Early on, my work was more focused on autobiographical and slice of life. As time moved on and as of current, I am more moved by the surreal and sociological.
What do you enjoy most about making zines/comics/art?
The freedom to whatever my muse takes me as opposed to what the market dictates.
What’s your favorite medium to use?
Pen and paper.
What drew you to zine culture?
The diversity of voices, the purity of those voices, and lack of gatekeeping.
What other artists should we check out? What is inspiring you right now?
Adrienne Norris is doing some cool stuff.
What is your favorite zine / zine publisher?
Warm Cookies for Revolution is pretty awesome
What music or films have influenced your work?
Really bad 80s movies.
What is a dream zine project you’d love to undertake if time and money wasn’t an option?
Mixed Media Interdisciplinary Artist with a focus on political art.
What do you enjoy most about making zines/comics/art?
The connection it creates with the viewer. I think we often feel alone as we express ourselves through our creations. When viewers can connect with your work it immediately makes you realize we are all having intense experiences.
What’s your favorite medium to use?
Digital Mixed Media
What drew you to zine culture?
The ability to create without restrictions, something accessible and affordable in the artistic community.
What other artists should we check out? What is inspiring you right now?
@feedthywizard @samanthacecilia @shylanvance
What is your favorite zine / zine publisher?
Hey Ladies – Collection Five – Samantha Tang
What music or films have influenced your work?
Everything! I know that sounds insane but I’m obsessed with music and movies so each one has left a mark. “Naked Lunch” is one of my favorite movies and when it comes to music, I listen to everything I can. I create a lot of my work with suggested songs that I’ve been listening to on repeat as I create. The connection between visual art and music has always been a huge part of my creative process which is why I get so excited when I’m asked to create album art.
What is a dream zine project you’d love to undertake if time and money wasn’t an option?
Something political for sure! I’d love to see a collective of artists working to describe their experience with race and politics in America.
What are you working on right now?
I’ve been rebuilding my website, writing a memoir, and preparing to present my paper on Puerto Rican reclamation and the statehood movement at the HERA (Humanities Education Research Association) conference in March.
What do you enjoy most about making zines/comics/art?
I love that there are no gate-keepers to self-publishing. You can make whatever crazy thing you want! That being said, self-publishing is hard. It’s a lot of work. You have to really love and believe in what you’re doing. That passion and commitment shows in the work.
What’s your favorite medium to use?
This is a hard question to answer. I like lots of mediums and I am also constantly frustrated by my own limitations in different mediums. My favorite medium is going to be a future Science Fiction medium which will allow me to just think of stuff and it’ll be instantaneously created without me having to fight with a pencil or brush or chisel to try and make what is in my head appear in the real world. I’m naming this future medium (which I am formally claiming copyright on right now) “Thinkieanditsdoneium” (all rights reserved).
What drew you to zine culture?
Freedom of expression coupled with a DIY punk atheistic.
What other artists should we check out? What is inspiring you right now?
My holy trinity of inspiration is Mike Mignola, Sergio Aragones, and Geoff Darrow. Those three artists have very disparate styles, but if you look at my work you can see its basically an attempt to mash those three styles together.
What is your favorite zine / zine publisher?
Jon Chad is an artist who began by making zines and mini comics. His book, Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth was published by Roaring Brook Press, so it’s not technically a zine. But it is, none the less, the greatest work in human literature. If you have not read this book, stop whatever you are doing right now and go find it!
What music or films have influenced your work?
Everything is an influence. Most recently, I’ve been impressed with the storytelling in the cartoon series Gravity Falls.
What is a dream zine project you’d love to undertake if time and money wasn’t an option?
I would pour billions into developing my proprietary Thinkieanditsdoneium technology.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on a 3D comic book. The working title is Quick the Clockwork Knight and the Incredible 3D Time Travel Adventure.
Favorite thing about Denver and/or Colorado?
The vibrant indie art scene, the people, and nature.
Comics and zines on the ineffable in life, often autobiographical in nature – plus occasional experimental detective fiction, free-verse poetry, and queer X-men, sci-fi, and wrestling fan art.
What do you enjoy most about making zines/comics/art?
Building an image out of the emotions, memories, textures, colors, and lines drawn by my mind. It’s a kind of remarkable witnessing of a moment of communication that is as close to clarity as I seem able to get.
That and the friendships that have come out of trying to communicate through comics and zines.
What’s your favorite medium to use?
Ballpoint pen for autobio comics – or pencil and copic pens and markers for minicomics. But my favorite medium is oral storytelling – the things that only a conversation can make you feel and understand.
What drew you to zine culture?
I fell for X-men: The Animated Series and then tried to love comics but felt a bit alienated from mainstream comics like Marvel. Indie comics and zines felt much more like home, with such a wide array of voices and the strong support for folks doing stuff similar or different to your own. There’s often a sense of being seen and appreciated and engaged on your own terms that is difficult to find in this world.
What other artists should we check out? What is inspiring you right now?
I really dig comics by Penina Gal (especially Drift & Orbiting), Sam Beck (I looove Winter Parting), Madhav Nair (surreal stories as deadtheduck), Kruttika Susarla (just everything), Mike Freiheit (most recently Woods & Indoor Boy), and Vreni Stollberger (whose anti-capitalist posters I covet) – and I highly recommend the comics of Jon Cairns, Blue Delliquanti, JB Roe, Cori Redford, Craig Campbell, and Mel Gillman. Dailen Ogden is perhaps my favorite comics artist, due to their regular combo of wolves, blue/pink, and space, as well as being generally a rad human and friend. Wendy Xu and Steenz are both key figures – and inspirations – in the comics industry, not to mention their fantastic storytelling projects.
