[dramatic march music] [dramatic march music continues] [dramatic march music continues] [dramatic march music continues] - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is one of my favorite people in comics, Monica Gallagher.

Monica, welcome back to "Comic Culture."

- Thanks for having me.

- Now, it's been a little while since you were last on the show.

I think when we last spoke, you were just getting started with "Assassin Roommates," which is one of my favorite series.

We could talk a little bit today about one of your more recent works, which is "Shadow of a Gun."

Now, your other work has been a little bit more lighthearted, even though there are dramatic elements and adventure elements in "Assassin Roommates," and you are a little bit more light in your tone than you are in "Shadow of a Gun."

So how is it, as a cartoonist, that you are able to shift gears and get into a more grounded reality, but also one that's a little bit more heavier in tone?

- Yeah, it's interesting, especially when I collaborate with other people, then I really have to step up my game, 'cause when I write and draw my own stuff, then I just let myself get away with anything.

Like, you never have to draw a crowd, you never have to draw a city, like everything's fine.

But when I partnered with my friend Tom, he had this whole story that he's been wanting to do for 10 years and asked if I would like to draw it.

And I was like, "Sure," and I didn't think it would really, I didn't think it would would happen.

[laughs] And then it did, and suddenly I had to draw guns, and cars, and Philadelphia, and everything.

So it was a challenge and it was definitely hard, but I felt like it really made me improve.

So it was an interesting experiment in can I do this kind of tone, and I don't know, I mean that's up to the readers to decide if it works with it or if my goofiness still comes out.

- Well, I mean, one of the things that I think is one of your signatures is you, you have very interesting knuckles when you draw, you have sort of this curlicue.

And I notice it is in a few pages in "Shadow of a Gun," and it doesn't detract from the seriousness.

It's just sort of this quirk, this personality that comes through in your style.

So as you are reading this script, this very serious story, how are you sort of adapting it in a way that is true to you, but also true to the experiences of your collaborator?

- That's interesting to think about.

I guess, I mean, it's always gonna be a combination, but when I did the first character sketches, and these were real people that my friend knows, so it was really important to, even though they were, my style's gonna emerge like a monster no matter what, but at least if I start trying to make them all look very different and kind of how they look in real life, then I think that that helps.

But yeah, it's hard.

I mean, I don't think a lot of us can control our style all the time.

I did try to tone down the cartoony-er aspects, especially like facial structures, and gestures, and everything.

But yeah, I don't know, it's hard to control sometimes.

- The one thing that I did notice was missing was there were no sound effects, like, "Team high five."

- Right, I'm very guilty of, like rustling fabric, I'll say, "Rustle," like I'll just, my sound effect is the word itself, which I don't think is proper comic book terminology.

- But again, I mean, that's what makes it so much fun, is that you have this unique voice.

And it's interesting too because your earlier work, "Bonnie and Collide, Nine to Five," which I know is still ongoing, that's a black and white, a newspaper strip homage, and then "Assassin Roommates" was in color, but as I recall, that was done pen and ink on board.

And it seems like now maybe you're working on a digital platform, so I'm wondering how that sort of evolution occurred.

- Yeah, I've been working on digitally exclusively for, I think five years now, or maybe four years.

2020 was such a, the last four years have been a blur.

I think it's been four years, and I was just playing around with it, with Procreate, because I used to bring, you know, I had like 11 by 14 bristle board that I would scan.

And so even when I traveled, I would bring my scanner, and it was such a pain.

But yeah, I just started playing around with Procreate, and then eventually got comfortable enough to where I do all of my stuff on it now.

Even though I miss, I'll do commissions at shows, and now it's terrifying to go from digital to back to hand.

It's just, oh no, don't screw up, don't screw up.

[laughs] - But you know, it's funny because when you are working on a board with a pen, there's no undo.

I mean, you can get an eraser, but once you start putting ink down, that's pretty much it.

So how do you resist the temptation, in Procreate, to not constantly undo but work so that you're happy with the page, and get it done 'cause you've got that deadline?

