“I am not a Satanist, but I love the devil” an interview with Corinne Halbert

I’ve overheard the reactions comic store customers have when they pick up Corinne Halbert’s work for the first time. My favorite was one twenty-something guy who called his friend over smiling, saying “this shit is blasphemous.” That’s the typical response to picking up her first graphic novel Acid Nun, which begins with a demon consensually eating a woman’s intestines and eyeball, then receiving oral sex from the titular Acid Nun moments later. I think the general public tends to dismiss confrontational art. Instead of engaging with the content, it’s easier to shoo away discomfort by saying the author was just trying to make the audience uncomfortable for shallow reasons, like they just wanted to get a reaction or they’re just an “edgelord”. This attitude can prevent shocking art from getting the attention it deserves, and I think its especially true with the type of comics Corinne has been making for the past decade and a half.  

To better understand Acid Nun and her entire artistic career, I talked with Corinne about the zines she believes are most representative of her art. There is a lot going on with her work both under the surface and directly on the page; it deals with her past grief, toxic relationships, aggressive misogyny, and her personal struggle with mental health. She hopes that by expressing these feelings on the page, she can provide catharsis and hope for anyone struggling with the same issues. 

JIM FALCONE Corinne, please introduce yourself. 

CORINNE HALBERT Hi, my name is Corinne Halbert. I was born in 1981 in Anchorage, AK, and I grew up in suburbs of Massachusetts. And here I am with the wonderful, Jimmy jam.

So let's just start from the beginning. Do you think that you were always a creative kid? Drawing on walls, doodling in class?

Absolutely. I was drawing as soon as I could have crayons in my hands, somewhere around three to four years old and I really, deeply loved it. When I started to get into first, second grade, I was known as one of the “artists” in the class, which was kind of cool because most of them were boys. I was one of the only girls, at least in early school, that was known as someone who could draw.

So you were encouraged a lot at a young age. 

Yes, I was really lucky. I lived with my grandparents and my mom and my brother growing up, and my grandparents were incredibly supportive of any creative endeavor. I went to Catholic school through 5th grade and they had a wonderful art program. So I was able to really foster that from a pretty young age.

Did you gravitate towards comics in your early life, or was that more of a later love?

I would say more of a later love. I did start reading Garfield comics somewhere around seven or eight years old, and I absolutely loved them. I don't know if you ever saw those old…they were landscape size and they had all different colored covers and they went from the really crude early Garfield all the way up, you know? 

Oh yeah, the Three-in-ones.

I'd hide them under my bed cause my grandmother always told me I shouldn't read in the dark- she was right. But, you know, I didn't listen.

So comic strips were more your thing. 

Yes, I really loved all the cats. I was obsessed with the Heathcliff cartoon show. I loved Garfield. We had an author come visit our class at Saint Joseph, my Catholic school, and he talked about his books, and that was really inspirational to me. His character was a cat too, but I don’t remember the name. Ralph maybe? [post-interview we were able to derive with Halbert that the author in questions was Jack Gantos, author of the Rotten Ralph series- ed.]

When I look at your early work, I think its hard to imagine the author of Acid Nun and Hate Baby reading all of the Garfield and Heathcliff. Your stuff feels much more in line with underground and alt comics. 

Yeah, I discovered those old Weirdo Crumb comics sometime in high school. We had a place called Newbury Comics near my house, and that was more CDs, but they also had merch and books and all sorts of different cool stuff. And then I would go into the city with my friends [to] the comic shops in Boston, I found some of the cool underground stuff.

Was Crumb the main guy that got you started on this more hardcore path, or were there other kind of artists that you were discovering alongside him?

There were definitely other artists. I was really into goth and industrial music and that kind of stuff, so anything about vampires or just anything dark. Also in childhood, I was super into Edward Gorey. He was a really big early influence.

Did you go to college for art?

Yeah, I went to Massachusetts College of Art for my undergrad. I was kind of young for my grade. I was still 17 when I was a freshman. The first year was sort of an exploratory year and I actually ended up majoring in film/video, but I was able to take painting and those types of classes as electives. So I got my undergraduate degree in film/video, and then I went on to get my MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and painting and drawing. The whole time, when I was in middle school, high school, I was always drawing, painting. I probably started painting when I was 14. 

So art was always your ideal career path.

The only other occupation I ever wanted to do… I got really into Madeline L’Engle’s books when I was younger and she had this series that was about dolphins. And I also spend a lot of time on the East Coast, near the ocean, and I got really obsessed with animal life of the ocean. So there's a brief period of time I wanted to be a marine biologist, but the only other occupation I ever wanted to be, the consistent one, always was an artist.

So, your grad school stuff: you can see a lot of hints of the kind of stuff that's going to show up in your later work. You have a lot of death, a lot of Christian imagery. But one of the symbols I thought was really interesting was these little chickens with, only one eye. And with your later work, eyes become such a big motif. 

Yes, I was obsessed! I was obsessively drawing those Cyclops birds. I don't know why, but for about like three to four years, you know, for me, drawing is just therapeutic. It just feels really good, and this kind of drawing just straight from the imagination, these silly little characters…I just really loved the feeling of it. And you know, I also drew a lot of men's hats, like sort of the classic old man hats, sometimes with feathers. And the caps. Then tons of those bird people with one eye.

I also notice there's this heart that shows up in your work with a smile on it. There’s this Adventure Time character that looks uncannily similar to it. I know your work comes before it, but…

Oh my God, so funny! Yeah, those little heart guys. Unfortunately, they’re supposed to be about the dark side of love. They're kind of reveling in my suffering.

Yeah, trust me, the Adventure Time character seems like a sadist too. 

Oh, really? Oh my God, that's so funny. I'm not familiar. Oh my God, that's so funny. The collective unconscious. 

Looking through more of your grad school stuff, there’s the “there is no God” page, and there's a cyclops--

No, it says “there is no I in God.”

It's just interesting though, to kind of look at this early stuff. It does feel very straight from you to the page, no editing. It was for a book binding class.

Right, yes. I got to take certain electives in grad school, and I took a fabulous book binding class with this woman. She was awesome. It was really fun. The most high level thing I did was a clamshell box and that was really hard.

Was there anything that you took from that when you started doing your zine work?

I think it just gets into my love of books. I was very lucky to have my grandparents help raise me and my grandfather was huge on education. And I always loved school. I was a good student, for the most part. In high school I had some pretty depressive years, but I wanted to do well and I took it seriously. I just deeply loved books. Like my grandparents always had weird old books that I would always look through, and I wanted to know the full scope of what it takes to make a book.

Yeah, I think its easy to forget that these objects we buy and cherish had to be made. 

Exactly.

I wanna talk about your early zines. I know that you don’t look back at your early Hate Baby zines very fondly. 

It's just one of those things. I don't know if you've ever heard Chris Ware talk about his really early work, but he absolutely despises it. I don't know if I'd go that far, I just feel like it's so unhinged and I know that it makes some people kind of uncomfortable, and that in turn makes me uncomfortable sharing it now.

Let's talk about that, because you do deal with a lot of uncomfortable stuff in these early issues. There's a lot of limbless, headless corpses, a lot of creepy sex. And I think the stark black and white is very confrontational. What kind of made you think about sharing this?

So I read Charles Burns’ Black Hole around 2009, and Hate Baby issue one came out in summer of 2010. I also had somebody gift me Super Fly by Mike Diana and when I read [it] I had this really crazy moment where I was like it “this is beyond Crumb.” Something about it really clicked where it was like you can do whatever you want. And the funny thing is, I didn't think at the time I was trying to be an edge lord, but there is a little bit of an edge lord energy to this when I revisit it. But anyways, the combination of seeing Mike Diana’s work and then Black Hole being my favorite graphic, it’s just…I can't describe the impact that had after I finished reading that book. Not only did I love the story, but the artwork I mean, I had never seen artwork like that in a comic book, and that's how I decided to do Hate Baby in the high contrast, black and white.

Hate Baby #4 has probably is where you show your work a little. The Boiled Angel font, along the Charles Burns homage. When you hear Diana and these edgier alternative artists talk about their work,  they all talk about the Comics Code Authority and how they were denied those EC comics and other horror books. And their work was a reaction to that censorship, like “okay, we're going to make comics for adults and take it a step further.” And it’s like they just went down a list of taboos and put everything they could in there. Would you say it like what kind of context would you say you were working in? 

