"The Death of Pagliacci and the Birth of Another" – A Self-Portrait Comic by Angel Juarez

"The Death of Pagliacci and the Birth of Another" is the way I decided to make my self-portrait. Drawing has been the biggest part of my life and has been the biggest influence for what I want to do in life. Comics have also been right there with me since I learned how to draw squares. All throughout my life, I've been making comics, whether they were small comedic strips or longer, story-oriented books. This comic, "The Death of Pagliacci" (for short), contains one illustrated cover and fourteen internal story pages. The pages are sized 5.5"x8.5", so a spread of two pages could be printed on one sheet of standard letter sized paper and be folded in half to create the book. Despite the cover being colored, the rest of the comic is in black and white with minimal shading.
This comic is perhaps the only time I've made anything retrospective of my life at all, so it was very interesting for me to make something like this, when anything else I've ever done would normally be completely made up, not based on anything real. I decided to split this comic into two parts, the first part being young me and the second part being me as I am now.
It starts as a sort of catalogue of some of the more important and formative moments of my early life. To me, I believe one's identity is mainly what makes them who they are. What makes them say the words they say, do the actions they do, think the thoughts they think, etc. I'm far less interested with the physical aspect of one's identity, but I will not disagree that definitely has an affect on the non-physical aspects of one's identity. Perhaps I am in some kind of position of privilege to be able to think like that, which is a thought I have inside the comic as well. So, the first part of the comic includes thoughts and moments from my early childhood which profoundly affected me and made me who I am today. I tried keeping everything as clear as possible because I am not too good with subtlety.
The second part of my comic is more about who I am now and the more nuanced thoughts about identity that I have. Some of the more impactful knowledge I've encountered from this class and beyond is just how racist the world is, something that confuses and disgusts me. I added my small thoughts of this in the comic, which again may be coming from a place of some kind of privilege since I've never experienced any kind of racism in my life, at least not directed towards me.
The entire comic is contained within the context of the Pagliacci joke, which is something I wasn't aware of until I was a teenager in high school. The joke is that a man is telling his therapist that he's depressed, to which the therapist suggests he go see the Pagliacci, the funnies clown he's ever seen whose in town right now. The men responds by revealing that he is Pagliacci. Sadness is something that I personally have a complicated relationship with, as I believe that I cannot be sad or truly depressed because there is always someone who has it way worse than me, so it would not be fair to them for me to be sad. So for a long time, I never allowed myself to be sad. Instead, I used my natural skill of being funny to make sure I was a positive element in peoples' lives. However, I've been coming to terms recently that it's okay for me to feel sad, even if I don't let others know when that is. I want to remain to be the happiness in peoples' lives, and I don't want their perception of me to change, so I keep the sadness with me and share the happiness with others. I don't know how hard the world can be for others, and I can never say that "I know how it feels" because I haven't been through anything much myself really. All I can do is do my best to not make it harder and relieve any kind of sadness anyone is feeling as best as I can.

The comic can be read here.