- I'm not a perfectionist, so I'm kind of used to just like meeting the deadline.

So at a certain point, you just kind of like give up, not give up, but you just let it go and you.

And then when you look back at it later, you'll have a totally different viewpoint of what you just drew.

So yeah, I'm not too bothered by that.

And I think, I'm worried that I'll get lazy with like resizing 'cause you can resize all the time and do stuff like that.

So if I'm drawing by hand, I worry that I'll lose the ability to see what size it should be, [laughs] 'cause I'm so used to that crutch.

- Now Monica, it's funny that you say you don't wanna get lazy because I think you are one of the hardest working people in comics, especially when it comes to connecting with fans.

And if I'm not mistaken, you are one of the founders of Be More into Comics.

- Yeah, I created Be More into Comics, yeah.

We did that for a number of years.

- And then you moved to Austin, and I was talking to Drew Edwards last year about a convention, and he mentioned you.

He's like, "Oh yeah, Monica was there."

And I just think it's interesting.

So as you go from Baltimore to Texas, how do you sort of get your way into the comic community there so that way you've got that support, and you can make those connections, and you can find those voices that help you be a better creator?

- That's a good question.

I think it is difficult sometimes, but luckily I'd been going to Staple for a long time.

I'd been going, and that was the comic convention here in Austin that was every March.

And so I think I'd been maybe four or five times before we moved here, so I knew that.

But we moved right before the pandemic.

So that, really, I still haven't kind of recovered, like community-wise with that.

But I have been lucky enough to do a few shows, and meeting Drew, 'cause he's kind of like the ambassador here, like he knows everybody and goes to all the shows, so that was really helpful.

But no, I'm still working on kind of creating some kind of regular comics community meetup that we can do, or I can find.

'Cause I've asked people here, I've asked some of the local creators and they said there isn't one yet.

So I was gonna say, otherwise I could just creep on the ones they have here, but it doesn't seem like they have a very consistent kind of like gathering yet.

But yeah, I'm excited to kind of discover that, and see what I can arrange, if I can help or something.

- You would think that Austin, Texas, known for being weird, would've had one of those comic book meetup type of situations.

But if anyone's going to be able to bring it together, I think that would be you, because again, it's tough finding people who are into making comics who aren't working for the big two or big three, I suppose, and are looking to do these smaller comics that are maybe humorous, or maybe biographical, or maybe both.

So as you are connecting with different creators, whether it's at a convention closer to home, or a convention in another state, how do you sort of make that introduction so that maybe in the future, they can collaborate with you on something, whether it's setting up a small con near them or vice versa?

- I think, I mean, conventions are the most valuable thing to me, or even doing signings at a comic shop that you've never been to in a new town, because the people who work in comic shops really actually care about comics and the community.

It's kind of like a nice community center.

I've noticed that over the years, that that's become more and more the case.

So they host a lot of games, they do a lot of community-oriented stuff to bring people in, all around this outer like hug of comics.

But I do think conventions are still the best way to meet people, fellow creators, editors.

It's the best way to find work, but it's also the best way to, like your table neighbors will be like new comics, people you've never met before.

So that's a great way to establish community.

And then if you go to those same shows repeatedly, you see the same people, and then you'll notice each other at other shows, and it's just a really organic way to build community.

And I think we're finally starting to see that again.

It was really hard with COVID and we really lost a lot of that sense of community.

So I think now it's finally coming back.

- This past year, while our studio was undergoing renovations, we attended a lot of conventions to get our shows out.

So we went to Baltimore last year.

I know that for an independent creator, it's tough to go to all the conventions.

So how do you sort of pick the convention to go to that maybe you haven't been to before or that you've got that great relationship with somebody who you know is gonna be there?

How do you sort of budget your time and your money to get the most impact out of the conventions you can go to?

- It's difficult.

There are certain conventions that I know I'll get into, and so that's easy.

But then there are other ones that, it's a crapshoot every year.

So this year I applied to, I don't know how many I applied to, maybe like 10 conventions, and five of 'em, which I usually go to, rejected me.

