Secret Origin of a Fangirl

Unlikely Fangirl ... or Not?

By Michele Witchipoo
June 15, 2009

I never considered myself a fangirl or a geek. Yet I knew from an early age I had a love for comics.

You can thank my mother for my introduction to the sequential art world. Born in the Bronx, New York City, I was a quiet only child. I mostly hung out with my mother as dad did his fatherly duty of going to work. As far as I can remember, she would purchase various Harvey comic titles of the early 1970s. I loved Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Witch, and many others. (My mom still has the Casper bedsheets from when I was a wee child.) I recall some Fantastic Four, but my mother decided to censor the Marvel stuff when she discovered Silver Surfer had given me nightmares.

Later on, I progressed to the world of Archie. I loved seeing what outfits Betty and Veronica would wear, but never understood why they fought over Archie. Never understood what those two girls saw in Archie. If anything, I preferred Jughead. The attitude that the nonconformist Jughead possessed won me out over the unattainable Archie's confusion.

I juggled reading Archie with the comic strips appearing in the daily papers. I taught myself how to draw by imitating Charles Schultz's characters. My favorites were Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Everyone could relate to Charlie Brown's lack of self-confidence, which was counter-balanced by the whimsical world of Snoopy. I can attribute the natural dialogue exchanged between all of the Peanuts characters as a definite influence towards my own work in later years. My mother was also quite annoyed by my wasting endless amounts of good writing paper trying to emulate Schultz's drawing style.

Of course, there were the awkward pre-teen years. How many of us would like to forget those "wonderful" years? I was no exception, so I continued being a loner with few friends. At this point, I was already weaned off the Archie stuff for quite time, but still read Peanuts and other newspaper funnies. I had also discovered British sci-fi thanks to Doctor Who.

I had discovered something else, however — music. At first, it was the radio-friendly commercial fare, but when Culture Club hit these American shores, it was over. I was completely enamored with the androgynous beauty of Boy George. It didn't halt my love of sequential art, but my attention was held elsewhere. I do remember the newspaper strip Brenda Starr, Reporter having a story about a band resembling Culture Club. The guest character that reflected the real life Boy George was Girl Brenda, or Boy Brenda, or something along those lines. I remember cutting these strips out and placing them into my Culture Club scrapbook.

My mother disapproved of Boy George, but she was not aware of what was to come. Disgusted with my local neighborhood peers, I decided to try out for one of NYC's magnet talent schools. I was accepted into an art high school in the borough of Manhattan. It was during my Freshman year of high school that I had discovered my all time favorite band. It was another UK unit calling itself Siouxsie and the Banshees. I dropped everything that had to do with the Boy, and went straight for the dark allure of Ms. Sioux. Through new friends, I had discovered something else: horror films. This was during the 1980s, so the arrival of cable and VCRs didn't help quench this thirst. Yet despite weekly trips to Forbidden Planet located in the Greenwich Village, I had forgotten all about comics. My attention was more focused on 80s Goth, Punk, and New Wave. That was until my late teens arrived.

One day I was loitering around Forbidden Planet, when someone showed me an early issue of Love and Rockets. Two brothers from California, who called themselves Los Bros Hernandez, created it. Jamie Hernandez based his sequential world around Maggie and Hopey, two punk girls and their world in their local neighborhood of Hoppers. Beto Hernandez focused his stories on the fictional foreign town of Palomar. I was hooked.

Thus began my forte into alternative comics of the early 1990s. This renewed interest also introduced me to other titles like Tank Girl, Hate, Omaha the Cat Dancer, Joe Matt's Peepshow, and countless others. Oh yeah, there was also Sandman, Watchmen, and 2000AD, but I preferred the word from the Underground. The ironic thing was, even though I had gone to school for art, I never thought I was good enough to put out my own comics. Thinking to myself, "let the professionals handle this," I was content to just simply be a distant fan.

This continued for a while. Then, thanks to real life, my interest in comics waned again. I continued to buy some comics here and there until 2000. I'm not certain how this came about, but I thought I would actually attempt making my own comics. It was pretty odd too, considering that the environment I had been in was not exactly comic friendly. I came up with little characters here and there, but nothing stuck.

In 2003, around springtime, I created as a personal joke some kind of angry rabbit. I was more or less goofing on the Easter Bunny. I did one-offs here and there, until one night when I was at a gathering at some local downtown bar. I had doodled my angry rabbit on a bar napkin. Someone was looking over my shoulder, commenting that he would be a good cartoon character. In 2004, I tried my hand at self-publishing and I thrust Psycho Bunny Issue One into the unsuspecting world. Later on that year, I compiled sketches of women, putting out another title, Babalon Babes. Three issues later, Babalon Babes continues to be a unique sketchbook of sorts, mixing erotic and esoteric symbolism featuring a variety of women in all shapes and sizes.

In May 2004, I debuted Psycho Bunny at a small convention in Hawthorne, New Jersey. I was nervous and excited, and the results of that con being pleasant. Slowly I followed with The Big Apple Comic Con a few times, the MoCCA Art Fest, and selling my comics at a friend's nightclub parties. The monthly nightclub parties soon turned weekly, which was at the same time I discovered promotion through the Internet. In 2008, the Comics Artists Guild, otherwise known as CAG, nominated me as Best Cartoonist.

I've said this before, but what I like most from doing comic is observing how certain characters can affect readers. To me, that is part of the beauty of storytelling in general, and comics in particular.

I'm still a comic book fan. My all-time favorite remains Love and Rockets, along with other titles like Strangers in Paradise, and checking out other friends' comic work. In addition to producing self-published titles, I've done a little background work for television, DJ'd a little bit, and tried my hand at bass. However, nothing comes close to my heart than the wonderful world of comics, and for that, I'm grateful.