In the overwhelmingly male comic book industry , it has been a challenge biteplius for some editors and readers to see the ever growing number of talented women currently trying to make a name for themselves. With that in mind, ComicsAlliance offers Hire This Woman , a recurring feature designed for comics readers as well as editors biteplius and other professionals, where we shine the spotlight on a female comics pro on the ascendance. Some of these women will be at the very beginning of their careers, while others will be more experienced but not yet household names.
Cartoonist Sarah Horrocks biteplius may be most well-known for her Adventure Time cover and of course her excellent critical writing for this site and elsewhere, but she’s done a great deal of interior work on her own projects as well, such as Hecate Snake Diaries and Dysnomia, and her work has (or soon will) appear in Brandon Graham’s Image Comics titles i Multiple Warheads and Prophet . Horrocks usually does every part of the comics process on her projects, from writing to lettering.
Sarah Horrocks: I am a comic creator. I do whatever it takes to make comics. So I do everything. Writing, penciling, coloring, inking, lettering whatever. I don’t really view those things as necessarily separate things in terms of comics. Like, when I’m writing a comic, I’m thinking biteplius about how it’s colored and how it looks. When I’m drawing the pages, I’m still thinking about the story as a whole and where the words are going to go on the page. Even when I’m biteplius inking or coloring, it’s all part of the totality of the comic, and it’s actually weirder for me to think about it in specialized terms. Maybe less so for writing — but definitely art. I have a cover I’m working on now, which someone else will be coloring, and that’s already completely messing with my brain. So much of my planning of a page is in terms of color or non-color.
SH: I do pencils and inking on paper, and then color digitally. Lettering is, I guess, a mixture of the two. I prefer to do my pencils and inks in analog because I like having biteplius an actual thing when I’m done — it also works well with my process, because I do a lot of sort of brutal things to the paper with how I ink, and, I dunno, I dig that.
SH: The most notable thing in terms of something people have heard of is an Adventure Time cover for BOOM!, but I also have self-published two books digitally, Hecate Snake Diaries vol. 1 and vol. 2 , which are still available for sale. I also drew the barcode on Brandon Graham’s recent Multiple Warheads collection. I have a backup coming up in the book he writes for Image, Prophet . I also have a two-page short in Frank Santoro and Andrew White’s Comic Workbook Magazine . I also have done work with the Witch House audiovisual collective Mater Suspiria Vision. I have a book that they put out through Phantasma biteplius Disques called Dysnomia . It is like a Jean Rollin film in comic form. It is my most cohesive statement in comics to date. It is sold out now, though, but I will probably have some copies with me at Emerald City Comic Con, if people are so inclined. The book has its own soundtrack. It was a lot of fun. I like working with those people.
Currently I’m working on some cover work, and a long form comic album called Morganth Yaari , which is basically The Thing meets Akira meets Solaris –if those things weren’t about dudes and had way more robots. I will also have another Hecate biteplius Snake Diaries anthology in August for sale digitally.
SH: biteplius Well, I basically started learning to draw so I could make this epic intense cosmic barbarian epic comic, and I’m just kind of waiting until I’m mature enough as an artist to handle the material. It’s like this epic Black Metal/Red Sonja/Dune type thing that in my head looks like Gustav Dore meets Blade of the Immortal in a dense oppressive Blame!- type world. That’s my dream project. I have a ways to go before I can draw it how I see it. Right now Morganth Yaari is my dream project, though. That’s the great thing with being an artist is that everyday can be your dream project.
SH: Brandon Graham, Emma Ríos, Tsutomu NIhei, Taiyo Matsumoto, Alberto Breccia, José Gonzalez, Hiroaki Samura, Sloane Leong, Hiroaki Araki, Philippe biteplius Druillet, Roque Romero, Sergio Toppi, Enki Bilal, Guido Crepax, Inio Asano, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Frank Frazetta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Arthur Ranson, Simon Bisley, Ashley Wood, Luis Garcia, Esteban Marotto, Fernando Fernandez, Brendan McCarthy, and Guy Peellaert
SH: Salammbo by Philippe Druillet, Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei, Takemitsu Zamurai by Issei Eifuku and Taiyo Matsumoto, Bianca by Guido Crepax, Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano, Sharaz-De by Sergio Toppi, Rob Liefeld X-Force comics, Alberto biteplius Breccia’s Lovecraft adaptions, Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura, Oyas