It's kind of scattershot, like you just, you kind of apply for everything, and then when it rolls around, you decide if you do have the budget, or based on past metrics at that show, if you think you'll do well enough to justify it.

Like I have, I've been to Thought Bubble several times, and that's coming up in November, and now I have to cancel it 'cause I can't afford it.

But I applied months ago and I got in, but now it's like, ugh, that's probably, it's not a good time to go to Europe.

I can't just do that right now.

But yeah, I would say my strategy is just apply to everything, and then once you get in, you can decide whether or not you could actually do it.

- I guess at a convention too, you've got a lot of things that you need to consider.

I mean, obviously there's transportation to get there.

If you need to book a hotel, obviously, that's gonna be something else.

I know a lot of creators will crash on somebody's couch or something like that.

So as an indie creator, and again, you're basically, whatever you bring in is what you can afford to spend.

So when you're looking at conventions, again, you're talking about Thought Bubble in Europe as one that you can't go to, and the metrics, did you ever think that you were going to be, as an artist, having to be this business-oriented to make that you can do the marketing but also keep the lights on at home?

- Yeah, I had a day job for so long that I didn't even think about it.

I just went to every show I could, and I could afford it because I had a day job.

I didn't really, yeah, I figured, very naively, that if I ever did go full-time freelance, I would, well if I was able to be full-time freelance, that means that I'm able to go to whatever shows I want, or there's a publisher backing me, or something like that.

And it's really not that cut and dry.

It's constantly like, you don't know what to expect, you're just always just riding the wave and seeing what.

Like next year I could have a completely different schedule of events than I do this year.

You just have no idea.

It's kind of exciting, but it's also very terrifying.

- Now, the last time we spoke, you were doing "Assassin Roommates," which was on WEBTOON, and then I think that year you appeared at Heroes Con, and you were sponsored, I think, by WEBTOON as well.

- Yeah.

- But now you're back to sort of working independently and you are, I guess, between crowdfunding and Patreon, you're sort of trying to find that audience to be able to pursue the comics that you wanna make, the comics that they enjoy making.

So as somebody who wants to be creative, how do you sort of market to the people that are out there that like your work, and the people who haven't been introduced it yet, so that way they will become part of this collaboration with you, so that you can continue to provide the content that they love?

- It's a struggle.

I don't know.

There are a lot of other comics creators that do it very well that I've tried to emulate.

But I think the best thing you can do is to put out work and put out quality work, and then just shout it from the rooftops.

And when people reply to you, realize that you're having a conversation with people who are reading your stuff.

It's always like an engagement.

It's not, I'm making whatever I want, and then if you don't like it, go away, it's not.

And it's not, I'm not targeting any particular audience, it's just putting things out there that genuinely interests me, and then finding those people who wanna read it.

But it's difficult, especially now, it's become so spread out that a lot of creators are, we don't even know if anyone's seeing our stuff anymore because of all the algorithm stuff.

So it has become very difficult to kind of create any kind of consistent audience and hope that they stick around with you.

'Cause I'll have people who go away for years and then they're like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about you."

So it's just, I don't know.

[laughs] - It's interesting because the era of crowdfunding is one where you can communicate directly with the audience.

And it seemed like that was great because you didn't have to go through the editors or the big publishers to connect.

But now there's these electronic gatekeepers, folks like Facebook and Google, who are going to target what people search for or what they engage with before they are going to prioritize just having a stream where you come up automatically.

So it's gotta be frustrating, as a creator, to be working that hard, and having to kind of fight uphill battle.

I was gonna say upstream, but that'd be kinda mixing my directions, and my metaphors, and my terrains.

So how do you sort of maybe trick it up so that way you're able to get past those barriers?

- I don't feel like I've figured that out yet, really.

A lot of it is just hitting different, like different sections.

So it's different social media platforms, of course, obviously, but also going to different shows, or calling, like ugh, the most terrifying thing, which is calling comic bookshops and arranging with them to do a signing, stuff like that.

