In this week’s Illustrated PEN, Guest Editor Robert Kirby presents an excerpt from Dave Ortega’s Dias de Consuelo—a look at the immigrant experience through the eyes of Ortega’s 102-year-old grandmother.

Kirby writes: In this excerpt from the fourth issue of his series, Dias de Consuelo, Dave Ortega continues to document the experiences of his grandmother, who was a child during the Mexican Revolution. Dave’s sensitive cartooning vividly captures both the quotidian and the grander events of the era with unsentimental artistry. I am very much looking forward to reading the work in its entirety.


Dave Ortega has been making comics and illustrated zines steadily since 2010. He taught comics as visiting faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and collaborated with the Art Lab at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston on a comics education project. He and his husband live in Somerville, Massachusetts, where Dave also works as programming coordinator at the local public access channel, Somerville Community Access Television.