there is a really cool parallel between these things that maybe exists in some other mediums but not a lot… Comics is already set up in this way to have you think relationally.” 

Aidan also observed that comics have a way of fighting defeatism among people who want to take action to protect the planet but don’t know how. Comics are a highly accessible artform that helps us build communities within and outside of the arts. “Not doing anything is not doing anything no matter what your views are,” says Aidan, “How can you push against that psychological barrier? I think that’s something that the arts can help with.”

Aidan has curated a list of environmental comics on her website.  Similarly, this year, Electric Squeakers Joyce Rice, Max Barnewitz, and Jamie Straw started an informal book club examining the ways comics engage with climate change and environmental themes. What emerges from these works are not only explorations of environmental danger, but also significant layers of gender and social politics, racism, and a careful look at what it means to be part of a relational ecosystem. Our reading list includes these fantastic works: 

Dear Creature by Jonathan Case

Ducks by Kate Beaton 

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki 

Climate Changed by Phillipe Squarzoni 

For cartoonists who want to bring the environment to their comics, there are also numerous resources including worksheets and a brilliant workshop Aidan conducted with Sequential Artist Workshop’s Believe in Comics series. Aidan also has some advice for cartoonists who want to bring the environment into their comics. She says: 

“Part of what’s motivated me is just getting out into the world more. Participate in a bigger way, not necessarily with a discreet agenda… Instead, what I’ve been trying to do is go be out there and know that that material will work its way in just by being an artist. Some of it is starting to seep in. Over time I’m curious, too, if seeing those relationships if my art can be more intertwined with that work. It’s motivating in that sense of finding your people and finding people who care. 

Aidan concludes that community is an essential aspect of this work. “Try to build community, community within and outside of the arts. [I’m] trying to bridge those things for myself and to be a citizen who cares. It’s a lot of work to care and it’s so much more meaningful when you find those people.” 

Editor’s note: the interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Special thanks to Aidan Koch for speaking to the Electric Squeak!