whitelippedviper:So since people don’t really interview me, I...

whitelippedviper:

So since people don’t really interview me, I decided to see what the big comic sites were up to when it came to talk about transgender issues in comics, so I googled like…cbr, transgender, looked for an interview with a cisdude, because I know they always get the most space to speak, and then I did what my interview would have been over the top of that, if they had interviewed me about my work instead.  Still working on the best way to present these.

But this is from this cbr interview about Rat Queens:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=58458#storyContinued

Here is the text version of that in-case you’re like…a sane person:

This week, fans of “The Leopard” can rejoice as the Sarah Horrocks returns with the much-anticipated specials, “Leviathan” and “Goatlord”. Before getting back to the pillaging already in progress courtesy of Oswald, Charlotte, Ophele, and Carlos, artist Sarah Horrocks takes a slight detour to spend time with Joan, the fierce old hollywood actress.So far, we’ve seen the the pitiless void at the center of being the gazed at refraction of the death beauty turn from oppressed object, to abject subject, but there’s more to her than meets the eye. Illustrated by Sarah Horrocks, the Image Comics  self-published as fuck one-shot shares the story of how fucking awful everything is, and everyone in it, and everyone around it.

Horrocks spoke with CBR News, filling us in on the connection she has with the horrible Joan, what she has in store for the leopard and her upcoming Helmut Newton-esque series with an awesome new collaborator.

CBR News: Sarah! I love, love, love the one shot you’ve done with yourself. What inspired you to do an issue focused on Old Hollywood?

Sarah Horrocks: I’m an avid listener of the podcast You Must Remember This, which is this podcast about the history of old hollywood, and of course some of the stories are so scandalous–that coupled with a renewed interest in pre-code films and old silents–I wanted to draw something really glamorous–I mean there were two impulses behind Leviathan, I wanted to draw jewelry that affected me the same way that seeing a Josef Von Sternberg did, and I wanted to think about Gloria Grahame as a xenomorph.  Maybe that’s silly?  But that’s how my brain works.What makes that special to you? I think the idea of glamour is interesting, because it is kind of the beauty of status, and while a lot of work has been done to use camp glamour to parody and ridicule status–I was interested in the vile structures that prop it up–and more, actually, I’m interested in unpacking glamour as a visage of the sublime–it’s a manifestation, but it has its particular attributes, like how Phobos is nightmares, right?Did you always know you would make Leviathan? Or was this something that progressed as you wrote “The Leopard "I was between Leopards volumes, and there was the idea that I might be a special guest invite to this convention, DINK, and I wanted to have more to sell than just my comic Bruise–and more, I had seen these beautiful comics my friend and trash twin Katie Skelly had printed with Agent 9, and it was exactly what I wanted a comic to look like, and to see that that was possible without needing a ton of money, or the approval of well…anyone–so then one thing led to another.

Trans characters have been underrepresented in media for so long – who are some of your favorite examples in comics?

My own because they’re all terrifying demons walking straight into the apocalypse and every other depiction is soft and wants to make people like…see us as their special cause.  I want to approach myself the way that Mcqueen made dresses–like I don’t want your fake concern that just makes me a target, y’know?.

I don’t want to spoil the issue for readers – but you handle how much it sucks to be transgender in a bigoted cisgender world which wants to tell all of your stories for you? How did you go about getting people to listen to you instead of some whitewashed cisgender version of your life?

Yeah my thing right now is, cisgender dudes if they want to tell my story, then they need to be able to tick off like ten transgender artists that inspire them in every interview applauding their whatever…probably award winning book–because what pisses me off is not cisgender people telling my story, it’s that you can’t hear the real true story from the people who actually are living this life over the applause for all of those fucking jerks.  I hope they choke to death on all of their awards.  If you really want to tell my story, just retweet me.

You and I have talked before about your own transformation in terms of personal beliefs, and how you’ve dedicated a lot of time as an adult to try and make up for some former beliefs that were hurtful to others. This seems like a very personal story for you – defying expectations, making your own path, following what you know to be right. Does this feel like a moment of closure for you?

My great shame is that before I had to draw comics, I wanted to write a Huntress comic, and now I can’t think of any more mortifying a waste of what little time I actually have left on this earth.  All I want to do is get closer and closer at trying to get these internal beauty that obsesses me every day outside of me, so I can be horrified from it–and the process of doing that is very addicting, and a good way to pass the time, but the result is always so humbling and far away, and it’s like once it’s drawn, I feel like I kind of lose that image forever, or it’s harder to remember, because my internal vision is now skewed by this really poor manifestation.  Which makes me try harder. 

The difference between drawing and writing is that when you write, you keep the image, and when you draw, you lose it–and so when you finish writing you are completely delusional about what you’ve done, but when you finish a drawing, it’s cold water in your face about how fucking much you’re dumb.