So it's kind of, yeah, just trying to hit as many as you can.

And then, I don't know.

I don't know the answer, I haven't figured it out.

I think one of the best things that has happened for creators is Patreon because people can dip in and out, and we have a list of all the people who've ever been there.

So we can directly contact them at any point if we wanna say like, "Oh, I have a new book coming out.

You were a fan in the past," whatever.

But at least that's not gonna be filtered out by anything.

We can actually talk to them directly, which is nice.

But yeah, I don't know.

It's an uphill, up the river struggle.

[Monica and Terence laugh] - Well thank you for torturing the metaphor with me.

So one thing I do wanna say is, comics have changed quite a bit since when I started reading them.

There's a lot less focus on the super heroics that were so prevalent in the '80s and '90s when I started reading.

You are a master at the romance comic, but a particular style of romance comic, either comedy romance, or I guess it would be supernatural, because there are a lot of werewolves in "Bonnie and Collide."

And then you also have action-adventure romance with "Assassin Roommates" with, again, the comedic elements.

So as you are writing, how are you sort of tapping into the different little pools of, I guess, rom-com but also into the action-adventure and into the supernatural to kind of come up with that pastiche, that blend that works for you?

- The funny thing about "Bonnie" was that I had started, that was for the Baltimore City paper I was, they were asking for new cartoonists, so I was like, "Oh, I wanna do a comic about a roller girl."

And I think it was the second or third strip, there was a werewolf in it, [laughs] and so it just kinda happened.

And people over the years, I had a guy come up to me at a convention a couple months ago, and he was like, you know, "I started reading Bonnie 'cause it was about roller derby, and now I guess it's about werewolves," and he just accepted it, which I thought was funny.

But with "Assassin Roommate," I had an idea about assassins and then WEBTOON approached me, and they wanted only romance, so I was like, "Oh, I'll just make the assassins make out with each other."

It was fine, but it, I wasn't, I hadn't considered myself a romance comics person.

There was always romance in all of my stories, whether it was like "Gods and Undergods," which was super old.

But yeah, I never considered that a feature.

And then once WEBTOON hired me, I was like, "Oh, I can lean into this."

And it's kind of fun to explore that like back and forth with all the other stuff going on, and it kind of made me take it more seriously and explore that, which is fun.

- The one thing about "Assassin Roommate" is that this should be a series on a streaming service.

This is, every show that is popular now, this comic seems to have the right elements for it.

It's got the adventure, it's got the romance, it's got this very clever long-form narrative that's going on.

As you are working on a strip like that, are you ever attempted to maybe just, I'm gonna start writing up a script and see if I can pitch it to one of the studios, and give up as the comic creator and go in as the show runner?

- I mean, I wish.

And it's been, there's been interest over the years, but it's always, so far my experience with, like any comic that you make now with a publisher, they want you to sign an option agreement.

They're assuming that it's gonna, or they want that option no matter what, which is, so comics have become this springboard to TV shows and movies, which is interesting.

I kind of, it's always gonna be its own thing, like you can't replace one with the other.

But I, yeah, I would love to, I mean, be part of like, I think all of my work is very influenced by cinematic stuff that I grew up with.

So when I do comics, they're kind of just a storyboard already, like I'm thinking of it in that term.

Yeah, I mean, I wish it would be, but things keep coming up and then going away.

- I would have to say that, having read your work and your various projects, one of the things that I'm struck with is you've got a unique sense of humor.

You're able to work in jokes that will work for, they can be girly, they can be the sophomoric jock type humor.

Obviously there's a lot of fun with your sound effects, again, the, "Team high five," and, "Punch."

So as you are approaching a scene, are you, is this just the natural sense of humor that you have, or are you kind of like, "Oh, you know what, this would work better if I kind of leaned into a John Cusack film from 1987?

And this would work better if I went into like 'Charmed'?"

- Oh wow.

No, that's a really high compliment.

I've never considered that my sense of humor was in any way like hitting multiple levels with people.

