The first volume of You’ll Never Know showed Carol’s initial, sometimes difficult, attempts at grappling with her father Chuck’s traumatic World War II experiences by bringing them to light. As Book 2 begins, she is startled to discover that Chuck’s decision to suddenly, after 60 years, open up to her on the subject has motivations that go far beyond his desire to reveal his past ― putting even more pressure on an already explosive relationship. In any event, Carol finally begins to delve into, and re-tell, Chuck’s horrific wartime experiences in Italy (which are worse than even she had imagined). But back in the present, the cycle of family dysfunction continues as Carol’s own daughter runs into her own trouble, leading Carol into further exploration of her family’s buried traumas and sorrows ― with an expanded reprinting of the out-of-print “The Hannah Story,” Tyler’s superb chronicle of the short life and accidental death of her older sister, a heart-rending story (named one of the “100 Best Comics of the 20th Century” in a Comics Journal survey) that in turn sheds light on her parents’ subsequent lives and patterns of behavior. Everything is connected, and the past is never just the past...
Carol Tyler is one of the most enduring cartoonists of her generation. Debuting with the short story "Un-Covered Property" in
Weirdo in 1987, she went on to contribute to other anthologies of the era like
Street Music, Twisted Sisters, Wimmens Comix, Drawn & Quarterly, and
Zero Zero. Her debut book,
The Job Thing (Fantagraphics, 1993), collected stories that examined the intersections between working-class labor, artistic expression, and misogyny. Her second collection,
Late Bloomer (Fantagraphics, 2005), spanned her career to date, and showcased her facility with vibrant color alongside her expressive pen-and-ink brushwork.
In 2009, her three-volume series You'll Never Know serialised a biography of her father, tracing his return from WWII and the way the trauma of war and expectations of masculinity, affect soldiers' families and reverberate through generations. The first volume won Tyler nominations for the Eisner Awards for both Best Writer/Artist and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist. The series was expanded and compiled as Soldier's Heart (Fantagraphics, 2015).
Tyler delved further into her own history for the 2018 Fab 4 Mania, referencing her own 1965 diary for a memoir of a 13-year-old girl's life as focussed through obsession with the Beatles, culminating in attending their final Chicago concert. In recent years she taught in Sequential Art at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning between 2006 and 2019, and moved to integrate the teaching, creative, practical, and caregiving aspects of her life via the Ink Farm, a Kentucky retreat for cartoonists to work. In 2023, Married To Comics, a documentary about Tyler's life with husband and fellow cartoonist Justin Green (1945-2022), premiered at the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre. She is completing her next memoir/graphic novel, The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of my Grief, to be published in 2025 by Fantagraphics.