It's so hard for me to articulate. For me, I feel like it's like almost like stream of consciousness. You know, I don't want to sit here and be like a pity party, but unfortunately for me I've been through a lot of really devastating, horrible things in my life. And so this was an opportunity for me to just, like, splatter the emotions on the page. Just like let it out, you know.

It definitely shows up in the imagery. There’s a lot of sweaty pent up men, there's a lot of gender commentary here where you’ll draw a man finding stuff like mutilated woman very hot. A lot of the grim Reaper having sex with women, that sex and death thing. Would you say that’s cathartic? 

Absolutely. I had a lot of extreme familial deaths when I was a child. You know, my dad died when I was eight, so I lived with my grandparents. My grandparents were like a second set of parents for me, and while we were living together, my grandmother got this degenerative illness that took seven years to kill her. So basically in one of the most formative years of my life, from the time I was about nine years old till I was fifteen, I basically watched one of my favorite people slowly suffer and die and it really fucked me up, so that led to some depression issues which led to some bad choices. Drinking heavily in high school, doing drugs, hanging out with older people, dating abusive boyfriends. You know, I had a great high school boyfriend and I had a boyfriend that was not so great, you know. And so the violence that people can experience throughout the course of their life that they never really talk about, some of that stuff is in there. 

Did you ever share your art with your friends who knew what was going on in your personal life? Or did they just know you as an artist who draws very grim subject matter?  

Of know you as an artist, I don't think I really understood fully everything I had experienced until later, so it was just me. Like I said, the best way I can possibly describe it is just like splattering that emotion and frustration and anger right on the page. It’s more about the art than the writing I would say. And you could probably pick up on that. 

Yeah, there's not much story early on.

My early work I almost look at like art zines that are slowly transitioning into comics.

What was your early distribution like. With all of this…

I love this question. [both laugh] It's so funny because I would go to FedEx Kinko's and I would print them all myself. It's a pretty laborious thing to do since they're 8 1/2 by 11, so I would feed one side and flip that page over to the other side. And so I would do anywhere between 15 and 30 copies at a time, I had…I don't remember, it was 200 or 400 copies, but by the time I got to issue five I had finally been like talking to other artists… and I didn't realize you could let stuff go out of print, so I was reprinting all of them for a long time.

So I don't know exactly the numbers, but let's just say there could be 100 copies of issue #1, maybe 100 copies of issue 2, but it was from going to FedEx Kinko's. And I would just keep reprinting them and then I had them at Quimby’s in Chicago. And then I started doing CAKE and I would sell them at small press shows and that's how I got my start. I worked at the Quimby’s in Chicago for six years.

Do you remember any of the other stuff that was on the shelf along with it? Was it a lot of confrontational stuff at Quimby’s?

Oh yeah, Quimby’s had it all, you know? They even had the old Jim Goad “Answer Me” zines. Stuff like Peter Sotos that would make my stuff look like freaking kindergarten. It was some pretty intense stuff. They very much believe in freedom of speech and expression, that every voice should be heard. I mean, obviously if you get to the point where it's like, something insane that's punching down and hateful, that's a line.

Hate Baby is all about kindness and joy. It's for the lovers! [both laugh].

I mean, hey, Hate Baby’s where I started building up a fan base that’s still with me to this day, some long-time people that have been very good to me, very supportive that have been there the whole time.

So Hate Baby was the beginning of your current fandom.

Yes, it sure won me some enemies too, but that's OK.

What types of fans do you interact with? What’s the typical reception that you get from not just Hate Baby, but your work in general?

There were people that were so into this, it's not even funny. I would have people show up my table freaking out, you know?

Because they loved it?

Yeah. And then I'd have people that come and are confrontational and say this bizarre, “how can you put this stuff out?” kind of stuff. I had this one guy, and I swear to God, I thought he was gonna be really into it. He had a cut off metal shirt, tattoos all over his arms, and he's just looking at it. He looks me in the eye, then he's looking at it, and he goes “Why? Why did you do it?” I didn't know what to say, so I just said, “Because I wanted to.”

I’d imagine you have one of two types of people when you put out confrontational art like that into the world. You get that one person that's like, “I get it, finally somebody gets it.” And you have that other that is going to kind of like give you the side eye and be like “I don't know if I want this, who comes up with this stuff?” Do you get different reaction from people who know you versus people who haven’t met you yet?

I would say so, because you know, I feel like I really try to be a kind and loving person as much as possible. And you know, I'm pretty “Go along, get along.” Sure I have my moments, but you know, it's funny. I know a lot of pretty extreme horror metal type illustrators, and they’re some of the sweetest people in the world. Just because your work is incredibly dark doesn't mean it reflects who you are as a person. And I know that in this day and age that is a difficult concept for some people, unfortunately, but it's good that people can get this stuff out on the page.

Was there any fear that someone would tell you couldn’t put this out into the world? Like a Mike Diana type of trial by fire?

I think the fear more centered around the shame attached from being raised Catholic, and if certain family members saw it, that was always a big deal. My grandfather, who I dearly loved, who was like a second father to me, passed away this past November. He was 98 years old and my mom was always like “he can never know.” So just the fear of my grandfather Googling my name. And then in the past five years, with the way everything's changed…people getting canceled for things, obviously there's just fear of “what if somebody finds some bone to pick with me and they have a vendetta against me.” It's like we live in a day and age where people are rewarded for that.

I'd be surprised to see something like that…I feel like a lot of the subject matter that you go for, although it's dark, I don't think that there's anything that's necessarily vindictive…

No, and I wasn't trying to be hurtful towards anyone in making this work. I'm being honest when I say that, and I have been a victim of sexual violence myself. I've been a victim of physical violence. This is lived experience in these pages and so if somebody wants to come after me about it, I could just be like “hey buddy, you know, we live in a violent world and I have to be able to express myself as an artist. And you don't have to read it.” It's very easy. You just close the pages!

Do you think that would be the difference between someone that might get canceled and someone that might not, having lived experience of “I know what I'm talking about”?

I don't know. I think people are getting canceled more for committing actual acts of violence or sexual predatory nature in the world. These are literally, as R Crumb said, just lines on a page. I have not, I don't have any interactions that are of that nature, you know. But it's possible, to get canceled, I don't know. A question to think about for sure.

Something I wanted to talk about with some of the later comics is the power of images, because I'll lay my cards on the table, I was very uncomfortable reading Hate Baby. What are your thoughts on that kind of the power? Because there has to be something powerful enough that you, as an artist, want to create images.

Part of that is taking power back from other people taking it from you. I have complete control over my artwork. Of the comics and the scenes and the stories that I tell, and that is a really powerful thing.

In 2016 you do a web comic called Honey. Why go from print to a web comic? 

I don't know. I mean it wasn't really, truly a web comic. I just posted it on my Facebook every Friday and then I put it up on my website. You know, it wasn't like Webtoons or any of that stuff, and I did plan to eventually print it into a zine. It was more about the learning experience of making comics on a schedule and having a deadline and having them done every week at the same time. And Honey is sort of about…I don't know. I've always been into dark suburbia, that Lynchian thing of the happy family, but then you look in the window and “what the hell is going on in there? Is that the dad doing something real weird to his family?” It's that sort of creepy. Things aren't really what they appear in a mundane domestic way.

It's like that part in The Shining when you look inside the hotel room and you see that guy getting blown by a bear.

Yes, exactly! And so I wanted it to be funny, I was playing with that. 

There's definitely a tonal shift from your other work. Before, although there's a little bit of dark humor, I think that this is the first one that’s very gag centric. When you were drawing Honey, did it feel like you were activating a different part of your brain to come up with that stuff?

Absolutely. It's just a whole different vibe, and it's lighter, even though it's very dark. I would say it's remarkably lighter than Hate Baby.

There’s also a shift in your drawing style. You get a lot more…were you reading Lynda Barry at that time?

Not at that time, no.

The face looks very similar to her early work. That, like, creepy kind of smile. The side perspective, it's really interesting.

Oh, my God, that's so funny. Full disclosure, you know I am a divorced woman and I'm still friends with my ex-husband. He's a wonderful guy. But the male character is essentially my ex-husband and I am essentially Honey.

So what is the deal with Honey? Is she dead? 

She's a corpse. 

OK, because there are some parts where the corpse will smile and I'd wonder “is she really dead?”

No, she's the corpse. She's the corpse.

If we could backtrack to the shift in aesthetics. Were you reading or being influenced by anything that doesn’t show up in your previous work? Maybe something in the macabre comic strip genre?