Because I know there are comedians like Tina Fey, like one of her writing styles is, you can tell she's doing highbrow, lowbrow, slapstick, she mixes it up so that everybody finds something funny.

But no, I've never considered it, I think it's just, and I worry sometimes that I am just regurgitating the same jokes or the same language, and you always fear, as any kind of writer of characters, that they all sound like you.

You wanna make sure that they sound individual, and that's always a fear is that they all, they're all making the same like mean girl joke.

It's not appropriate for that character.

So yeah, I hope that they have separated in that way, but yeah, I can't, I don't know where it comes from.

I think it's just things I pick up and things that make me laugh, so hopefully other people do.

I did use some very '90s terminology in WEBTOON, and all the teens reading it were like, "What does that mean?"

So [laughs] my outdated.

- We have just a couple of minutes left in our conversation.

I think it's interesting, you talk about the teens who are reading your story on WEBTOON, how are they communicating with you?

Is it like an email that WEBTOON is sending to you, or is it comments on a post, a message board or something?

- Oh yeah, it was back when it was on their site, every time it was uploaded, the comments, I would read the comments, and it was fantastic 'cause I'd never gotten that kind of feedback before, but there were like 10 year olds and 12 year olds, so it was really funny.

- I will point out, I'm still very pleased that at one point you referenced my name as one of the characters in IT, so it made my year.

I think I put it on my annual evaluation.

- Yeah, you're like spelled the right way.

[laughs] - If the folks at home wanted to learn more about you and your work, where can they find you on the web?

- Well don't Google me 'cause you'll bring up "Shameless," I get that all the time.

But my website's eatyourlipstick.com.

I'm on Instagram, @monicacomics.

Those are probably the best places.

WEBTOON still has one of my comics up, called "Boo, It's Sex."

Otherwise everything's on my personal site, so.

- Well Monica, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule today to talk with me.

It's been a blast catching up.

- Thank you.

This is awesome.

- And I'd like to thank you at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

[dramatic march music] [dramatic march music continues] [dramatic march music continues] - [Announcer] Here's a flashback to Monica Gallagher's first appearance on "Comic Culture," from Heroes Con 2016.

- Yeah, I've been doing comics for a while now, and I mainly do auto bio, but I also have a web comic about roller derby, and I have two books that I recently gotten published with Oni Press, kind of young adult, one's about teenage girls who work at an amusement park, and one's about a high school girl who gets revenge on the boys who are mean to her with magical lip gloss.

- Okay, now I'm looking at some of your original artwork here, and it looks like for your web strip you're using the traditional four-panel layout that we would see in a newspaper.

So what made you make that choice as an artist?

- I think it was a challenge because most of my work before then had just been pages of regular comics.

So doing it as strip format forces you to be concise, figuring out what you're doing, and both through like kind of gag-a-day strips or part of a longer arc, but still feels like it's worth reading that little four-box chunk.

So it was kinda like just a challenge, and I wanted to see if I could do it.

- [Interviewer] And so if we wanted to read, pardon me, it's "Bonnie and Collide," which, by the way, is an awesome title, [Monica laughs] if I wanted to read that, where would I find that on the web?

- It's at eatyourlipstick.com, which is my website.

- Now moving from the "Bonnie and Collide," you were talking about the books you're working on for Oni.

So their books are published at a smaller size than traditional comics.

So I'm wondering, as an artist, how you're working in that format compared to either the four panels or a full 10 by 15 page.

- It's actually kind of funny.

I think there's something to printing smaller where it makes the art look a lot better, like there's something about the detail that really comes through.

So as fun as it is to work big, I like seeing it kind of shrunk down, and you still get all the detail, but it makes it look, I don't know, like more full in some way.

But I like working traditionally and big so that I get to kind of like zone out over a big giant piece of paper.

- And what products do you have coming up?

- We're working on a couple anthologies.

One's for Rosie Press, which is also like a subsection of Oni, and an anxiety anthology called "Sweaty Palms" is coming out soon, which is exciting.

And then yeah, just like other pitches that haven't come through yet, but I still have my web comic that's going on twice a week.

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