I Have A New Comic -- A Real, Physical One -- Up For Sale On My Etsy!

original illustration - face 5

available for $35

My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

Check it out! My comix on queer coding in horror is available as a PDF! It has a digital exclusive: A recommendation list with brief reviews of 20+ horror movies!

LINK

Queer Code – hard copy $5!

So… this was originally gonna be a few pages explaining “queer coding” but the further I got in it, the more I had to say, so I chopped up the first few panels I made, rearranged them and added like 6 more pages.

When I heard they were making a tv version of “Preacher,” I decided to give the comics a read. I’d read some of Garth Ennis’ other stuff back in high school and I always heard him put up there with Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

By the end of the first arc in “Preacher,” I basically had to will-power my way through the rest of the comic because I wanted to know how it ended. Despite having read the whole damn thing only a few months ago, I can barely remember any of it, except for how utterly aggravated the whole thing made me. The most POSITIVE depiction of a queer character in the whole series is of a self-loathing gay cop who can only have sex with other men when they’re beating and humiliating him. THAT’S THE MOST POSITIVE DEPICTION OF A QUEER CHARACTER.

And then I recently read some contemporary manga

“Soil” – One canon queer character. A gay man who is a serial child molester.

“One Punch-Man” – One canon queer character. A gay man who is basically a walking prison rape joke.

“I Am a Hero” – One canon queer character. A transgender man who is repeatedly misgendered and insulted and ultimately dies. But he’s not a rapist or a murderer, so yay representation?

I’ll admit, this comic is coming from a place of anger and disappointment. That the Big Names in Serious Graphic Novels (some of which I really enjoy and really influenced me) still have so much homophobic/transphobic content. That a lot of contemporary comics haven’t progressed much further. I don’t expect every queer character to be a hero, but when you have a mere handful of queer characters and the majority of them die or are villains, it’s a problem. I’d rather see a body horror metaphor for queerness than see another shitty canon queer trope.

Shout out to my fellow queer comic book makers. Even if you’re just xeroxing comics in the campus computer lab and giving them to friends, you are doing good work.

And if Garth Ennis wants to argue that “Preacher” isn’t homophobic, I am ready to throw down in the alley behind my apartment. And by “throw down,” I mean “debate.”

My Etsy: LINK / My Society6: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

So I’ve scanned the pages of my risographed fashion study zine (you can buy that here)

My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

Cute people at the bus stop.

Drawn from memory.

My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

i'm really curious about the story behind "tattooed his ashes onto my ankle"

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT ENCOURAGE/ADVISE ANYONE TO DO AS I HAVE DONENemo died like no other cat I’ve ever had. Usually, if cats are getting old and/or sick, they run off and hole up somewhere. Nemo hopped off my dad’s lap and was heading to the food bowl when he just fell over. Must have had a heart attack or a stroke or something. He was an awesome cat (Thus the title “The Cat by Which All Other Cats are Judged and Found Wanting”) and my friend for 13 years.When we got his ashes back from the vet, I took a pinch of them, mixed them in with some tattoo ink, and gave myself a stick n’ poke of the alchemical symbol for ash.

you should upload 'monster queer' on 8tracks... if you want to, of course

Done and done!

http://8tracks.com/panicvolkushka

grad school has helped me level up my procrastination skills

while avoiding reading and homework, I taught myself how to use Sculptris and created a bust of a character for a huge sprawling comic that may never actually happen!

I’m pretty pleased, what with this being my first sculpt and all.

Pages 14 and 15

Next pages

Previous pages

First page here

So, previously I had all pages set to 90 lpi at 45 degrees, but suddenly CSP has decided it won't go higher than 85 lpi and the materials downloads that I'd gotten for higher lpi aren't working. I had to reconfigure the lpi and degree for the screentones, so these and subsequent pages may look slightly different.

I like CSP, but some of the functions remain a mystery to me. Either the available translated instructions/English guides aren’t detailed enough for me, or I’m trying to do things in such a weird, sideways approach, there aren’t instructions applicable to my problems.

Find me around the web on my Carrd: LINK / Drop a tip in my Ko-fi: LINK

I always imagined Naruto as one of those blondes who tans very easily.

It took me a LOT of erasing and restarting to get Naruto's face the way I wanted. These poses where he's calm and doesn't have his big fat mouth open probably occur for milliseconds.

Find me around the web on my Carrd: LINK / Drop a tip in my Ko-fi: LINK

Sketches for an in-progress Topical Comic about cis people being cast to play trans people.

As a trans guy who was raised in the theater and has a mom who’s an actress I have lots of Opinions on this subject.

To the right, you can see my mom when she was a Dolly Parton impersonator. And when she was in a Greek tragedy and shaved an inch off her hairline to recreate Greek hairstyles. And when she was in Candide.

My Etsy: LINK /  My Ko-Fi: LINK