Jesse Reklaw

Jesse Reklaw
Reklaw, photographed at the 2004 Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco.
Born	Jesse Walker 1971 (age 45–46) Berkeley, California
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Cartoonist, Penciller
Notable works	Slow Wave
Awards	Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California chapter) — Excellence in Journalism Award, 2004 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, 2001, 2003, 2004 Ignatz Award, 2008

Jesse Reklaw (born 1971) is an American cartoonist and painter, author of the syndicated dream-based comic strip Slow Wave.

Reklaw was born in Berkeley, California and grew up in Sacramento, studied at UC Santa Cruz, and completed a master's degree in computer science at Yale University. In 1995, while pursuing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, he began self-publishing comics in his dream-themed series Concave Up. At the same time, he developed the weekly strip Slow Wave; when he began to have some success in syndicating it, he dropped out of Yale to work as a cartoonist. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his cat, Littles, who appears in many of his strips and zines.

Slow Wave is "a collective dream diary authored by people from around the world." Readers email their dreams to Reklaw, who illustrates them in a classic four panel cartoon which credits the dreamer as co-author. Reklaw pares down each dream he selects to a few sentences. Reklaw has said he likes dreams because they have "their own logic and a natural dada-like humor." Examples of Slow Wave stories include one in which "a man is pursued by an all-knowing ham"; one in which "the Royal Hole in the Earth Society discusses an award for the best hole filled with water"; and "one about a man who rode a unicorn to distant mountaintops in search of the world's only bathroom".

Slow Wave has been published in alternative newspapers and on the web since 1995. An anthology of Slow Wave strips was published in the book Dreamtoons. Slow Wave has also been published in Dream Time, the newsletter of the Association of the Study of Dreams, and two Slow Wave strips appeared in the textbook Introduction to Psychology, 5E by James Kalat, published by Brooks/Cole.

Reklaw's work has frequently appeared in small-press anthologies and self-published minicomics, many of which are available through the small-press comics distributor Global Hobo, which he co-operates. He is also the designer and editor of a small found art book, Applicant, which reproduces photographs and descriptions of graduate school applicants in the 1970s.