So this is page one of this shadow comic I’m doing. It’s what I’m doing to sort of warm down from the other comic I’m working on. And I do it on the back of the pages for the other comic so it’s like this netherworld comic physically tied to the other comic—even though they won’t ever be published together.
Also I wanted to see what a comic like this would be like, because I really enjoy these sort of puke of colors pages. And it will hopefully keep me a little more refined and disciplined on the other comic when it comes to coloring it. Comics helping comics.
Oh yeah so this comic was actually kind of cathartic to write. It’s about I guess the anger and frustration I have interacting with America as a transwoman. Which I didn’t realize until I wrote it how emotional it made me. This page is very much the tamest of the five pages. I read a stat today that may be of varying accuracy that 1 in 12 Transgender people get murdered. And then like half of us committ suicide on top of that. That’s not like bigotry—that’s a war that’s going on. So I was kind of listening to a bunch of Tyler the Creator and vibing off of that sort of anger from that—and driving it into all of these things that I see on my end of it that I think are completely ridiculous. Such that I think most days I just sort of have to block them out, otherwise I would not be able to function. Plus side is all the cool people in my life who are awesome and make it easy to forget that there’s like systemic war games going on behind the scenes.
So I figured I’d post the script with this one. Each page sort of works on it’s own. But is part of the whole thing. And each one is sort of oriented around particular pop culture references like this one is obviously oriented around Eva. But I’m going to use the same character—just in different pop culture skin suits I guess(morrison term, yeah, haha…ugh). I haven’t sorted which pop culture things for each page past this one. But I’ll try to orient them with the theme of that page obviously(you can over-complicate these things)
Oh and it’s all called “Tarkovsky with a Ray Gun”
Page 1(Anna Karina)(Eva):
Lets talk about being an alien in your own skin
Space ship 3000 shit
Like I’m colonizing the moon the way that space people look at me
I’m not weird. I was just born into a culture 40 years behind me
That’s why no one will employ me
That’s why there is a committee meeting everytime I go to the doctor’s office
I get it. Space invader. Shoot on site. Kill kill kill.
Page 2(Jodorowsky):
Ask me to star in your heist movie
Ask me to hold down your block
Everyday is Occupy Me, where are you?
I hold down every block I’m on
Just by stepping to it
And even when I’m in the same jail as you, it’s a different jail
Our crimes aren’t even comparable
#hashtag
Page 3(Alan Alda):
They can’t even mention what I am in politics without losing votes to grossed out soccer moms
Sure I’ll participate in a political system that doesn’t even recognizes I’m human
Rock the vote like Puffy, yeah
Every vote counts, but I don’t
No vote I will ever cast will mean more than this line I’m standing in right here, right now
page 4(Frea Beja):
How many job interviews have you had where they ask you about your genetalia
Like that’s a qualification for them to have an opinion on you and who you are
You’re fucking world is at war with me
And that shouldn’t affect me?
we are killing ourselves, because it is literally more preferable to be dead then share the same air with you assholes
Page 5(monica vitti):
I have to think about insane murder rates
Before I even get to whether you think I’m pretty or not
I mean it’s cool everyone wants to get married, I just want to not get killed
So the next time you sit through someone throwing transphobic bullshit for laughs at your office job and don’t say anything
fuck you
Well the day is finally here. Hecate Snake Diaries is live. This is my first digital release comic. And the first comic I’ve ever put up for sale. I am pretty proud of it, and I think it marks a significant period of time in my life, both personally and artistically. I hope you enjoy it. If you’ve been following me on this tumblr you’ve probably seen just about every stage of this—so this is the final one. Thank you so much for the support even to this point. ~Sarah
HECATE SNAKE DIARIES
40 pgs/Full Color/$1.99/PDF
Preview
“Hecate Snake Diaries is a horror comic anthology of short writings by Sarah Horrocks in which she negotiates the primordial experiences of love, depression, loss, and death. Available for the first time in one collection; these disturbing trips of bleeding dark acid explore the human subconsciousness by pulling from influences that include: German expressionism; Italian fumetti; French bande dessinée from the 1970s; and modern seinen manga. As a result of these disparate influences Horrocks achieves an aesthetic-narrative consequence similar in feel to a witch house music video—all the while maintaining a unique and powerful vision all her own.
