IN THE MINI-COMIC Adult Babysitting, Maryanna Hoggatt offers a bartender's-eye view of her years slinging drinks at a Southeast Portland dive. With graceful, observant drawings, Hoggatt illustrates scenes of drunken debauchery and barroom camaraderie, peppered with jokey asides that anyone who's ever tended bar will appreciate. (She even sells patches for the "League of Adult Babysitters"—for "bartenders, servers, bouncers, and other service industry comrades.")

Hoggatt recently quit her bartending job to pursue illustration and comics work full-time; her solo show Animal Battle will open at Pony Club Gallery in May. In the meantime, the first two issues of Adult Babysitting can be found at Floating World Comics, Cosmic Monkey Comics, Bridge City Comics, Pony Club Gallery, and other venues where small-press books are sold.

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ON BREAKING INTO COMICS: "I've always been a fan of comics, but I had no idea how to make one. I think autobiographical comics are a good way to break into it, because it's easy to talk about yourself. But when I started doing the bartending comic, I was like, 'Holy shit, this is a whole wealth of information!"

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HOW TO MAKE IT IN PUBLISHING: "Breaking into publishing takes a lot of luck. Not being an asshole helps. So does not being a total weirdo."

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BARTENDING DETOX: "I'm currently going through PTSD from the service industry. It's going to be a long time before I can go anywhere without projecting my feelings on the service."

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LAFFS: "I like taking tragedy and horrible situations and turning them into something you can laugh at. Because the best thing you can do when things are horrible is laugh at it. That's actually how I go through my entire life."

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INSPIRED BY: "Nature, animals, self-empowerment, bravery, chasing your dreams. That's what [upcoming solo show] Animal Battle is really all about. It's a big metaphor for taking the two sides of your brain—where you have the passion and the vision, and the ideas and the tools—and bringing it all together in a children's book style, because that's when I really became inspired. I think it's important to instill that kind of encouragement in a child. I don't think I'd be an artist today without it."

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ANY LAST WORDS?: "Tip well!"

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To see examples of Maryanna Hoggatt's work and shop her online store, see littlewolfblog.com.