Just no, I think I just wanted to get back to a more cartoony style, like those bird people with the one eyes. I think I was trying to become a better cartoonist just by doing this thing on a schedule, having it out every week, doing the four-panel structure, because you know Hate Baby’s real free form. It's almost all splash pages. Now we get here, we actually have panels. So I honestly think I was just trying to learn to be a better cartoonist.

Would you say you succeeded?

I think so. I like Honey. It got into a pretty good anthology, Black Eye.

Yeah, I liked it. I think I started getting into it when you transition from Honey and her husband being the focus to the worms that are inside of Honey. They're little worm versions of Honey and her husband, with the giant boobs.

It's nuts. I had to do that. You know, gotta get a little meta sometimes.

And then after you go to the baby. What was the deal with deciding to shift main characters? Were you trying to keep it fresh?

Yeah, I think this is where my ideas went. And since the baby is me, it's sort of like a fantasy of where I could have gone in childhood.

Where you go in childhood, being friends with the Devil.

Exactly. I did mention I went to Catholic school.

I think that like there's a lot of similarities between Honey and that other zine you published, Lady Like. They’re both about the cult of domesticity, and all those myths and attitudes that go along with it.

I collect vintage women's magazines, I collect old Movie Star Parade magazines, and they all have these insane, real advertisements in them that are so misogynistic and absurd. They’re all about being a good wife, being subservient to your husband, you need to lose weight or you need to gain weight. It's awful! So they're hilarious to me. Just in a sense of how absurd it is. And so I wanted to make a zine that was riffing on that and making fun of it and subverting it to something much darker.

Yeah, it's like, like women drinking bleach or like or pouring bleach down their husband's throats. There's the woman that’s holding the guy by the tie, and it says “show who's really the boss!” There’s a big theme of gender politics in your work. Hate Baby, especially. Obviously you didn't grow up in the 1950s, how much do you think attitudes have changed?

The thing is…I grew up in my grandparent’s house and they never updated the decoration of their home. So I was in a 1960s home for the most formative years of my life. So I have a really big nostalgia for that aesthetic. And having grandparents who really loved each other and were such a beautiful couple, the sort of couple that people probably looked up to in the neighborhood, and then to see what happened to my grandmother and how horrible it was. And there’s also the experiences I've had as a woman growing up, when I did. The term rape culture is a real thing, and when I was in high school, I hate to say it, but it feels like it was normal to anticipate a certain level of terrible behavior from men. And I experienced it first hand. Those 1950’s advertisements take all of the power away from the women, so in Lady Like, I'm trying to give it back to them in a humorous way. I'm not serious about, like, making your husband into a turkey.

You’re acknowledging that misogyny exists, but it doesn't feel as if you're targeting men. It's like feminist rage that takes a shot at misogynistic culture, but not in an “all men are trash” way.

Hey, I love men. I really do. I just don't love anyone who treats people poorly.

So, after Honey and Lady Like you get to Hate Baby issue 666. What do you think about this issue? I feel like this is the beginning of Corinne prime. Like this is kind of where I noticed that the art starts jumping out at me. Your seven deadly sins illustrations. You have like, some of your beginnings of your fascination with nun culture, nunsploitation, nun-core. I didn’t read Hate Baby #5, did you feel like this was a turning point? Or--

I'm really happy with Hate Baby 666. I do think it's a very transitional piece. We still have a lot of splash pages. The whole thing is pretty much splash pages, so you could argue that it's an art zine/comic. But I do think there's more focus. And while it's not like a traditional narrative, there is more narrative in there than some of the earlier issues. And I do think there's a shift in the way I started making the art.

Can you talk about that shift? I notice a lot of ink wash and more of a focus on composition.

Yeah, I think at that point I had been drawing so much for so many years, it was starting to really pay off, just putting in all those hours. And I worked at an art supply store for over 10 years, so I was able to experiment with different kinds of ink, like some of the watercolor effects you get with sumi ink as opposed to India ink.

I think there's hints of this before, but this is issue 666. This is when I noticed more Catholic symbolism. You drew a series of portraits featuring different aspects Of the devil. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Baphomet, Leviathan. What’s your relationship to Satanism? 

It's so funny. The best way I can describe it to people, and I have before, is I am not a Satanist, but I love the devil. I think that Lucifer, the morning star, if you boil it down, symbolizes knowledge. Lucifer, “the light”. And Catholicism and Christianity, they want to take that knowledge and light away from you, which I think is an atrocity. So for me, the devil is a beautiful symbol of the darker parts of ourselves, the parts that we sometimes would put under the shame category. The more we can make peace with those parts of ourselves, I feel the more whole we become. There's also a rebelliousness there. Being raised Catholic, it made me absolutely love the darker side of life. It's a fascination, sort of an obsession. I love medieval depictions of hell demons, the devil. I like metal, I like horror movies. I tend to be attracted to those dark, sometimes taboo subject matter.

When did you start to develop a knowledge about the devil? Was it during Catholic school? Were you hoping the nuns would over your shoulder and see something spooky?

No, because I left Catholic school for public  in 6th grade. I would say more like college years and later. I collect books of all different subject matter and I started collecting morbid anatomy books, books about the Devil, Satan, demons, Hell. I have a whole bunch of stuff in my collection.

I feel like when you meet more trad Catholics and Christians, they have this attitude towards art with the devil like “oh this artist is symbolizing the devil and the devil is evil. So therefore the artist must be evil.” But obviously, like you were saying before, you don't advocate for evil. I don't think anyone advocates for evil.

No, not at all. I believe deeply in being a good person, and I believe that people are inherently good. We make a lot of mistakes, but hopefully we grow and change throughout life.

Would you say it's similar to how in the 1950s kids would kind of dress up like the devil? Is it poking some fun at that kind of thing?

A little bit. It's also rebelling against the hypocrisy of the church. I believe in God in a more abstract way. I believe in the sort of universal connection type of a thing, a source energy. I don't believe in organized religion. I don't begrudge anyone for having their faith either, but the experience as I had grown up with, it’s a crock of shit. How many priests in Massachusetts have gotten in trouble for molesting children? You cannot get more hypocritical than that. It's horrible. John Gagan was, I believe, a Massachusetts priest.

Would you say that's the relationship between Hate Baby, Honey, and Lady Like? Is it all about pointing out hypocrisy in different ways?

Yeah, and societal norms that have needed to be shattered forever. Women still get paid less than men in a lot of positions. And then if you're an even more vulnerable person, you might get paid even less. It's not right! I shouldn't get paid more if I have a penis.

I thought that Cursed Woman was one of your more interesting zines because it’s the beginning of you using more color in your work. In the introduction you talk about how Erotic Euro cinema of the 70s and 80s was a big influence on your work, specifically the filmmaker Jean Rollin. You mentioned before that in undergrad you majored in Film and Television, is there a lot of film influences in your work? Were there any other film makers besides Jean Rollin that you took inspiration from?

Absolutely, in that comment in particular Jess Franco was another big influence. And then in my other zine Demonophobiac I have some actual scenes from the movie “Possession” with Isabel Adjani and Sam Neil. And then in Mutations, all those zines of my paintings, I look at a lot of source imagery of starlets from 1950s, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties. There is a parallel between filmmaking and comics. They’re just different ways to tell your story, but even within the film industry you have storyboards that people do to set up shots for film. I think being a Film Video major helped lend to my aesthetic as a cartoonist because I learned how to make movies frame by frame. You can almost translate that into panels.

You're mentioning a lot of formal elements that connect movies and your comics. Would you say there’s any connection in terms of subject matter? There’s a story in Cursed Woman called Living Dead Girl. Is it a direct adaptation?

Yes, that's based on one of Jean Rollin's movies of the same name.

Yeah, because in the story that comes before, The Vampire Lovers, it's very 1950s horror plot. A couple gets stranded, gets invited into a spooky house by two supernatural strangers, and they get hunted down one by one, etc. The backgrounds in that story are very concrete and evocative, were you using any reference?

Yes, I was using film stills from I don't even know at this point what horror movie. It might have been Haunting of Hell House. It's an amazing movie, I love any haunted house movie. Inside the mansion, the interiors, I'd take screen grabs or pictures with my phone, and I'll use those for background imagery.

Sexuality is a big part of your work, and I notice in the backgrounds there are these medieval knight’s armor holding swords and it reads like a subliminal innuendo. And there's women splayed naked on the paintings hung on the walls.

For me, that's almost like a little humorous joke. Like, "do you notice?"

