About me

My name is Penelope Gronbeck. Almost everyone calls me Penny.
This here on the right is a photo of me, which I took. A little below that is another photo of me, which I also took, but which is from 2003.

I am vegetarian, tending towards vegan.
I do not like coffee.
I love the original Star Wars trilogy.
Currently I'm in law school. I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics. I went to grad school for it briefly and dropped out because they were formalists and I'm a functionalist.
I think all this biographical information would be better, or at least more interesting, in cartoon form. Maybe I’ll convert it when I have some time. Maybe I’ll use photos.

About the comics

The questions I get asked most frequently about doing comics are why comics as opposed to another form, and how did I get into them?

Nine out of ten of the kids who have an artistic bent and a tough time in high school write poetry. I was kid number ten.

Between doing comics and reading a lot of comics I’ve come to some realizations about the medium, and probably the one that’s the most interesting to me is how self-obsessive it is. Comics allow for incredibly personal and confessional pieces in a way that most media don’t. I don’t think that Joe Matt’s Peepshow would work in another medium. It’d make an awkward book, a bad movie, even if a tv producer would touch it, it’d just be too weird for tv. It’s a great comic, though, and I think that’s interesting, I think it’s interesting that there are some things that only work in certain media. Kind of like jokes that only work verbally, or optical illusion puzzles. Anyway, back to the part about self-obsession, because obviously everything is about that. For me my work ends up being self-obsessive for two reasons. First, of course, is that I do autobiographical material, so I’m telling stories about myself and I’m drawing myself. Second is that even when I’m not doing autobiographical work, I still have to draw people, and the easiest model for me to work with is myself, unless I’m drawing someone else specific and I have photos of them. Even then I end up using myself a lot, since I need to figure out how to draw bodies or hands or whatever in certain positions or in relation to things. I spend a fair amount of time messing with mirrors or cameras or examining my hands, trying to see how they look when I’m holding something or making some kind of gestures.

I wouldn't be able to put stuff on the web without help from a couple of people. Roswell Camp gave me my first scanner. The one I use currently is a gorgeous 11x17 Mustek I bought for very cheap off Justin Savage. Dusty Backlund built my PC. Peter Boothe provides me with web space and taught me how to use winscp, putty, and how to write html.