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Writing cartoons about my own life is a sort of guilty pleasure, a potent mix of self-indulgence and self-flagellation.
In P.D. Eastman's 1960 children's book, Are You My Mother?, the protagonist is a baby bird who hatches into an empty nest as his mother is off foraging for food. He sets out on a determined and increasingly desperate search for her, asking everyone and everything he sees the title question. He doesn't know to whom he belongs or what his mother looks like, only that he has one and he will find her. He's finally back in the nest when a smiling, worm-bearing bird arrives and asks, “Do you know who I am?” They are both delighted — the baby realizes his mother is a bird, and is his. The story is cheerful, but it seems problematic that the import of her absence and his despair are disavowed. A wing and a worm — a mother's physical presence — can impart love, but for the baby, her absence may be more real than her presence.
In Alison Bechdel's 2012 graphic memoir, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, hers is also an earnest quest: for maternal recognition, psychological insight, and deliverance. The book begins with a dream: she is searching for a way out of a dank cellar, emerges surprised, and stands before a brook she must cross. There are stepping stones, but they are submerged. The dream ends with Bechdel falling through deep, dark water.