I didn’t notice this in your work before, but Vampire Lovers is the first time you comment on something non-heterosexual.

Yeah, I think it's probably about me coming to terms with my own sexuality. I consider myself bisexual or pan or whatever. I remember telling my mom this once and she just said “No, you aren't.” Very Irish Catholic, condescending. I love women, I find women incredibly beautiful, I love their bodies. I just love drawing women, and it is interesting, I think up until that point I had drawn mostly or a lot of men. Or maybe not up that point, but there was a long stretch where I just drew and painted way more men, so I wasn't as confident with drawing women. I think by the time I made Cursed Woman, I had done enough sketching, drawing, painting of women's bodies, of myself, whatever, that I felt really confident drawing women.

So you felt like “okay, I can draw women, now I should put them in a story.”

Yeah, I like making my stories focused on women because I just feel like it's important to have those stories.

What would you say is the place of women in horror? There’s the final girl trope, for sure.

Suspiria by Dario Argento is one of my absolute favorite movies. That was a breakout sensation, which was unusual at the time because almost every single character in that movie is a woman, and in the 1970’s a very woman focused movie is going to traditionally do much more poorly at the box office. So he found some recipe to make stories about women, to empower them, but also make a really cool story. And it was a huge success. I don't know. I am a woman, so it's important to me to have that be a focus.

There's also the “bad woman”, Vampira type that’s very sexy and very bad.

Yeah, it's like you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. If you're sexy, people want you, but “oh, she's a slut.” You know? It's like no matter how you play it as a woman, you fall into these stereotypical traps that are suffocating.

You have a lot of women doing very bad things in your comics. You have cannibalism, women biting the necks of their victims. So I find it interesting because, especially in Vampire Lovers, you have both the man and the woman getting eaten.

Yes, equal opportunity. Because, as it should: they're both food.

Aren't we all meat?

I just love a good femme fatale. I really like that archetype. I'm very attracted to it. I find it provocative, and sexy, and I enjoy illustrating it.

Do you have any favorite femme fatales? 

For campy stuff obviously Elvira is hilarious, and Vampira, but I just love all these actresses that were in a lot of Euro horror. Edwidge Fennick, the woman that was in Vampyros Lesbos, what is her name? I'm blanking on her name. Off the top of my head. She died. Soledad Miranda, one of the most stunning women to ever live, and she tragically died right when her career was taking off. She was in a horrible car accident.

Would you say there's more women in these kind of roles in Euro Horror than in American movies?

Absolutely. There definitely was a lot of American Horror that you could point to that also had these types of characters, but Europeans have always been far ahead of America in terms of being comfortable with sex, sexuality, nudity, all that stuff. And so you have so much off the chain, Euro Horror stuff that’s really sexy and fun.

Do you have a lot of European fans, or a global audience? 

You know, it's funny. When I was at MOCCA, I had a large number of people from France and older people that were really wealthy looking that were coming up to my table and just saying the nicest things to me, and I was taken aback to be honest with you. I just didn't anticipate it.

I know, like, Frank Zappa had a much bigger following in Europe than America, even though to me he feels like a Very American Artist.

I shoot myself in the foot because I don't ship internationally. I used to, but it's become such a nightmare at the USPS. I was losing money. It was so stressful, the shipments wouldn't show up sometimes, and then I'm out because I got to send another one.

Tariff forms are killer.

It's pretty bad. You can get my book through Silver Sprocket internationally, but you definitely can't get all my stuff easily.

You can get Acid Nun digitally, but I don't tend to do that. I'll send out copies for review purposes. I do have a Patreon. I'm putting up all my original pages of Scorpio Venus Rising, my newest comic, up on my Patreon, so that's a way you can read it.

Out of all the reading material you gave me, I think Demonophobiac was my personal favorite. It's probably your most personal work. I think your later stuff is very personal too, but it’s in a different way. You have characters like Annie in Acid Nun, and Scorpio Venus Rising is you but in this psychedelic world. But in this one, you are the main character, it takes place in our present reality. Is there a reason you went from having the character go from being Corinne to “basically Corinne?” 

Sorry, this might be a little hard for me to talk about. When I started Demonophobiac, it was 2019, February or March, and I was getting it ready for Cake in June. My stepdad died in April on April 5th, 2019. He was essentially my favorite person I ever had in my life. And I felt very robbed growing up, having my dad die when I was 8 years old, and to have this wonderful man basically be my father, to just out of the blue drop dead, it broke my heart in ways I can't ever express. That wasn't what that comic was going to be at all. I don't even honestly remember what the hell I was thinking, what my plan was. It was called Demonophobiac from the beginning, but it shifted from being whatever story I had initially intended to being about my stepfather dying.

So making a surrogate self-insert was more of a protective move?

I think it helps me tell the story better because having a bit of distance helps me not be too in it. 

I know we've also talked about like kind of the difference between totally autobiographical, and having it be a true story with fictionalized elements. That’s a decision, to distance yourself from autobio comics. Is that genre something you aren’t interested in?

I don't want to be an asshole, but I think there's some incredible autobio work out there, and I also think there's a lot of dreadfully boring autobio work that's not very good. I don't have to name names, I wouldn't. You can have a boring life and make fantastic autobio work. And you can have a really interesting life and make horrible autobio. It's every which way but loose. I personally like fiction because to me it's like a little bit more of a creative. It's transcending beyond telling your personal story and creating characters and myths and worlds. It's something that speaks more to me. I'm not trying to throw shade at anyone, I just don't want to be an autobio cartoonist.

There was a time in alternative comics where a lot of cartoonists were afraid to embrace genre. I don't know if you’ve noticed a difference, you've obviously been around longer than I have, but I feel like I've noticed that more alternative comics are more comfortable with being considered horror or sci-fi. 

Yeah, absolutely. There's autobio threads throughout all of my work, but I like the filter of a fictionalized world. To me that's just a more interesting story for my own personal work. I’m making stuff I would want to read.

The other thing I'm interested in is this thematic thread about being afraid that the stuff that you watch, like Exorcist 3 and Possession, if the things in those movies could happen to you. What if you as a damaged person can hurt those around them? There is a metaphorical aspect of that that I think that you were kind of grappling with. Do you consider yourself superstitious in those kind of ways?

I would say so. I am very into spiritual stuff, like I read tarot, so I'm really into the occult and all esoteric knowledge. I was raised Catholic. I mean, I am superstitious and I have an incredibly vivid imagination, so things can become frightening for me, and I can bring myself back down to reality, but if I let it get out of control, I can put myself in a really bad fear state.

Has there ever been anything in your work that's scared you? Something you drew and got spooked by?

Yeah, I've definitely made one thing, probably made many things, that afterwards I was like, “what in the fuck?” And just ripped it up.

I’ve heard some interesting stories about other cartoonists doing that. I know that R Crumb had that story where the Devil Woman has her head pushed in that he was going to throw away until like Aline Kominsky was like “No, no, go with it.”

Oh my God, thank God for her!

And like same thing with Lynda Barry, kind of. When she first read Crumb, she was so horrified by what she read that she dug a hole in her backyard and buried the comic because it was too much.

Oh my God, that's like what people do with porn!

I think she compares it to porn.

Well, it's a shame thing, it is for me at least. It’s like, “what would people think of me?”

It's interesting because you put a lot of darkness into your comics, so it’s surprising me, or I guess its not, that there would be some stuff that you would draw that are limits even for you. I guess everyone has limits.

There are limits that even I always keep in mind. Like if I make myself that uncomfortable, I know I've crossed some kind of line, that I should not put this out into the world. 

Let's move on to your technicolor zines: Mutations 1, 2 and 3. They were published like during COVID, were these paintings you were making in your spare time, or did you plan to collect them into a zine?

When the pandemic started, you know as much as I do. It was a horrible situation for the world, collective trauma, I did find myself with extra time because I got laid off from Quimby's. I ended up being able to go back and even work in the store when it was still closed and we were doing web orders, but there was this chunk of time that I didn't have a day job. And you know, you got the government stipend, so that's when I started this series of paintings called Mutations. It was really just layering a lot of beautiful women's faces over each other. I've had this obsession with vampires since childhood/teenage years, and I love color. And I wanted to have fun playing with color and paint and drawing with India ink. It was such a pleasurable experience for me. By the end of it, over the course of maybe three to four years, I probably made 100 paintings or something. I sold a very large amount of them, which is pretty great. I basically made Mutations for people that can't afford an original painting. I wanted to give them an opportunity to have a collection of these works. So as I painted the series, I selected key images that I thought were really strong and I made art zines out of them.

