Archive for the LGBTQ Category


Interview with Queer Comics Creator Leia Weathington

March 25th, 2014

BRUJust about a month ago, indie queer comics publisher Northwest Press announced a Kickstarter for the sequel to one of my favorite comics of recent years, The Legend of Bold Riley. Written by Leia Weathington, and drawn by several different artists, this book was everything I could have hoped. For the sequel, Bold Riley Unspun, Weathington opted for a Kickstarter to pay her artists well and upfront.

Today we have a special treat. Weathington has taken time out of her schedule to take a look inside her process and her thoughts about Bold Riley. I hope you will all welcome Leia Weathington to Okazu!

Let’s jump right into some questions:

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Q1: How did you get into writing comics? Was it something you wanted to do as a child?
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I was obsessed with the Disney Adventures magazine as a kid. They had all of these serialized little comics from Tail Spin, Darkwing Duck, all of the cartoons I’d run home from school and watch. For a few months they were running Jeff Smiths Bone. I was just…blown away.

I was a really big reader as a kid but until I saw Bone I thought that it was impossible for comics to be as immersive and detailed as the prose books I was consuming. I know, that seems absurd considering how fanatical I was about animated shows. When DA stopped running Bone they included a note on the last page that you could still buy it at your local comics books shop. So imagine a ten year old hanging off of her mothers belt loops, almost foaming at the mouth while said mom flips through the yellow pages.

So mom drives me to some little dark comic book store to get the new Bone issues and I came out with Bone, Ranma ½, MIX Magazine and a few other random comics and no change for her 20. I’m lucky my parents love art, media and books so much otherwise I may have been in deep shit.

After that I was balancing my prose books with comics. I read comics for kicks but Jeff Smith showed me what you could really do with comics.

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Q2: Which artists or writers are your role models?
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Ok, here is the Big Fat List: Fumi Yoshinaga, Emma Donahue (The Sealed Letter, Kissing The Witch), Tarsem Singh, Garth Nix , Jim Henson, Chiho Saito , Goya, Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, Yukito Kishiro, and Mike Mignola.

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Q3:How long does it take you to write a story?
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Coming up with a cohesive plot can take a couple years of just…thinking. Writing an actual script can take a month or so depending on length. I have a bad habit (that I’ve managed to break only a couple years ago.) of needing to have the beginning, middle and end of something solidified in my mind before I would sit down and write something someone else could actually read.

Here is a bullet point break down of my process:
● Think of concept while doing something mundane, like showering.
● Make a stupid playlist for thing.
● Aggressively think about thing for several weeks while listening to stupid playlist on repeat.
● AGGRESSIVELY TYPE FIVE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT THING.
● Run away from thing for 2-4 weeks.
● Come back to thing, scrap half of thing.
● AGGRESSIVELY PACE IN A LOCKED BATHROOM AGGRESSIVELY THINKING AND AGGRESSIVELY ACTING OUT SCENES IN THE MIRROR.
● Sit down and type rough draft of thing.
● Have small crisis of faith.
● Sit back down and type final draft.

I cannot stress how important the aggressive pacing and aggressive acting out of scenes is. Also, the neighbors are terrified of me and will not make eye contact. To be fair, there are no curtains in that bathroom.

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Q4: How do you go about choosing an artist?
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When I’m developing a story I usually have a really clear idea of what sort of visual style would be most effective. I’m active on Tumblr and Twitter which is where a lot of artists display their talent. I’ve also been working in comics for about ten years now so I have connections with phenomenal talent. Sometimes there will be a toss up between two artists that would suit a script but that’s rare.

After I select an artist, approach them with the story and have their agreement to work on it I have a meeting with them to go over the script. Typically my final drafts are what I think of as “Bare minimum” meaning they are broken down into pages but not paneled. Some artists like having the structure of pages and panels and some don’t. I talk with them about how they like a script formatted for them to effectively work from. I give them folders of photo reference that evoke mood or setting and discuss the general emotional state and journey the characters go through. then they can also bounce back to me if they think that’s coming through in dialog or pacing.

With Bold Riley in particular I try to select artists for stories they would enjoy drawing and also be suited for.The type of artist I want for stories in the series actually strongly dictates the sort of narrative I want to tell. I have never and will probably never have multiple artists do test pages. I select comic artists who already have a body of work.

