Wayward SistersA Comics Anthology of Monstrous Women
Kickstarter anthologies have become an important -- and fun -- way for female cartoonists to get their work out in the world. This spring, Wayward Sisters: An Anthology of Monstrous Women will haunt bookstores with 224 pages of beautiful and fascinating comics about female monsters, by female writers and artists. Anthology editor Allison O'Toole and contributors Emmanuelle Chateauneuf, Janice Liu, and Cassandra Khaw kindly took time out to answer Sequential Tart's questions about the anthology and their contributions to it. Allison O'Toole |
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Allison O'Toole: I grew up loving monsters, and I was frustrated that women in monster stories were mostly victims, love interests, or sexy monster hunters. If they were monsters, they were mostly sexy witches or vampires (and of course, non-binary monsters were next to non-existent). I wanted to read more stories about monsters who weren't male by default.
Monsters are ripe with opportunity for metaphor; they can represent everything that society deems as taboo or abnormal, so I think that monster stories present an opportunity for creators to explore parts of themselves that they feel are rejected by larger society.
ST: How did you recruit contributors?
AO: We put out an open call! We had about a month wherein people could submit stories and art portfolios, and I went around the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last year with cards advertising that we were accepting pitches.
ST: What would you say was your proudest moment as the anthologizer of Wayward Sisters?
AO: Probably seeing the proof for the first time. Seeing all the stories together in print was so gratifying, and there's something special about holding it in my hands. All of our contributors worked so hard to tell some incredible stories, and I couldn't be happier with the book we made together.
ST: What was the first monster to hold your attention?
AO: I always have to go back to the whole cast of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I saw that movie when I was around three years old, and I was transfixed. It was unlike the other kids' entertainment I was familiar with, and I adored the music. I've loved spooky stories ever since!
ST: Have you written or drawn monster stories before the one that appears in Wayward Sisters?
AO: I'd written a bit of horror before; both of my stories in volumes of the Toronto Comics Anthology are horror-flavoured. Both stories were more expressly about the human characters though, so putting the monsters front and centre in this one was exciting.
ST: What's the origin of this story, and how did your collaboration come about?
AO: The collaboration came about because we both love Humphrey Bogart! I'd had the idea to mix monsters into a convoluted noir story, inspired primarily by The Big Sleep and In a Lonely Place. Emmanuelle and I were working together on Captain Canuck, and I saw on Instagram that she was watching The Maltese Falcon. With her heavily-detailed line work, I knew she'd be fantastic for a black and white story, so I reached out and the rest is history!
ST: How did you determine the style of artwork? It has a documentary feel, with strong lines and a lot of great crosshatching. You also use just one colour--red--strategically: it really pops against the black and white.
AO: Isn't Emmanuelle amazing? She can speak better to this, but her work always has incredible detail, and I know she really ramped that up for this story, inspired by horror greats like Bernie Wrightson.
ST: Where else can readers check out your work?
AO: You can find me on Twitter and Instagram as @AllisonMOToole. The anthology is on both as @WSAnthology, and you can find it on Facebook and Tumblr at WaywardSistersAnthology as well as at WaywardSistersAnthology.Com.
Emmanuelle Chateauneuf
"Tinseltown" co-creator
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Emmanuelle Chateauneuf: If I'm going to be honest, I grew up in a Catholic household, so Satan was the first monster that really and truly captured me. The idea of a shapeless, formless, boundless evil as vast and as all-encompassing as that, really blew my mind as a kid ... freaked me right out, too, in the best way. Had me instantly obsessed. If I could compare that to a more modern version of that classical kind of monster, though, hands down the winner would be Dracula. They have the same idea going for them in that they both represent something negative in our existence that sucks the life, light, and goodness right out of us!
ST: Have you written or drawn monster stories before the one that appears in Wayward Sisters?
EC: Ah, goodness me .... I have a long and embarrassing past writing vampire fanfiction online during the emo / gothic revival counterculture back in 2006-2011. It was that, and apocalyptic zombie pieces based on Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (gotta love those teen years). I was obsessed with the metaphorical side of horror after I watched a documentary on TV explaining it all ... wrote some A+ garbage that very seriously PAINS me to read today! I mean, I really can't complain as it was those horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE stories that taught me how to script-write! But jeeze .... The early 2000s were a dark, emotional, romantic, passionate time for sure.
ST: What's the origin of this story and how did your collaboration come about?