So for 1, 2 and 3, they have different thematic threads that tie them together. Like the second one has like a lot of abstract, geometric paintings. I think a couple of pages in that issue show up in your Freakbok contribution. Did you purposefully try exploring different styles or themes?

Not really. It was more a natural organic process. At the time I was doing Issue Two, I don't know if you noticed at the end, but I'm holding some psychedelic mushrooms. It’s funny that the Freakbok paintings showed up in Mutations #2 because that was an attempt at a healing expression about my father's suicide. I was on sort of a healing journey. 2020 is around the time I started diligently working on myself, seeking therapy, trying to improve some stuff with my mental health that had gotten pretty bad with my stepfather's death. A myriad of other things were going on, so that one is more psychedelic and abstract, because I was self-medicating with mushrooms on a not frequent basis, but here and there.

I do want to get back to drugs when we start talking about Acid Nun, but one of the other obvious elements of these zines is color. When showed my girlfriend Acid Nun, the first thing she noticed immediately was that you have a real good sense of color. How does working with color change your style, your composition? How do you decide on colors?

It's almost like being a musician or something. I operate a lot on instinct what color feels good at that moment and what colors I think are going to play well with each other. I had done so many of these paintings by the time I started on Acid Nun. It’s like I was boning up my color skills so I was able to add more energy and dynamic imagery to Acid Nun. You know, when I sent Acid Nun to Avi, my publisher, the first thing I sent him was a black and white version of issue one. And he was like, “this is about psychedelic stuff and drugs. You got to do it in color.” And I was like, “oh my God, why did I not think of that?” So originally I was going to do it in black and white, and then once I started coloring it I got an iPad. All the inking is hand drawn pencils with ink on top and scans, but the coloring is digital for Acid Nun, for the most part. There are some hand water-colored pages, but I used a hybrid of Procreate and Photoshop to color Acid Nun. I had been painting so much, I think it naturally, fluidly translated to Acid Nun.

I think it’s interesting that you have a nun as one of your go-to characters, and then the colors seem like stained glass. Was that on purpose?

No, but I adore stained glass. I love churches. I wasn't even thinking about that connection, but I definitely thought of that later too.

I think the color makes your work more inviting. The solid black and white is very confrontational. But the other thing I'm kind of interested in is the difference in cost between a black and white versus color zine. I notice the price goes up from Hate Baby to Mutations.

I've always tried to make my published works affordable. It's always going to reflect how much the printing cost is. For example, Acid Nun 3 is longer, and that's why it was $12.00. I really wanted it to be 10, but the cost of printing paper keeps skyrocketing. And I only have so much money as an independent art artist who works their ass off for beans! So I can't do an 1000 copy print run. I do like four hundred, two hundred copies. And then I have to break down the price for if I sell this to a shop, because when you sell it directly you get the best cut. But if I sell it to a shop, I’m getting 50%. So I have to factor that into the price.

Another thing I noticed in Mutations is this cross fade, cubist, kind of overlay montage style you develop in these paintings. Was this a style you were experimenting with before, or were you already doing this kind of work?

I think it started showing up in Mutations, but when I was a film student, I did do some super imposition, and I always found that really fascinating in editing, layering images over images. So it it definitely connected back to that many, many years before.

I feel like it's a style that can't translate into black and white. The colors really bring it together. The other thing is eyes. I started noticing in a lot of these paintings that there are two things that define the different women’s faces overlayed on each other: it's the eyes and the mouths. But the big difference is that there's a ton more eyes that show up than mouths, more than 2:1. Are eyes something that’s symbolic for you?

I think it's symbolic, and I think it's referencing psychic energy.

You can even tell when there's a vestigial left eye or right eye no matter where it’s positioned on the face. And then there's the third eye that doesn’t look anything like the left or right. Can you tell me more about that symbolism? 

I believe energy is one of the most powerful commodities on this Earth, and I really do believe we all have some level of ability of having psychic connection with other people. Now I don't mean this in a literal way, it's just something I believe. I read tarot, I believe there's life after death. It’s like shining a light into that world. Eyes are the windows into the soul. 

The other big thing I noticed were mouths. There are two types of mouth that you'll do: the regular vampire with the two canines as fangs, and then there are mouths were all the teeth are fangs. Where does that come?

For me, the two fangs is a vampire and the whole mouth of fangs is a demon. I know that might seem silly to some people. 

What would you say to that? Obviously there’s vampires, like those goofy Dracula types, versus demons. 

It's so funny because my obsession with vampires was always the blood sucking type, but in my more recent experience living on this earth, I feel like I was psychically signaling to myself about psychic vampires and energy vampires. It's symbolic, you know?

The Colin Robinsons of the world.

Exactly. And they're out there and they will feed on every last morsel of your light and energy if you let them. And I feel like I have given a lot of energy to some psychic vampires, sadly.

Let’s get more into the psychic world you create and the demon woman that shows up in Acid Nun. Acid Nun started off as a zine that you eventually sent to Silver Sprocket.

Yes. Once I finished the first issue in it's black and white form, I sent it out to five or six publishers. I got rejected from a few of them, I never heard back from one of them, and then Avi [Ehrlich] was down. I was interested in working with all people that it made sense for the work. I wasn't sending it to every publisher from here to kingdom come. It was publishers I liked that I thought the work could possibly fall in line with what they're doing. Hollow Press was one of them, Floating World. And small press publishers have a schedule. They only have so much room in their docket for everything, so I was fully prepared to get rejected from all of them, and was delighted when Avi was really into it. Avi and I had already known each other from seeing each other at Cake and various small press expos. They’re just such a kickass person and back in the day I'd give them the old Hate Baby sticker packs, so we already had a relationship before that. It's not like I was just sending it to someone who doesn't know me. So they were really into it and that's how it all started. And then we agreed that I would self-publish just like I'm doing with Scorpio Venus Rising right now. I would publish the individual comics as I go in the zine. It’s a great way to make a little revenue as you're going, and to get readers interested in the work. Then once the whole thing was complete they would publish the collected work.

I know that at MOCCA Fest there was a panel where Caroline Cash and Kevin Huizenga gave those same reasons why they still do single issues: the revenue stream. Was this the first zine you were expected to be published into a collection?

I sure was hoping because I wanted to make it a book length. Demonophobiac was 56 pages, but you have a lot of splash pages. This is my first, true book length project. It's 128 pages. 

This goes back to you wanting to make books as a kid.

Exactly. I always wanted to make a book. And you know what I made? A book. There you go. It's on your shelf.

It's on my shelf. With your other zines, were you ever going to publishers asking if they could print or distribute your stuff, or was it DIY in the beginning on principle?

You know, I'd try and not beat myself up about my past self, but…I don't know if you're super familiar with impostor syndrome and self-sabotage, it was so bad I didn't even know I had it. Which is pretty fucked up. So I had a lot of self-confidence issues. When I've told this to people, they're surprised just because I'm projecting people think I'm confident, which is great, I am confident, but I had that “carrot always dangling in front of you” syndrome of “I'm not there yet.” I have incredibly high standards and honestly, I'm so happy my first book is Acid Nun because I wouldn't want it to be my older work. I really wanted to be at a place where I could be confident and feeling good about that being my first book.

What pushed you over the edge? What made you decide you were ready?

As soon as I started making it, I just knew. I felt so in my element, it was coming so naturally, it just all clicked.

So in this project you develop an Acid Nun persona. We were talking beforehand with Hate Baby how there was already this rebellious Catholicness. This may be a simple question, but why the nun?

I went to Catholic school, and this is so funny, when I went to TCAF a couple of years ago, I was staying with my one of my relatives, Leslie. She's a wonderful person. I adore her. And she started talking about my grandmother's sister. And she was, I can't remember, my grandmother's sister or her mother's sister. Anyway, we had a nun in the family and she showed me this picture I had wiped from my memory. But as soon as I saw it, I remembered it. It is the most fucking haunting picture. She was very tall, so she's actually taller than the men she's standing with. It’s one of those old black and white photos where everyone looks like they've been through it, so there's these really old men that look like they've lived the hardest life you've ever seen, this towering nun in this exact outfit with no smile, it’s just the most haunting picture and it triggered everything. I was like, “holy shit.” I had seen that when I was a kid and I totally forgot about it. It must have burned into my psyche. You know what the most messed up thing is? I think her name is Eleanor, which is the name of the demon in Acid Nun. It was not conscious.

And you figured that out after Acid Nun was made?