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Q5: After you have chosen the artist, how does the collaboration work? Do you vet roughs, or critique the art in any way?
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Generally an artist sends me rough thumbs to show how they would like to tell the story, I give the go ahead and then they proceed in the fashion they find the most effective and comfortable. I rarely edit art. If I ask for changes it’s because something is insanely off model or it’s a consistency issue for artists later in the series.

I believe that in comics if you want to be a writer working with an artist you have to listen to their input and be open to revisions. I may panel out something I feel is perfect but if my artist comes to me with an idea of how it could be more effective visually it’s my responsibility to take that into consideration and then rewrite accordingly. Communication is key. I think if you want to involve another human being in a creative endeavor you have to be able to talk things out and compromise.

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Q6: You’re working on your second volume and your Kickstarter funded pretty quickly. What’s going through your head? What do you feel about your success so far?
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I’m honestly amazed, surprised and terrified all at once. This is my first Kickstarter and Bold Riley is my first book. When I started doing this project I thought maybe ten people, tops, would read my lesbian fantasy adventure comic. It turns out that number is more quite a few more than ten and growing. That’s huge, That’s humbling. I have women come up to me at cons and tell me shit like, “This book is really important, We needed this.” and I want to sit down and cry for a little bit. Artists I admire have asked about doing work on this series. Like, this story I believed in and thought was important it turns out other people feel the same way? That’s huge.

Now I sometimes go to sleep and have dreams about every pledger canceling their reward and the whole industry turning it’s back on me but from what I understand that’s pretty normal for most creatives.

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Q7: Do you read any Queer comics?
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Hell yes! Blue Dellaquanti’s O Human Star, Sfe R Monster’s Eth’s Skin, EK Weaver’s The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal, Tom Siddell’s Gunnerkrigg Court, Benjamin Riley’s Iothera and Brittney Sabo’s All Night are some of the best comics I’m reading right now that also have a queer theme. I can’t recommend them highly enough. Amazing art and unique voices.

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Q8: Plans for the future? More Riley?
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Oh, so much Bold Riley. If things keep going well the plan is to finish the Bold Riley series with eight trades and a ninth epilogue volume. Book three is already half written and the artist lineup is solid.

I also have a couple projects I’m working on with Joanna Estep, the artist who is drawing “The Lion Jawed,” the final chapter of Bold Riley: Unspun and I’ll be in the Beyond anthology of queer sci fi fantasy comics with a story called “Eat At Chelle’s!” about a transwoman restaurateur who is getting her food stock from bizarre parallel worlds and serving them to a well heeled clientele. I’m really pleased to be working with Lin Visel, who will be the artist for that one.

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Q9: Any message for fans?
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Thank you for reading. Thank you for making all of the time I put into this worthwhile. It means a lot.

Thank you so much for your time today and we wish  you the very best!





Dare mo Korinai Manga (誰も懲りない)

March 13th, 2014

Before we get started today, I’m going to ask you to watch a video. Abuse trigger warning, but if you think you can manage it, will you try?

Did you look away, maybe check how long the video was, or see what time it was?

If you looked away, why? You don’t know these people. This is not even real. It’s a Public Service Message that makes a point. It makes it well. And for a second, it was too hard to look at.

We don’t want to hear about someone else’s abusive situation. We don’t like being asked to confront that we are pretty helpless in the face of someone’s pain. The feels, they hurt. It’s even worse when the victim is a child. Between murderous rage and abject misery there is almost nothing we can actually do to change a story. Tweeting a message, writing a check to an NPO…these are things we do to salve our own pain, and we hope they salve someone else’s, because admitting that we really haven’t done all that much makes us feel bad.

As I’m reading the exceptionally well done, but emotionally brutal, Dare mo Korinai (誰も懲りない) by Nakamura Ching-sensei which was serialized in Quick Japan（クイック・ジャパン, I’m caught between praying to my gods that this is not autobiographical, and forcing myself to not look away in case it is.  I’d translate the title as “Some People Never Learn” and in regards to Nakamura-sensei’s manga, I may be one of those people. No matter how hard it is, I keep coming back for more.

Way back, when I started Yuricon, I wrote a serial for our mascot, Yuriko. At some point in the first book, Shoujoai ni Bouken, (which is online, for free, along with the sequel.) I have Yuriko tell a story about how, when her parents found out she was gay, they threw her out of the house. At that point, she had not spoken to any of her family in years. When that chapter went live, I received dozens of emails from people who were desperately afraid I had lived that, and dozens more from people who actually had. I reassured the former that I had not and sympathized deeply with the latter.  This also came to mind as I read Dare mo Korinai. A good writer writes something you like, a very good writer writes something you can’t imagine is fiction. I kept telling myself, “It’s fiction…it’s fiction” knowing that for someone out there, it isn’t and I feel powerless knowing that.

