E. S. Glenn

E. S. Glenn, in full Everett Samuel Glenn, was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1985. He began drawing as a child and was supported by his teachers because, according to his own account, he was otherwise a very impetuous boy. This is how his first comics came into being. His mother died when he was only sixteen and he was sent to a home for boys. He attended the Cleveland School of the Arts, a high school with an artistic focus, and was adopted into the principal’s family when he was eighteen. He then joined the Navy, where he was able to continue drawing.

Glenn spent many years in New York, selling his comics in the underground and indie scenes. His path eventually led him to Leipzig; comic artist Ralph Niese, who died in 2020, was his mentor. Glenn lost his wife Camino, with whom he had commuted between Vienna and Berlin, in 2021.

E. S. began keeping graphic-novel-style diaries at an early age. Hiding his personal experiences behind action scenes thus became a method. Stylistically, he is indebted to the ligne claire of Franco-Belgian comics from the 1980s, but a variety of other influences are also recognizable, for example those of Ralph Bakshi and his adult cartoons from the 1970s.

In his debut, »Unsmooth #1« [2020], Glenn puts his alter ego in the spotlight. As an aspiring artist struggling with self-doubt and ambivalence about the art scene, he joins a gang of small-time gangsters and becomes entangled in their criminal enterprises. According to »The Comic Journal«, »It is a complex meditation on masculinity, race, class, the art world and the act of cartooning, dressed up to look like a stylish thriller, and drawn with heaps of confidence and skill.« The follow-up volume, »Unsmooth #2: BUM« [2021], is the prequel to the debut. In a formally experimental and multi-layered approach, Glenn explores the feeling of existential fear.

Glenn has been a regular cartoonist for »The New Yorker« since 2020. He lives in Berlin.