How did you make this by yourself?

Comics aren’t hard when you don’t have to pitch them to anybody, don’t have to wait on anybody to do anything–it’s just you and your discipline.  The hardest thing is actually this part, taking the time to present to people what you’ve done in a way that makes them think they should give you money for it.  It’s much easier to just like write shit off, and just go on to the next thing, and hope some magic unicorn is going to drop from the heavens and put a gold star on your forehead for being so wonderful and great.

What were the conversations like about character design? We see quite a lot of Joan in this, and the nudity was handled beautifully. What was important to you about showing the various aspects of her character?

I think Joan kind of vacillates between Dietrich and Carole Lombard–I think my nudes you can still see my shame of the body.  I feel so ashamed and disassociated from my own body because of all of the body dysmorphia–you would think that I would be able to draw some kind of idealized nude body–but between the face and the knees, my anxiety elongates.  So I fall within that scope of artists who fetishize the torso–which hey, good company.  I feel like comics is mostly people who like butts, but I am on team torso. I’m much more interested in fashion than I am nudes.  If your body is this horrifying shift exterior that I want to look away from, but can’t, a dress is a great comfort at being able to say something through feedback of that horror.

Let’s catch up on the leopard a bit – issue #3 comes out in the summer and we’re heading into the killing part of the storyline. Where are all of our assholes at as the next arc begins?

Yeah so volume 3 I’m going to kill everyone.  I’ve structured it so that there’s not a page in the comic where there isn’t some kind of gory violence happening.  Everything in this comic has been set up for Vol. 3 and 4 which I conceived of before I filled in everything else.  So this is the part of the comic that if it works, the whole book works, if it doesn’t work, then my best hope is that the failure is completely catastrophic.  But yeah.  Lots of pressure.  Think about it.  Don’t think about it.  

In some of the teaser art you’ve shown, we see a lot of violence. Is more of the violence going to be revealed?

Lady, it’s all violence.  My goal is that vol. 3 will be the most violent book of 2016.  Is Crossed still going?  I’m coming for the throne.

You’ve had not had a change to the creative team, what’s it like being influenced by Rei Kawakubo?

It’s lonely!  But I feel like if I read my Kyoko Okazaki comics enough times, I can blot out all of the horrible fashion of like…all of comics.  I’m like…why draw?  Thank goodness for true Queens of the earth like Moyocco Anno out there putting up amazing instagram sketches.  Otherwise it would be a really bleak world!

The thing about Kawakubo is that she does collections that make me want to run out into the streets and get the guillotines running again.  She did this great collection a year or two ago, that was like basically “it’s time to kill the 1 percent” and I was like “right on”.  Which is to say, she makes art that makes me irrational, which is all I ask from art.  I’ll be completely mortified probably in like 5 years at even saying any of this.  But the great thing with the internet is that your shame will last forever, so if you just make so much of it that people can no longer even process you in a context where that shame even applies–then by the extent to which the internet is just the gamification of living, you’ll have leveled up fairly significantly.

What are you most looking forward to with the future of "The Leopard"
?

I’m really excited to see where it ends up coming out in print, and how people process the art in print, because I think it’s one thing to see my work on a computer screen, but generally people have responded really well to my stuff in print, because then my coloring really comes unhinged.  I haven’t really started shopping it to publishers, because it’s hard right now to figure out where my work fits most in comics, there’s not anything like what I’m doing, which is exciting, but it’s also hard to measure where exactly I’m at with things–so I have this weird thing going on, where the publishers I’ve worked for so far are Image, Boom, Secret Prison, and Phantasma Disques–which is all over the map. So it will be interesting to see where it settles.  I think I need like…Alamo Drafthouse to get into comic book publishing.


What else is going on with you? Any other exciting news?

Yes!  I’m writing a thing for Katie Skelly’s Agent series that she does for Slutist.  It will be called Agent 73.  Very excited with that. Skelly is my co-host on the Trash Twins podcast that I do, and just kind of someone who is on the same sort of wavelength that I am in terms of what we want to do with comics–and her style—it’s really funny because I’d say we share some influences, but our styles are very different too–so writing for her, and getting to imagine my stories in her world and through her imagination is really exciting and inspiring.  I think people will be really stunned by what we’ve come up with.  I pretty much refuse most collaborations in comics, because I don’t have the time to work on someone else’s lame ideas–but Katie is in a group of about 5 or 6 people who I would do any kind of comic with.

So yeah.  Check out Leviathan and Goatlord.  Two brand new print comics from me,  coming Thursday April 7th through my store.

http://www.storenvy.com/stores/517924-sarah-horrocks