Nakmura-sensei described the book on social media as a kind of epilogue to GUNJO.  Sometimes when you’ve been working on a really emotionally intense project, you have so much built up inside that the only way to get it out is to get it out. You scream, you write, you draw, you make fun of the rage so it stops being something that hurts as much. Or you cut into it, plumbing the depths of the pain to see where it goes.

Dare mo Korinai, follows the life of Toshiko, a smart, talented girl from a well-off family whose life is shredded by abusive family members and stomped by family politics. Her lesbian lovers are no better for her and the best thing you can say about her life by the end is that she survives. But, by god it hurt to watch.

Ratings:

Art – 8 All hand drawn, without the detailed photographic backgrounds of GUNJO
Story – 9 but buckle up, it’s not an easy ride
Characters – I can’t.
Lesbian – 5 Yes, but no.
Service – Same

Overall – 8

So often I say that when I’m reading a book that I find painful, I wish to pluck the main character out, feed her, and give her a better home in a better story. I hope Toshiko finds herself in a happier story some day.





LGBTQ Adventure Comic: Gun Street Girl

March 11th, 2014

81TK5BKRjrLWith the kind of synchronicity that I’m used to, there has been a lot of conversation in LGBTQ comics and Yuri circles recently about stories with lesbian leads that are more than just a romance. Yuri anime is firmly entrenched in selling school life rom-coms to man-boys, and many readers are looking for something a little more…fun, with action and adventure. I’ve mentioned The Legend of Bold Riley several times and today I want to talk about a new comic – Gun Street Girl is definitely all that. The lead character happens to be gay, and then a story happens. ^_^

Barb Lien, one of the founding members of Sequential Tart, was tired of reading mainstream gay comics characters whose only story seemed to be that they were gay. Rather than looking at the body of LGBTQ comics to find similar role models, she decided to write the story she was looking for. “Because I wanted to read a story about….I wrote it” is the most common reason I hear for creating a work. It’s a totally valid reason, I’m not dissing it in any way. ^_^

And so, Barb created Gun Street Girl, a comic that if I were asked to describe, I would probably sum it up as “if Willow was Buffy”.  Lizzie is the “gun” for a street wizard named Eddie. We meet them in a fun meta-commentary of comic stereotypes “Everybody Want To Rule The Wold.”  The stories are independent of one another, but we get a glimpse of Lizzie’s relationships, her history for a solid volume. Lien has created fully fleshed out characters, with a slightly less fully fleshed out world. Like Buffy‘s Sunnydale, Gun Street Girl‘s world uses magic freely, then imposes random limitations upon itself, leaving it slightly adrift in time. It’s contemporary, but not our world, exactly.

For a story that was going to just have a gay lead and then the stories happens, Gun Street Girl gets a little heavy-handed in other places, addressing sexism in “An Unsuitable Job For A Woman” (a title which was used back in 1972 by P.D. James and, I felt, was an unfortunate choice in 2013. Update: I am informed that the stories were written about 10 years ago and admittedly comics have changed since quite significantly), and racism in the second story “Waking the Witch” in which we also meet Lizzie’s lover, Prana, who has a secret of her own.  Too much of a good thing and also too little. The lessons are good, but – and here is my sincere concern – why are we still having stories about this stuff? If Lien was frustrated that superhero comics were still wrapped in the most basic “gay” stories, here she was pointing big red arrows at “she’s a woman in a man’s world” and “look how not-white this character is.” Ironically, the whole shebang is set in the UK, which is far, far more  integrated  in media representation than we are in the US.

Ryan Howe’s art is solid, easy to follow, even in “magic”-y scenes. It’s very 2-dimensional, hearkening back to comics of my youth. A few panels felt downright Kirby-esque. ^_^ The all-back and white art suited the story well, I think the pages might have looked messier in color, but then I much prefer B&W to color comics now, having had my sensibilities warped by manga. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri/Lesbian – 7 No obligatory sex – which is good, it’s a little *look, she’s a lesbian* but + for her and Prana’s relationship just being a relationship.
Service – 1

Overall – 8

For action, adventure, magic and fighting with a lead who just happens to be a lesbian, definitely give Gun Street Girl a try!





