The Vital Beat at the Heart of Comics Today
- The Vital Beat at the Heart of Comics Today
Katie Skelly (also reviewed in this issue) is one of the most creative, cutting-edge comic book storyteller's publishing today. From the biker-chick sagas of Bon-Bon in Operation Margarine (2012), polymorphous explorations of an interplanetary nurse Gemma in Nurse Nurse (2014), the ever-curious and vampiric Clover in My Pretty Vampire (2017), and the in-print transformation of her webcomic into in-print book of her picaresque adventuring Agents 8, 9, and 10 in The Agency (2018), Katie radically revises generic expectation and deeply affirms female agency and all sexualities. Skelly has been compared to some of the world's great storytellers, including Osamu Tezuka, Junko Mizuno, Naoko Takeuchi, Dario Argento, and so many others. Katie is at the heart that beats in the life of comics today. Katie works as Associate Director of Communications for Film Forum. She lives and creates comics in Brooklyn, NY.
Katie, when did that light-bulb moment happen when you knew you wanted to become a comic book creator?
There was not lightning bolt moment for me. I don't remember a time when I didn't think of myself as a comic book creator. I grew up reading comics. I learned how to read by reading comics. My dad worked at his family-owned newsstand and he would bring comics home for me to read. They were always in my life. Unfortunately, the newsstand closed this year.
There's definitely a lot of film influence and also literary influence in your work. Can you talk a little bit about that part of your education as well?
Reading novels was always a big part of my life. One of the big influences on me and my work was Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. There's something about Pynchon's pacing and storytelling generally that's stuck with me. And, there's no doubt that my formal studies in art history inform my work.
Genre clearly plays an important role in the shaping of your comics: Nurse Nurse follows scifi conventions; Operation Margarine follows the road-novel formula; and My Pretty Vampire drops readers into the world of vampires.
I'm drawn to these genres. I like to work in genre most of the time. Their familiarity provides me with the guidelines to create my stories.
You re-inhabit these genres with queer, feminist, and otherworldly storyworld logic—an anything-goes dream logic. When I read your comics I often think: Barbarella, Metamorphosis, Alice in Wonderland. And, yet, they are powerfully feminist and queer.
Honestly, I don't really think about it as re-inhabiting of genres as you put it. I think of it more as bringing my own experiences into the stories; using my experiences and my world to frame the stories. Honestly, I try not to analyze and create at the same time.
Katie, there's some formal training in your background. You studied Art History at Syracuse University (BA). You also took formal drawing classes at Moore College of Art and Design. What might be some of the pro's and con's to formal studies of art history, theory, and practice? KS: I always wanted to work in a museum, so studying art history was great. When it comes to practical training as a comic book artist, I only took 3 art classes at Moore when I was 17-years-old. This is the sum total of formal training in drawing. Sometimes I wish that I'd had more formal training; that I could fall back on this a little bit more. Every single time I go to draw it feels like reinventing the wheel. If I had learned how to do all of that stuff, maybe some things would be a breeze. Maybe the process of creating comics would go faster. Or maybe it would even go slower? Maybe I'd be more of a perfectionist. I think studying art history was great.
It's all worked out in the end. I feel very lucky for that.
