A graphic memoir about housing insecurity
Cartoonist and musician Rick Trembles grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, in the house his father, Canadian Golden Age Cartoonist Jack Tremblay (Crash Carson), paid for as a commercial illustrator. Encouraged by his father's cartooning, inspired by underground comic artists like Robert Crumb, and propelled by the DIY ethos of the burgeoning punk scene, Rick gave in to his own natural drive to create and built a life full of art and music.
But the comics industry had changed since Jack Tremblay found success, and Rick followed his heart into alt-comics. Mainstream cartoonists were already making less money, and alt-comic artists were making even less from their art - if anything at all. When Rick first moved out, he couch-hopped from one messy band rehearsal space to another, finally settling on a small apartment above a pool hall, where he worked on zines and wrote music - until he wasn't able to make rent. This is just the first stop in a series of insecure housing situations made worse by gentrification.
In Gesticulating Gentrification, Trembles provides a close and honest look at the challenges faced by people living in precarious housing, the constant threat of being forced out by gentrification, and the social and health problems that result from all of it. But this graphic memoir isn't only about social issues - it also provides a rare glimpse at a bygone version of Montreal and the DIY culture that thrived there.

Rick Trembles is a Montreal-based illustrator, post-underground cartoonist, writer, filmmaker, & musician. Two of his Motion Picture Purgatories books have been published by the UK's FAB Press. He's written for Fangoria & Rue Morgue Magazine, and his comix have been published in internationally distributed books, periodicals & anthologies such as Russ Kick's The Graphic Canon, Robert Crumb's Weirdo, Darius James' That's Blaxploitation, Thomas Waugh's Montreal Main, Fantagraphics Books' Pictopia, Kier-la Janisse's Spectacular Optical Kid Power, Satanic Panic, and Yuletide Terror, and France's Hopital Brut for Le Dernier Cri. His award winning animated film Goopy Spasms has toured the festival circuit globally. He is currently animating a series of cartoon shorts called "Building 108." He's been a singer-guitarist for post-punk band The American Devices since 1980. The L.A. Times has called him "A famous free thinker," the Guardian has called him "Genius."

Rick Trembles' profile page

Jack Tremblay's profile page

"With Represented Immobilized, a graphic memoir published by Conundrum Press, Trembles takes us beyond his impenetrable appearance, additionally defined by an all-black wardrobe and an unruly mop of jet-black hair, through a series of autobiographical strips, each describing a different moment in the artist's life. Unsurprisingly, considering the way Trembles' mind is tuned and his eclectic body of work, the memories chosen are scattered and seemingly random: a childhood nightmare about statues in a basement, getting robbed while buying comic books, being kicked out of a Who concert, chopping down a tree on Saint-Laurent Boulevard to try and stop gentrification." - Montreal Review of Books
"Even more twisted & weird than me." - Robert Crumb
"I considered that scene where I first encountered Rick Trembles to have been my education as an artist. It was there that I learned to have a voice. And one of the things I would like to time travel back to was the feeling of authenticity and newness that I felt when first encountering the art of Rick Trembles." - Heather O'Neill
Entertaining & compelling! A great story! Totally brilliant! A great book! Genius! Really!” —Robert Crumb