Yeah, isn't that interesting?

It is, an act of the unconscious. There is an element of consciousness raising stuff that shows up in Acid Nun, and we talked about your experiments with psychedelics with Mutations 2. How much were those a part of the process in creating Acid Nun?

This is more reflecting back upon my behavior as a younger person when I was in high school, late teens. Well into my 20s I experimented with a lot of drugs. I tripped on acid, I tripped on mushrooms, I did other things. I tripped quite a few times. I don’t know exactly how many. It's definitely in the upper, not like every day or anything. It would be on the weekend here and there with my friends. And then I was telling you I was on that self healing journey. Now when I did the mushrooms, I had read that you can reset your depression brain with mushrooms, so I was using it more in the spiritual/trying to reset my depression brain kind of way. Not in a “hey, let's go camping in the woods,” way. So I didn't work on any of the imagery or writing while tripping. I worked on some paintings when I was tripping, but this is more a reflection of lived experience of tripping a lot. And I definitely had some bad trips.

Acid Nun in itself about a bad trip. And I think one of the strong things about the comic is that there are a lot of these powerful images. You know, you're a Catholic talking to a Catholic. We talked about nuns for a little bit, and in the first few pages of the book you show a nun eating ass, [both laugh] for lack of a better term. Do you of still get some psychic charge when it comes to nuns and like sexual imagery?

Yes, I find it very, very hot. Nuns having sex with each other, priests and nuns.

The tabooness.

The whole thing. The aesthetic, you know, in a church, please! Yes!

Has it become banal seeing sexuality and religion combined, or does it still shocks you?

I guess it depends on who you ask. It doesn't shock me. I'm sure it would shock someone else. Nunsploitation is one of my favorite genres of film. I love nunsploitation. School of the Holy Beast, The Devils by Ken Russell is my favorite movie of all time. There's so many. There is Dark Waters, Black Narcissus if you count it. It’s not really nunsploitation and more classy, bizarre nun story. 

I feel like you’re comfortable when it comes to religious symbolism throughout the whole thing. And you mentioned you're a very spiritual person. Let’s talk about some of the symbolism in general. You have four main characters. Annie, the titular Acid Nun, Baphomet, the devil, Eleanor, the demon, and Noah the bad vibe. Baphomet is the only character taken straight from religion. Can you tell me the symbolic implications behind Baphomet?

As soon as I discovered Baphomet I immediately had this deep connection and was fascinated and obsessed almost instantly. I believe the guy’s name who did that classic drawing you'll always see is Eliphas Levi and he was around, forgive me if this information is wrong, the 1700s. He was in those, what were they called? Where they would be a brotherhood and get together. And there's rumors that there were these black masses. Ben Franklin was in one of those secret society type groups. And they were often interested in educating themselves on things beyond the norm like the occult, esoteric knowledge. There are some people that argue that the Baphomet symbol comes way before that from the Knights Templar, and it's fuzzy where the actual origin is. But the Sabbatic Goat God with huge tits and a metallic cock with two snakes that are also penises…I mean, come on, how could you not love that?

Well, of course! [both laugh] I know that there's like some symbolism there, it's the staff of Hermes, right? 

That would be funny if it's the staff of Hermes because I have character named Hermes in my new zine. See you learn something new every day! 

Baphomet also has the candle on the head, the fingers pointing up and down.

Yes, as above, so below coagulates all the alchemy.

And there's the like difference between the pentagram with the star pointing upwards versus downwards, is that correct?

Yeah.

So besides Baphomet, another character is Eleanor. We were talking about how she's specifically a demon woman, not a vampire. No, she's not a vampire. She’s an original character, does she serve some symbolic purpose? I feel like she's a figure that shows up in a lot of your work, this demon woman that eats other women.

She's kind of a sexual fantasy. I'm talking about my past experiences, maybe she’s a symbol of needs being unmet, so creating this character that can fulfill your needs.

It's the more sexual aspect of you?

Yeah, and also a loving aspect because she loves Annie and she wants to care for Annie. She may be a flake and takes a little while to get it together, but she does love Annie.

So with Baphomet and Eleanor, they get reunited, and the first thing they do is fuck. [both laugh] even though Annie’s in trouble.

They're demons, they're just falling into the nature of themselves.

It's interesting because the literal demons in the story are juxtaposed with Noah, who is this shadow creature with a cute little top hat. 

Noah is the part of my brain that tells myself awful things about myself, manifested into a shadow man form.

It's an inner demon. Can you talk about the design choices you had for Noah?

There's a documentary about night terrors, what the hell is it called? It's a great documentary and they have all these animations and illustrated scenes of the experiences people are describing, these experiences of feeling like they're suffocating in bed and can't move, and then they'll see in the corner of their room a nightmare.

Like those sleep paralysis demons.

Yes, so they're having a nightmare, but it's so visceral and real. It's like the creature is in the room. So I was trying to evoke that vibe.

For me, the most interesting part is that he has a southern drawl. And I was curious about that.

I wanted him to be creepy and for some reason, to me, having that Southern drawl made him creepier.

Was it a conscious decision to make him look vaguely like a cross?

That was not intentional, but I thought that later too. And that's the religious oppression showing up. But I can't escape, it's in my DNA. You can't get the Catholic out of your blood.

There's a lot of blaspheming in Acid Nun, but there's also still some reverence towards Christianity. When Annie becomes self-realized, she takes on the form of Jesus with the burning heart and the robes.

I'm just trying to reference spirituality and becoming a better person and loving yourself in a visual way, so using symbology that people are incredibly familiar with is for me, more effectively going to tell the story.

Are there still those Catholic images that stick with you?

Oh my God, yes. If you come to my house I have figures and paintings and stuff everywhere.

It's interesting that instead of completely rejecting Catholicism, there's still something syncretic with your religion.

There's a fondness for it, for sure. I just don't like the greed and hypocrisy and the negative impact Christianity has had on many people and countries throughout the world and throughout history. But I deeply love the symbology, the imagery, the churches, the stained glass, and if you look at some of the messages, some of them are good. You can get some good stuff out of there. And I believe in being a good person and trying to be a good person.

I feel like there are some people who have a hard time trying to wrap their head around the idea that you can have this positive depiction of Baphomet, this symbol of evil for some, in a story that’s also advocating to be a good person. There’s another major symbol that I noticed that I want to touch on. Later in the story and when Annie discovers her inner child in her psychological trip, and the thing that comes to protect her is a fox.

That's my stepfather. His name was Finbar and I changed it to Phineas because that was my nickname for him. So he's like my guardian angel, and foxes have been one of my favorite animals since I was four years old. I saw Disney's Robin Hood when I was very young and was deeply obsessed with it and would watch it hundreds of times. I have always just loved red foxes. They're one of my favorite animals, so it would make sense that I would make my guardian Angel a beloved animal and my beloved stepfather who is actually dead.

The other big symbol I just mentioned was also the inner child. When I think of that concept I'm thinking of therapy-talk. You were talking about how the 2020’s was when you started actively think about mental health. Can you have talk about how getting mental-health help affected your creative process? Do you think there’s a before and after?

Absolutely. The thing about shame, mental health, all that stuff, often it's literally right in front of your nose and you can't see it. And there's a process of introspection, delving deep within yourself and letting stuff soften and come to the surface, and it's a very difficult process. I deeply believe that a lot of people's issues stem from their childhoods no matter how good a job your parents tried to do, something happened that made you feel unsafe. Whatever everyone's experience is will be different and there's a scale and there's people that experience horrific trauma on a daily basis in childhood. There's sexual abuse, there's all sorts of horrible things. I had a lot of death and things that were so heavy and beyond my control that I needed help with. But at that time, people didn't think you went to therapy unless you were off your rocker, or whatever you want to call it. I don't know, people just didn't have the understanding of mental health that they have now. Maybe that's not the best term to use, “off your rocker”, but what I'm saying is they weren't going to send their kid to a therapist unless they're physically harming other children or something.  So I needed help and I didn't get it, and I'm not begrudging my family for that, it's just the truth.

Acid Nun is the beginning of you writing stories more about your personal journey. It’s more cathartic than your previous works.

Yes, the whole point of Acid Nun was hopefully to heal myself, send some messages out there to people who need to feel like they're not alone and they're suffering, and to make some very interesting art and a great story. That was my mission.

Acid Nun started off as zines and that was collected into a hardcover book. What was the public reception to the project? How does it do at Silver Sprocket sales wise?

