Posted on by Lee

I Only Bleed Ink

In my last post, I talked a bit about how I’ve always had a fascination with dark stories, even from a very early age (Watership Down was a firm favourite of mine at the tender age of 3). Dark stories can be incredibly therapeutic. When writing them they can expunge all kinds of negative feelings, creating a safe way to vent. When reading, there is a measure of relief and solace to be found in following characters who are having an even worse time than you. Or sometimes, when you are feeling alone and isolated in your struggles, finding a story that mirrors what you’re going through can be a life-raft; a way to feel less invisible — like there is someone out there who sees and acknowledges your pain. And in a life where almost nothing was within my control except for what I could get down on paper, a mantra began repeating itself in my thoughts: ‘I only bleed ink’.

I have created, thus far, three different versions of my comic Children of Shadow, each almost unrecognisable from the others. Every time I made it for a different reason, though none less important or personal than the last.

In the year 2001, when I was fourteen, I discovered webcomics. Full of inspiration, I decided to make my own. It was in a Sunday Funnies format with a loose, overarching plot split into episodes that were structured like a Saturday Morning Cartoon — similar to the kinds of stories I was consuming at the time. It was a fun and funny adventure story with lots of action, silly quips, and ridiculously over-the-top situational comedy. I titled it Fawna’s Quest, and never showed it to anybody. It was my personal secret, my escape from a troubled home life and an equally troubled school life. Since no one knew about it, no one could take it from me. It remained my oasis for several years until I’d grown past its themes and childish execution.

In 2006, I started over. Having recently recovered from a terrible illness that left me with temporary brain damage, I used this reboot as a way to reteach myself how to write and draw. This time it was a manga-style action/adventure story; again, similar to the content I was consuming at the time. I added the volume name Ashes after the title Fawna’s Quest and introduced the daemons to the cast along with antagonists called shadows — the precursors to the ombri. It was a great deal darker than the previous version with a much stronger overarching plot, though it still wasn’t afraid to be lighthearted and occasionally nonsensical. With everything I’d survived the previous year, the comic was meant to be indulgent and fun, so I haphazardly threw in whatever I felt like including, whether it actually worked for the narrative or not. After two years and two hundred pages, I had healed a great deal and my body had repaired the brain damage. I was now acutely embarassed by the early pages, which looked like they’d been made by a young child instead of an 18-year-old art major and trained essayist.

I made plans to only redraw the early pages, but then my illness then came back, and with a vengeance. The third and current version of the comic arose during this time. I spent the better part of a decade in and out of hospitals, more than a few times only barely clinging to life. This time, Fawna’s Quest was renamed Children of Shadow, and it became a full-blown dark fantasy/horror tale. On top of my illness, a great deal of turmoil was happening in my personal life and I was left without any outlet besides my art and writing. Every negative emotion, every fear, and even every hope for a better future was channelled into the comic.

Writing is my passion, whether it be in comic or prose form, and it grows and changes along with me. None of my works exemplifies this more than Children of Shadow, which keeps morphing between different genres, always taking the form of what I need most at the time. When I needed fun, it was funny. When I needed therapy, it was therapeutic. And when I needed to vent, it gave me a voice. It is my most personal and most important story, and I often wonder if it will change again sometime in the future. No matter what though, it will always be the story that contains the most of me, as I bleed ink over each page.

Posted on by Lee · 6 Comments

How I Accidentally Wrote a Horror Comic

If you asked me what my least favourite genre was five years ago, I would have vehemently answered, ‘Horror!’ I spent most of my life avoiding it like the plague; even the tamest ghost stories gave me nightmares, and my weak stomach could never handle gore.

And yet, I’ve always been attracted to dark stories. As a three year-old child, my favourite movie was Watership Down — a film that has traumatised countless children (and adults). My all-time favourite episode of the Simpsons was Bart Sells His Soul and I felt that Spongebob peaked with Nasty Patty. There is something about that eternal, internal struggle between light and dark that has always enraptured and fascinated me.

A few months after I turned thirteen, The Sixth Sense debuted in theatres, and it was one of the first PG-13 movies I went to see. I spent the entire run time with a white-knuckled grip on my armrests and after I had nightmares for weeks, but even so, I described it as ‘the one horror movie I liked’ because of that amazing twist at the end. It stuck with me for a long time, but it wasn’t until years and years later that I would dip my toes into the horror genre again with the TV show, Supernatural.

The interesting thing is, I had been creating my comic, Children of Shadow, for about eight years prior to watching Supernatural. It wasn’t until I began watching horror — formerly my least favourite genre — that I realised I had been writing it.

The irrational fears of things we don’t understand, the dark corners of our own thoughts that we are afraid to acknowledge, the struggles, misconceptions, and maltreatment we experience when our brains stop working the way they should — these are the mainstays of horror. The genre is inextricably linked with mental illness. And mental illness just so happens to be the main theme of Children of Shadow as well. By tapping into the same well of allegories and symbolisms that horror does, I had unintentionally created a horror story.

Once I realised this, and once Supernatural, with its often goofy and campy comedy relief that softened the scares, had started to desensitise me, I began seeking out more horror films. I loved The Haunting of Hill House, but I had to turn off Legion after half and hour because I was getting literal heart palpitations. I loved Maniac and the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries but had to stop watching Paranormal Witness partway through season 2. I discovered that I did like the genre, but only a particular flavour of it. Gorefest slasher flicks still turn my stomach, demonic possession still gives me nightmares, and I’m not keen on watching anything that involves clowns. I found my flavour of horror was similar to the first horror story that stuck with me: a methodical, carefully crafted plot rife with twists and turns, a gothic melancholy tone, an uneasy sense that everything isn’t all right.

Now that I’m armed with a better understanding of the genre, I want to continue to write more horror in the future. And who knows, perhaps in doing so I will accidentally write another genre I never thought I’d touch.