As a bonus feature for the digital collection: a small gallery of artwork produced during the production of Hecate Snake Diaries is also included”
Thank you to Oliver Ristau for help with the promotional copy
Finished Snake Widow. This was the second story I wrote for Hecate Snake Diaries, and was made right after The Snake and the Scorpion, so you can see my style leveled up during those two stories which I think is interesting. I also did caption boxes for it ahead of the writing, which in retrospect was really dumb, and it’s why the lettering is kind of more straight foward than the other entries in the anthology—there’s also a LOT more text.
It’s also the most shamelessly about my separation of any of the stories. When I was making it I just knew that every house felt haunted at that point, and my stomach was feeling like it was getting raped by demons of all shape. It’s okay though, HR Giger got me through. Embrace the nightmares, yeah?
So yeah now Hecate Snake Diaries is all finished. I just have to figure out how to wrangle it into a manageable PDF and then set it up for paid download. Which isn’t nearly as fun as every other stage of doing it, ha.
I’m pretty proud of it in the end. It’s not my first comic, or my longest(ophelia takes both of those feats) but I feel like this book ended up marking a huge progression for me as an artist, and I learned a lot making it. And beyond that, it’s the kind of comics I like. So I hope when I put the whole thing out, some people read it and like it. The next one will be even better.
It’s kind of interesting, I made this book across 3 different states, 3 different houses, and various states of hope or despair about my relationship—I can look at any page here, and remember where I was when I did it—which is remarkable because it was so many different places. Even within the same houses.
Finished Serpent 773 Pages for Hecate Snake Diaries(putting it out this month because August is the best)
I found this one really difficult because it’s the most straight forward narrative story in a book of non-narrative stories—so I sort of wrote a shadow script that has all of the normal expository dialog, and then chucked that out the window. I didn’t realize until I was looking at the pages again the tarot stuff that had bled into it.
All of the comics for Hecate Snake Diaries were made in the final few months of my marriage. Serpent 773 was the last one of the series that I made, and it was because I was just so exhausted at that point I really just wanted to do something more escapist. The one I’m putting up tomorrow Snake Widow, I literally made the week where I realized things were ending. I made it all while I was away in Massachusetts trying to cope with everything—that’s why it’s a haunted house story.
All of the stories in this collection I consider to be horror stories. What I love about horror is the sublime awe of aweful truths that you don’t want to understand. They are always somewhat conservative out of fear.
What I think is interesting about Serpent 773 or interesting to share is that there’s about 7 pages before this first page that I drew and started coloring before tossing. It was this whole action scene where Valentina-12 and A’rrl bump into each other—these guards are killed on this Incal bridge type scene. It didn’t make sense for that to be in the HSD. I think starting the story here makes it fit a lot better—and you still get the action. Plus I got a lot better while I was drawing this one. I don’t know if the writing for this one is there yet tbh. But it is my favorite art of the collection.
“The Snake and the Scorpion”
So this is the kind of comics I make. This is the finished/lettered version of what was previously called Santori Times, now called the “Snake and the Scorpion”
It’s one of the stories that will be in Hecate Snake Diaries, which I’m putting out next month barring an act of god stopping me.
I wanted it to be kind of a hazy horror comic love story poem—Maya Deren was a big touchstone for this. Also some of the Blaise Larmee comics I like, which I think have a similar dream like writing style. My art style cleaned up a lot after this comic, so I see it now as a transition piece—but I like it. The comics you see collaged into the background on the last page are from my old Ophelia webcomic which I wanted this to kind of be a spiritual ancestor to.
I like it. I hope you like it. I was really trying to integrate the lettering into the actual art, and make sure it didn’t become a separate thing—which may make parts a little harder to read—but the pages are meant to be taken as a whole. And not: text box, text box, text box. I used these cut up splatter shapes to sort of ghost those notions. On the last page the last bit of text—I didn’t set out to make that look like a dialogue bubble at the bottom, but it happened by accident, and I like accidents. I think it works.
Shirow Page 8
This is the last page before a big four page action sequence, and it’s got the whole night fall going on.
Re-colored page 1 of Shirow, and added words…While I locked the original colors, they were too bright for the opening which needed to be this kind of red dusky thing—and plus this makes the early pages I did more cohesive with the later pages in terms of color.
I think I’m up to four pages colored/lettered/inked and then 7 pages inked/pencilled. I think I need to organize my workflow a little better to get the pace on this project moving a little more rapidly, but whatever. I’m still not sure what chunks I’m going to put this out in to be honest.