I feel great about it. I'm sure there're other people selling more books, doing bigger sales, but it's done well. It's made them money at this point, which is great. People message me and share how much this story meant to them. Honestly, I need to be more focused on money just so that I can live in this world, but I don't really. That's not why I make art. I make art because I love it and I want to share it with the world. I feel like I accomplished my mission, and I think it was very well received. You mentioned earlier, I made myself a little bit of a spokes model. I would dress up as the Acid Nun. You got to sell your comic, so there's a little bit of a playful, fun theatrical thing for me. It was incredibly cathartic for me. I find it to be a big success and I think it's one of my favorite things I've done artistically, and hopefully once I finish Scorpio Venus Rising, I will feel the same way.

We both work together at Forbidden Planet. Whenever I see someone's picking up Acid Nun, and I mention that you, the creator, works here, it does kind of get a reaction. I was going through the Forbidden Planet Instagram and there's this one reel where Matt D introduces himself and then call yourself the Acid Nun. I feel like despite your aversion towards autobiography, you put a lot of yourself into the work.

Absolutely yes, but I like putting that filter of fiction on top of it. To me, that's just more interesting for my own work. 

Acid Nun comes out in 2022, you moved from Chicago to New York in 2023. Do you notice any difference between those two city’s comic scenes?

I love New York. I freaking love New York.

Do you have the t-shirt?

 I actually have one! My aunt gave me a t-shirt that I think just says “New York,” but it's almost like and “I love New York.” Chicago was very good to me for a really long time. I got a divorce. I left Chicago. It was incredibly difficult and it had a lot of pain involved that I sort of kept to myself because I learned quickly that no one wants to know about that stuff. It's hard to not have a salty taste in your mouth about a place when you have that kind of experience. I have some great friends that live there. There are places that I deeply love. I love Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago. I love the Music Box in Chicago. I love Sideshow Gallery in Chicago. And like I said, there are some fabulous people back there. But I don't plan on going there anytime soon and that is just a personal thing. I'm trying to move on with my life, so it was a really hard transition, but I did it. I made it. I'm in New York. I wish my ex-husband all the success, love, joy, happiness in his life. He's a really wonderful person. Our relationship just didn't work out, so here I am. I live in Jersey City. It's the only place I could find that I could afford where I could have my own studio because I didn't want to live with roommates. I'm a 42 year old woman. I need my own place. Also I work on art, so I need to be able to go into that room and not have to worry about anyone else's schedules or whatever. So it's been a great start. I was in MOCCA, which was an incredible fest. I had so much fun. I made great money, got to hang out with Sprocket and my friends. They put me on a panel. You know, I did a morbid anatomy show. I feel like New York has embraced me with loving arms.

Do you notice a difference culture showing up in Chicago versus New York?

Chicago changed so much in those last few years before I left. A lot of the core people in the scene had gotten a little bit older or left. The younger cartoonists all moved to Philadelphia. I don't know, it really changed.

Was it COVID you think?

Yeah, and it's not. They're not all from Chicago. There's just a cluster of really incredible talented opportunists that live in Philadelphia, all near each other. There's amazing cartoonists in Chicago, don't get me wrong, it's just the people that I knew, and were my friends, a lot of them had already left. So Chicago's got a great scene. Philly's got a great scene. New York has a great scene. I think the thing about New York is there's just so much here, and there's so many people. It's just mind blowing. The museums, the spaces, it's just endless. And people are so focused and driven towards whatever dream they're trying to pursue. It's hard not to have it be infectious.

We’re talking three different cities miles apart, do you think that we're past the idea of scenes? With the digital world and technology and everything. Your publisher is in San Francisco, and as far as I know it doesn't sound like you've ever lived in San Francisco.  In the 70s everyone flocked over to wherever the publishers were. Do you think that like distance is still a thing anymore?

With the digital age, you can live anywhere. I think there still are scenes, but they're not enormous. Especially when we're talking about independent comics, alternative comics, we're not talking about the big two. The funny thing is now, some of these people work in both worlds. It's like everything has changed. I mean, it's a great big world of opportunity out there. It's up to us to go freaking grab the torch, baby.

Speaking of opportunity, you were featured in Katie Skelly's Viscere #1: Body Horror anthology with your story Total Vore. Reading that anthology was surprising, I was under the impression that there aren't a lot of women that are doing work like yours, this very confrontational, horror based work. Right now, are there other women apart from the Viscere-contributors that you feel are doing work on similar wavelength to yours? Any Corinne-core, Corinne-coded artists out there?

I'm sure they're out there. I've seen some female artists do some very sexual stuff, I've seen some female artists do some very horror stuff. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I think I do something a little bit left to center to what most other people do, so I don't really know who to say. Not to say they aren’t out there. 

The only comparable thing I can think of is maybe Dame Darcy, but even then--

Yeah, but she doesn't really go that far.

So let's talk about Total Vore. In Vampire Lovers, Living Dead Girl and even your earlier stuff in Hate Baby with faces and eyes on a platter, you really love cannibalism. 

You got me.

There was concert I went to a long time ago where this singer Miss Cherry Delight introduced her song like, “have you ever been so pent up and horny that you can't even fuck, you have to consume them.” She introduced that for a song about cannibalism and sex. What’s your connection between those two? 

It's a euphemism for sex for sure. Especially with Total Vore. I have struggled with my mental health, with anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and I went through a lot of experiences over the past few years. Thankfully, I'm feeling a lot better now, but starting about six months ago, maybe a little before, things were improving pretty tremendously. But everything I had to do to get out of Chicago was not easy. And when I realized I had to get a divorce, at some point, I was never making plans, but the thought crossed my mind many times that I could just kill myself. And then I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. And so the vore fantasy combines that intrigue, the sexual taboo of somebody's doing it for you. They're eating you, and then you're dead! [both laugh] And then your suffering is over.

So it’s about giving control to somebody else. Is it connected to that Hellraiser, BDSM, freedom through slavery kind of thing?

A little bit, but it’s what you just said. It strikes me because this whole journey is about me trying to take my power back, and I have made a lot of progress, but even there I'm putting it in someone. In Acid Nun, I'm putting it in someone else's hands. That's why in Scorpio Venus Rising, it's going to be in her hands.

Let's go ahead and talk about Scorpio Venus Rising. This is your this is your newest work,  what was the impetus behind making it? I noticed instead of the cover being black with a yellow border like in Acid Nun, this new zine is yellow with a black border. What’s the connection between these two comics?

To me it is the next logical progression, both in terms of mental health, self-introspection, healing, and spirituality.

There’s definitely a shift in tone. I think Acid Nun is a heavy trip. Scorpio Venus Rising so far is pretty tame in terms of subject matter. Did you get burned out? 

Not burnt out. I decided that A.) I wanted to challenge myself and B.) I don't want to die in poverty. I would like to make something that could reach a wider audience, and the other nice thing about that is it could be more applicable for older teens and up. People in their teenage years often struggle with mental health issues more extremely because of all the things happening to their bodies, the hormonal changes. It can be a very difficult time for some people. So this work will not have any drugs, any hardcore sex, there might be some intimacy and romance, but it will not be like it is Acid Nun. I'm trying to keep this, for lack of a better term, a little bit clean.

My God Corinne, you've gone commercial! [laughs]

No, I wouldn't say that. I really hope it's a story that helps certain people, and that's the point of it, is to help me. I'm trying to help myself, to help others potentially, and I also want this to be fun! But the other thing I have to say, caveat or whatever it is, it will get very weird and it will be very dark. So I can't really escape that. That's just my voice.

I don't think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it's interesting to see how flexible you can be with your art. We were talking about Honey having a more cartoony role, and in Acid Nun there’s that fight scene at the end that’s shown as a giant cloud of fists and heads, which is a cartoon visual shorthand. In this one, the vampires, are less sexy. They're have the capes, the fangs, it's cute!

Well it makes sense that it would have a lighter tone because I'm feeling better about existing on this planet.

Do you think you're saving darker stuff for anthologies? Are you still going to create work like that?

That’s why it's fun when I do agree to do an anthology and I know it's more an adult thing, because kids won’t be picking it up. I can do 4 to 8 pages and let loose, and then I can just keep doing this.

At MOCCA Fest I was running your table for a few minutes, and I was surprised that there were kids that would come over along to your table with their parents and the parents would be fine with it.