LGBTQ: Yuri no Real (百合のリアル)

March 6th, 2014

ynrMakimura Asako is a former Miss Japan finalist who is an out lesbian. She is married to a woman from France and works as entertainer (a “talent.”) To answer a lot of questions she gets about being gay and about LGBTQ people, life and sex, she has written a book called Yuri no Real (百合のレアル), or, as we might say it, “Real Yuri.”

This book, as Makimura-san plainly states, is not for people who already consider themselves members of the LGBTQ community, but really for people who just have no idea at all what being gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans…or anything means. It’s for the same kind of audience that Takeuchi Sachiko’s Honey x Honey series was for.

The book begins with, and is interspersed by, a short manga. Five people from different walks of life find themselves at a “How to Be Popular” seminar, taught by Maya, a lesbian. High school student Haruka thinks she might be a lesbian, but isn’t sure, Hiromi is an straight female office worker, Sayuki is a transwoman who has had top surgery and Akira is a straight guy. The five of them will discuss common misconceptions and questions of femininity, masculinity, gender roles, straight and gay sex and they will cover a lot of LGBTQ terms, history, and life.

Breaking up the discussion sections (which are appealingly designed, with little character faces expressing emotion, above the character’s dialogue, Makimura-san discusses her own life – her attempts to be straight, questioning her own gender and sexual identity, her acceptance of herself and her coming out. (Incidentally, she also mentions Higashi Koyuki, who very publicly married her partner at Tokyo Disneyland last year, which is tangentially how I “met” Makimura-san on social media, through another friend who was present at that wedding. It’s a very, very small world.)

It’s all very approachable, with the characters in the seminar voicing concerns, myths, questions and assumptions of the sort that most LGBTQ people have faced. Makimura-san’s autobiographical segments are going to be familiar to anyone who has been down the same road.

Through the book I honestly had only one complaint. The premise was that the seminar was supposed to have been about learning to be popular. After Maya has so thoroughly covered LGBTQ history and current issues, I wondered if they ever would, in fact, talk about how to be popular. Well…they do, and a lot of it has to do with accepting one’s self. And, of course, that is true. ^_^

Ratings:

Art: 7 Simple, magazine-y and appealing
Characters: 7 Morishima Akiko-sensei-esque. But I felt bad for Akira, the only guy in the book
Story – It’s really a non-fiction, with some fictive elements, but as a guidebook to LGBTQ life, it was quite good.
Yuri – 10
Service – A shocking almost nothing. Even in the “explaining lesbian sex” bit, it’s pretty low on service and high on useful content.

Overall – 8

I realize that this entire review will probably get lost in a black hole of no real audience. Japanese LGBTQ community members aren’t reading this blog and English-reading Yuri readers aren’t reading this book. But that’s never stopped me before and it’s not stopping me today. ^_^ Real no Yuri was real and it is yet again another small mesh in the zipper of terminology that is Yuri and Lesbian.





LGBTQ Comics – The Legend Continues in Bold Riley: Unspun

February 28th, 2014

BRUI’m sitting here in a Kickstarter-induced dopamine rush. Leia Weathington has just posted the crowd-sourced fundraiser for the sequel to her lesbian action fantasy series The Legend of Bold Riley, today. The sequel will be called Bold Riley: Unspun.

Like the original series, Bold Riley: Unspun will be released as several stand-alone pamphlet comics and as a collected volume slated for a winter 2014 release.

There were many things I loved about the first book; the different art styles, the Conan-esque writing, the stunning cover art. I’m still hoping that NorthWest Press will get a Riley t-shirt together.

The kickstarter this time is purely to pay creative costs.  You know how strongly  I feel about artists being paid for their work. So for the first time in my life, I went all-in and pledged the highest level. I know and enjoy the art by a few of the artists and I adore the stories and my birthday is only 7 months away. ^_^

If you like action-fantasy with a lesbian princess who can fight a god, bed a wench and stand up to an evil-eyebrowed wizard with the best of ’em, support Bold Riley: Unspun.

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While I’ve got your attention, NYC-area friends, I have two NYC events of interest.

Tonight at Jim Hanley’s Universe, some of the contributors to Northwest Press’s QU33R will be doing  a book signing!

Rica Takashima will be joining Jennifer Camper and a host of other feminist and lesbian comic artists at the Feminist ‘Zine Fest tomorrow at Barnard College.

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Save all that snow-shoveling money, kids…it’s going to be a great year for LGBTQ comics!