EC: I'm not sure what Allison's version of this story is, but I remember our collab being spawned out of a intense mutual love for Humphrey Bogart! At the time we had already been working together for a few months on Captain Canuck, and of course got to talking. It turned out that we both were gothic literature fans and also had a thing for noir, black and white movies, and well, everything Bogart. One day she just messaged me and said something along the lines of, "Let's make a lady-monster Bogart noir comic!" I couldn't say no.
ST: How did you determine the style of artwork? It has a documentary feel, with strong lines and a lot of great crosshatching. You also use just one colour--red--strategically: it really pops against the black and white.
EC: I tend to draw one way for all of my work, so I wish I could say more thought went into this besides excitement at a new challenge ... but I like to shoot from the hip! Allison suggested the red, I'm pretty sure, to help add a little pop here and there to the storytelling. And I went ahead and used a more North American comics stylization for the faces to help give it a more distinctive old Hollywood feel... But yeah, besides that, I just kind of did my own thing, tossed ideas back and forth with her and Margot [Blankier], our editor, and tried to push myself.
ST: Where else can readers check out your work?
EC: You can check out my website, www.thebatmanni.com, and my prolific IG account, which I never stop posting on, @batmanni!
Janice Liu
"The Wife's Shadow" creator
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Janice Liu: I've always found yokai / yaoguai fascinating. There's something about fox spirits and like, literal objects like skeletons and musical instruments having spirits and taking human form, that I find delightfully weird.
ST: Have you written or drawn monster stories before the one that appears in Wayward Sisters?
JL: The story of mine that's in Wayward Sisters is more serious than the other comics I've done. Before that, I'd made a short story about a harpy-like bird girl that was published in an Asian-American zine called A Side of Rice and then reprinted in Augur magazine. That one's geared more towards kids and younger readers, and in that story, the "defying categorization" part of being a monster is used to explore unbelonging. You can read it on my website! I want to do more with the characters from that short, so I'm working on a longer thing with a few chapters based on that.
ST: I loved the classical style and colour palette of "The Wife's Shadow". Is the story rooted in Chinese lore?
JL: Thank you so much! The bat monster herself isn't based on any particular creature from Chinese lore, but I definitely did a lot of research on Chinese supernatural tales in the brainstorming stage. The bat also has a specific symbolism in Chinese history that's relevant to the way I'm using the metaphor of monstrosity. Bats are actually a positive symbol of happiness and good fortune in Chinese art. In my story, Xiao Yan turning into the bat monster is a moment where she finds joy and freedom.
ST: It looks like it was done with watercolours on textured paper. Can you talk about why you chose this technique or look for this story?
JL: The artwork for this story is actually 100% digital! To get this watercolour effect, I used a combination of Paint Tool SAI and a tool called Expresii, which simulates the look of traditional Chinese painting. The program ended up crashing on me several times -- I'm still trying to figure out how to use it, but it's so worth it for the effects you can achieve. Most of my digital work tries to emulate natural media in some way, but for this comic I was definitely going for the look of Chinese ink washes and swooping brushstrokes on textured paper. I wanted this story to be really illustrative, and for the artwork to be very atmospheric and sensory to fit with the surreal feeling I was trying to create.
ST: Where else can readers check out your work?
JL: You can find my portfolio and more of my comics at janiceliu.com, or you can follow me on tumblr or twitter @flutterdoodle!
Cassandra Khaw
"Bad Hair Day" co-creator
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Cassandra Khaw: Oh. Man. Let's see. Probably the nekomata. I was a kid back then, and I was delighted by the idea of necromancy-happy kittens, who were sneaky yet incredibly dangerous. (My fascination with dark things began young.)
ST: Have you written or drawn monster stories before the one that appears in Wayward Sisters?
CK: Yes! I suspect there are monsters in everything I've written. Some variety of them, at least, whether genuine monsters or human horrors.
ST: Hair seems like a trivial thing, but it's not. In the comic, it seems to represent Soo Ying's social anxiety. On the other hand, her colleague covers her hair with a hijab. Can you talk about why you chose this contrast, and how it's expressed in the artwork?
CK: There's a little bit of me in Soo Ying. I hide behind my hair a lot. It's in my face, over my eyes; I like hiding behind a curtain of them. Buried under your hat and your hair, it's easy to think of yourself as invisible, unworthy, unimportant. Having said that, there was no desire to create a contrast there -- I'd really just wanted queer girls of color to be falling in crush and asking each other out and being cute at each other.
ST: Where else can readers check out your work?
CK: Lord. Many places. I've novellas out with The Book Smugglers, Abaddon Books, Tor.com. You can find my short fiction everywhere on the Internet too: Lightspeed, Nightmare, Clarkesworld, Tor.com.
Wayward Sisters anthology — Official Website
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