Oh yeah, I have experienced that a lot. I even had the cutest little girl in Chicago, from the time when she was pretty young, five or six, all the way up until 10 or 12. She was obsessed with my work, she'd always buy my stickers and the prints. You know, she’s not buying the explicit stuff. And these are cool parents that let their kids at my table, sometimes they're like a librarian or whatever. But this one little girl, I remember I was tabling at an event and I saw her sitting like at a little table, and she kept looking over at me. I was like, “what's going on,” and she just kept looking over at me, and it was going on for a while. She came over, she had drawn me this picture where she copied all my women. And she gave me the sweetest note, it said something like “never stop drawing.” And I cried, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

I think there are aspects of your work that all ages can enjoy. Obviously you aren't showing the kids the explicit stuff.

Exactly. Never, no. I think they're drawn to the color and the lines.

I like seeing your more lighthearted stuff like Scorpio Venus Rising, does that feel like something a kid could probably pick up?

Exactly. That's what I'm trying to do.

I don't know if you're familiar with art spiegelman's Raw Junior line of graphic novels. These alternative cartoonists like Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez, Tony Millionaire, all these cartoonists that were a part of that generation of “comics aren’t for kids anymore” cartoonists, they all made some kids books because of because art asked them to do a kids thing for me.

That's so cool! Ivan Brunetti from Schizo did one I think. I love Ivan, by the way. I know him from Chicago and he is the sweetest man. Actually I have an original. It's pencils, so not an inked piece, but it's stunning.

Do you think there are some people that might read this and then look into your other, darker work?

I mean, Johnny Ryan did a kids show for Nickelodeon.

Johnny Ryan did gag cartoons for Nickelodeon Magazine.

Yeah, we're all multifaceted individuals.

Let's talk about this first issue. Scorpio Venus Rising feels much more allegorical than Acid Nun, but instead of using Christian metaphors and symbolism, you've gone full hog into tarot and astrology. We were talking about tarot and astrology before, but how did you start learning about the esoteric? 

I started teaching myself how to read tarot during the pandemic by watching a lot of tarot readers on YouTube, reading some books. I worked hard to memorize all the cards and all the meanings, it took quite a few months to do that. Once I did that I started doing readings for myself for a while, and then I did readings at Sideshow Gallery in Chicago, and then I got what I like to call “Tarot Boot Camp” by doing Riot Fest with my buddy Anna Elliott. She's an incredible woman, she's one of the owners of Sideshow Gallery in Chicago and an amazing tarot reader herself. I believe, as long as she still goes by it, her name was “The Demon Cleaner.” So she rocks, love her. I've known her for almost 20 years. She really helped me out a lot with my tarot journey. And then I've done some parties, but I haven't read professionally out here. If the opportunity arises, I would. So I have experience professionally reading and I just love it. I’m really the type of person that my thirst for learning new things never really stops. And the nice thing about tarot and astrology, especially astrology, is it’s such a vast universe of information. You could study astrology for 5 years and only scrape the surface. It’s bottomless, there's so much to know. And the beautiful thing is astrology translates to tarot incredibly well, because all the cards are connected to the different signs and elements, and so the more you know about astrology, it can help you be a better terror reader. So I'm trying to constantly learn as much as I can.

I know that reading Promethea for the first time taught me that connection. So in your comic, your character is named Venus, I assume she’s a Scorpio, can you tell me what Scorpio Venus rising means in astrology?

So it doesn't actually make sense, because it would be Scorpio Rising or Scorpio Venus. But her name is Venus, she is a Scorpio, and it's about her rising to her own power. So it's a bit of a play on words.

You’re also starting to draw your own tarot deck in this issue. 

Yeah, for the book I'm going to draw all of the Major Arcana. And some other cards have already worked their way in there, like the 10 of swords is in there, so I'm sure other cards will work their way in. But in terms of full card imagery, I plan to do the Major Arcana, which is 22 cards because it starts at 0 and goes to the world, which is 21.

You insert yourself as the magician in the first one, what are you basing these cards off of? Is it from a specific tarot deck?

Yes, the Rider Waits Smith.

Can you talk about some of the changes in symbolism that have any meaning? 

Sure, so for example in the Fool card, they're holding a stick with a bindle, which is a very light handkerchief, and it's to symbolize that this person is going on a journey, and they're acting on blind faith because you can't see what's over this cliff. Is it a little step down or is it a leap into God knows what? The belief that something will catch you on your way down and that they're leaving on this journey with barely any of their possessions because they’re at the start of a new path. I replaced the dog, which is the companion on the traditional card, with the Scorpion. So I'm playing with little stuff like that. And if you look at the High Priestess Card, the whole deal with the High Priestess is she contains beautiful, esoteric knowledge, secrets. And in the traditional card the curtain behind her  is all the way down and you can't see what's behind because it's Pisces energy, it's Neptunian, it's foggy. You can't see clearly, so I'm making a pretty bold statement by pulling that cloth up so you can see the Oasis behind.

The little scorpion is behind there too.

And there's a scorpion and my little Peeper.

I like little Peeper and the little scorpion.

Thank you! They're my friends.

So we also have Uriel who looks like a cherub

Yeah, like a head with wings. Uriel is an Angel and a scribe of God. So there's a little bit of that in there, but instead of a God figure, it’s like the eye of the universe.

I’m also noticing a stylistic shift in this project. I’m noticing Acid Nun had a blurry stained glass palette for the background behind the panels, in the gutters, but it’s been replaced by patches of greens and yellows. Is there any reason for this? Have started coloring differently?

Yes, so the neon green is symbolic of the toxicity of the psychic vampires. And like the yellow is like energy, like psychic light. Also, can you tell what book I ripped that panel structure off from?

I can't, but please tell.

If I'm remembering correctly, it's the Alan Moore Swamp thing, so working at Forbidden Planet, I'm looking at incredible works and working that in there.

That's what I've noticed. With Acid Nun and your previous work, some pages are very traditional comic pages, 1-4 rectangular panels. But you'll also have these other ones with composition that feel closer to your paintings. In Scorpio Venus Rising, I’m seeing a lot more traditional comic book influences. Do you think it kind of comes from working with more traditional comic books in your day job?

Like I said earlier, I'm always trying to learn more, and I've always felt that my weakest link in my comics knowledge is the big two, the more mainstream superhero comics. Obviously Alan Moore is in a whole different freaking universe, but I am trying to absorb and learn as much as I can. And I think I had shitty preconceived notions about things, so I’m being as open minded as I can be about more mainstream comics. There is some impeccable writing, some glorious works of art. So just trying to learn more about those things is only going to benefit my work.

Any new favorites you can think of off top of your head, new people that you were introduced to recently? You mentioned Swamp Thing and Alan Moore, are you trying to emulate any others?

I'm not really trying to emulate anybody with the style, but definitely the panel structures. Rafael Grandpa, who did the Gargoyle of Gotham, that's a new person making new work that I'm like, holy shit. But I think Alan Moore is a big one. I read Miracleman thanks to you. I haven't read a ton of it, but Jim Starlin, the Warlock book I bought, that artwork freaking melts my skull. Some of the Spiderman comics, certain artists like the old, cool stuff is incredible and I never would have thought that before working here. I'm super into Ditko right now. I got the Doctor Strange stuff. His Doctor Strange stuff is so fucking cool.

That new Love and Rockets sketchbook has some really cool art of Gilbert Hernandez trying to do Ditko. You figure there's a lot of  psychedelic imagery you’re tapping into, would you say that there is a connection between that older 1960s psychedelic superhero work and your current work?

Absolutely. I've always been obsessed with vintage comics, I was more in the underground and stuff. And now I'm veering towards the more mainstream stuff. Its so cool that we have those little collections that are more affordable of all that stuff, because you can just pick up this little book and it's just a treasure trove of the coolest panel structures, the artwork going on in those panels. And it literally brings me so much joy. Like I looked at that Steve Ditko Doctor Strange book I bought so many times and  every time I was like, holy shit, the way he draws this woman's hair, how Strange has a third eye beaming light out, it's so cool.

All right, last question: what's in store for Venus? What are we expecting from the New Scorpio Venus Rising?

I have the whole second issue broken into multiple segments with a sequence called Teenage Wasteland where we go back to an earlier time, and her meeting [with] what we'll call her first psychic vampire. It's more of another shadowy entity host type situation. We have her in a diabolical laboratory. We have a little back story on what the actual interaction with the psychic vampire Dracula Guys was, and a shift into getting out of the desert, and then she gets to a destination which I won't disclose because I want to, you know, keep some stuff under my hat. I'm really excited. This issue is over the top in terms of the visuals and the drawings.