Multimedia comics and zine folks are especially inspiring of late – folks like Pam Wishbow, who makes a huge range of visual narratives and mystical objects, Shing Yin Khor who combines visual storytelling with games and installation pieces, and Abby Howard, whose Scarlet Hollow has been all that I desire from video games. I am similarly inspired by the work of the international Kadak Collective, especially researcher, writer, and filmmaker Aarthi Parthasarathy and educator & artist Shreyas Krishnan. I’m also inspired by my former collaborator and fantastic comics editor, creator, and researcher/journalist Vidyun Sabhaney.
I’m inspired by people who wear many hats, as a comics maker, teacher, researcher, editor, and event organizer myself, so I’d also recommend the work of comics pros like Orijit Sen, Phoebe Gloeckner, Mari Naomi, Parismita Singh, Eleanor Davis, Ed Luce, Thi Bui, Appupen, Bharath Murthy, Breena Nunez, Sreejita Biswas, T. Edward Bak, & Lawrence Lindell. There’s also a lot of autobio work from that group, too!
In short, there’s too many folks / comics / zines to recommend! Shoot me an email or chat with me at some future event and ask for more particular recs, eh?
What is your favorite zine / zine publisher?
My favorite zine is Vreni Stollberger’s A Date with Data – though I also adore Larissa Zageris & Kitty Curran’s How Ill Is Your Repute? and the innovative format of Unfolding the Saree by Mira Malhotra, Aarthi Parthasarathy, Pear D’Souza, and Vrushali Somavanshi (which unfolds from a hanger like an actual saree).
Zine publisher-wise, I’d recommend you check out publications from Pagal Canvas, the Gaysi Zine series, and comics from Studio Kokaachi, all very innovative and based in India – thus perhaps a bit tough to find in the US. For North America, check out Ad Astra Comix, whose publications include some very rad anti-capitalist work.
What music or films have influenced your work?
That’s tough – There’s far too many. I guess Camera Obscura, CHVRCHES, Doves, and REM are probably at the top of the list of music, plus maybe Morvern Callar, Under the Sand, and Miyazaki for films – Those probably reflect my love for mood in storytelling. A big film influence for my autobio work is maybe My Life Without Me.
What is a dream zine project you’d love to undertake if time and money wasn’t an option?
I’d like to make something interactive, combining weaving and comics and nature – so that you’d walk down a forest path and forage for wild foods while learning about the history of that place and also exploring a fictional story that feels like letting go of all the burdens the world has put upon you. Something like the incredible installation work of folks like Shing Yin Khor.
That, or finally finishing an old superhero murder mystery anti-capitalist comic I started forever ago – and then discarded because the plot was over-complicated.
What are you working on right now?
I’m starting tiny autobio comics about grieving the death of my father in November (Tiny Deaths), revising a queer romance minicomic, pencilling a comic for an academic volume on X-men: The Animated Series, collaborating with Zak Kinsella on a second X-men fan zine (first was Previously, on X-men) but on mental health, and drawing indie wrestlers I’d like to consensually cuddle for a possible zine.
I also teach social science at Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio – and am working on a couple articles / volumes on comics culture in India.
Favorite thing about Denver and/or Colorado?
The people and the ecosystems. Since moving to Ohio, I very much miss wandering over to Mutiny Information Cafe on Broadway or St. Mark’s Coffee House on 17th to draw the evening away with friends from Denver Drink & Draw – or going for hikes and reminding myself to drink water all the time.
I make all-ages monster art (Feeping Creatures) and queer & trans comics of various sorts (autobio, sci-fi/fantasy, contemporary fiction, etc.).
What do you enjoy most about making zines/comics/art?
I enjoy creating works that are personally meaningful to me, whether it’s a silly monster or an autobiographical comic about my experiences as a trans person, and sharing those creations with others.
What’s your favorite medium to use?
My comics are usually done with natural media (bristol board, ink, marker, gouache). The monsters take many forms, from original art made of polymer clay or ink on paper, to merch like enamel pins, stickers, buttons, and socks.
What drew you to zine culture?
It’s often difficult for marginalized creators to find a platform for their creations. Zine culture strives for a level of inclusion that’s frequently missing from mainstream publishing.
What other artists should we check out? What is inspiring you right now?
Reading comics by other queer & trans creators like Blue Delliquanti, Melanie Gillman, and Taneka Stotts. I’m also inspired by the variety of nature in general, from bats to bears to bizarre creatures from the deep sea.
What is your favorite zine / zine publisher?
MariNaomi makes a lot of great zines.
What music or films have influenced your work?
Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese metal and punk (Mejibray, Oz, Stance Punks). I did a comic about going to a heavy metal show in Japan a few years ago.
What is a dream zine project you’d love to undertake if time and money wasn’t an option?
Something with die cut pages where the nature of the art changes each time you turn the page.
What are you working on right now?
Glow-in-the-dark rat stickers, my queer YA sci-fi webcomic Valley of the Silk Sky.
Favorite thing about Denver and/or Colorado?
I love that there are so many queer and trans folks here in Denver. As for Colorado in general, the mountains and the animals.
