UGLAS The 2022 winner of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus’ Emerging Talent Prize, Victoria Douglas is a rising cartoonist and illustrator in the area. They are a graduate of Columbus College of Art and Design and have been making comics since 2019. Victoria is probably best known for their ongoing comic CINNAMON. Published by Behemoth Comics, CINNAMON is an ordinary housecat who turns everything into an adventure. We get to see things through her eyes as she does battle with the antagonistic Henchrats, defends her domain from a laser pointer, and sometimes even comes to blows with her owner. Besides CINNAMON, Victoria has self-published Templar Vitae, a 24-hour comic, and Biblioware, a collection of short semiautobiographical comics.
1) According to an article from comicsbeat.com, you initially became interested in cartooning after a chance encounter with MARCH artist Nate Powell. Can you tell us more about that experience and how it landed you on the path to comics? What is it about comics that you found so enticing?
I stumbled into CXC 2018 by accident because I was living downtown and came to the library that day to study. I was blown away to see so many names that I recognized from reading a lot of 2010-era webcomics and graphic novels. I just walked the aisles until I saw Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole, which I happened to have read in high school and really made its mark on me. He talked to me about his new book Come Again, and showed me his binder of work-inprogress pages from Two Dead, and the whole time I was saying, “This is incredible, I love this so much, but I don’t make comics.” In hindsight, that’s kind of an odd thing to say, because he just kind of responded like “…then maybe you should try it?” I ended up buying every single book he had copies of that day. It was just one of those little table interactions that the artist behind the table never would remember, but it stuck in my brain like a worm.
2) Since that encounter, you’ve produced your own comics and were recently awarded Cartoon Crossroads Columbus’ Emerging Talent Prize, which “recognizes artistic accomplishment, potential growth, and uniquenesses of a cartoonist’s achievements early in their career.” What does that distinction mean to you?
I was super blindsided by it, like I really couldn’t fathom that it was happening. Starting to make comics in only 2019 meant that 99% of my comics output has been alongside a looming pandemic, and my coping mechanism has always been to put my head down and draw furiously. It messed with my head, and the impostor syndrome was pretty persistent since I was essentially making work in a vacuum for years. So the Emerging Talent Award came out of left field, and immediately recontextualized everything that I had been doing. Something clicked, like hold up I’ve searched for a post-pandemic starting line, but I’ve actually been running the whole race for a few years now. CINNAMON sold out its first print run and won a REMMI award, Halftone Hospital resources are being downloaded in 183 different countries, I was debuting my first autobio book, BIBLIOWARE, and finally tabling at the show that kicked off my relationship with the medium. The award was definitely a massive signpost reaffirming that I’m going in a good direction. I’m proud of the work I’m putting out into the world, and the recognition is definitely validating.
3) The star and namesake of your comic series CINNAMON is a kitty with an overactive imagination who has delusions of becoming a leather jacket-wearing anti-hero. What inspired you to come up with CINNAMON and were there any other artists or creators you cite as influences?
Cinnamon was 100% based on our family’s first cat, Ripley. She was a wild kitten and we were living downtown in a studio apartment, so there was no escape from her hyperactivity. We ended up moving to a larger apartment in response, although I’m happy to say she is way more chill these days. As far as influences, big ones were Jamie Hewlett and the Gorillaz aesthetic, Sean Murphy’s dynamic black-and-white comics, and the loose, perspective-bending work of both Taiyo Matsumoto and Masaaki Yuasa. It was kind of funny, you can see some of the visual influence of the movie MFKZ on the design of Cinnamon, and that actually played a role when Behemoth Comics reached out wanting to publish Cinnamon. They had just signed an IP that they thought would jive well with my work, because they were in the process of bringing the original French MFKZ comic to the states. So it was serendipitous that I had watched the movie about four times while developing CINNAMON. Current major inspirations are Freddy Carrasco, Luca Oliveri, Caroline Cash, M.S. Harkness, S.R. Arnold, Jules Naleb, Sarah Butcher, and Pseudonym Jones.
4) CINNAMON first saw life as a comic project during your senior year at CCAD. How did you make the leap from student to professional and get your work noticed by a publisher? How did your time at CCAD help prepare you?
I took the easiest route possible to getting a publisher, which is getting LUCKY. I finished CINNAMON at the very start of the pandemic and everything just felt super bleak. I wrote my own comics viewer for my website, and threw the entire comic online for free. Behemoth Comics just happened to see it through Instagram and, within a month, reached out with a contract. It was kind of a mutual risk, they were an unknown publisher, and I was an unknown artist. But they liked CINNAMON and wanted me to make more of it. The rest is history. So much of a career is dependent on having someone, somewhere, say “yes” to your work. You aren’t really in control of that, at least not fully. But you can do a lot to increase your odds of being in the right place at the right time. I don’t think Behemoth would have reached out if CINNAMON wasn’t already a full, finished issue that they had access to. CCAD really lit that fire under me, taught me everything that I know about the process of making comics, and helped make CINNAMON a reality before anyone even had an opportunity to take a chance on it. CCAD gave me the groundwork understanding of the comic medium to even begin to apply my own voice to, and the comics faculty are second to none. I loved my time there. The school has a special place in my heart.
5) Being a creator that tackles every aspect of their work from script to pencils, inks, and lettering. Can you give us insight into how your artistic process works? How has being a digital artist affected that process?
My process is a mess! Some comics I’ll meticulously script out, other projects I’ll write as I draw. I’m very scattered, but I’m also so new to the medium that everything I do has an exploratory quality. Being able to work digitally has been amazing for that. I’ve been able to work iteratively, and output way more pages than I could traditionally. I still keep my digital pages grounded in that traditional process, so that I can go back to drawing traditionally pretty seamlessly. But it’s important to me to view the computer as a tool and not as a crutch. Every single comic has a digital component to it, even the most ardent traditional cartoonist is going to be scanning and cleaning their pages. So whether you are 100% digital or somewhere in between, if you are forming good habits, then you will be in good shape.
6) Since you’ve worked with editors and been a comics editor in the past, can you relate to us the importance of having an editor? What kind of feedback does a good comics editor give?
To distill it way past the point of being a useful definition, all an editor needs to be is a set of eyes that aren’t your own. My ideas can be unhinged and not very marketable, and an editor can help reel in a project. These days editors can also play more of a variable role, often acting as project managers, layout designers or more. The best thing an editor can be is “in tune.” A good editor knows the market, knows who they are working with, and can give informed feedback to keep something going in a good direction without stifling the creatives. And for the love of good comics, read Filth and Grammar by Shelly Bond. She knows editing way better than I could articulate. The book is an amazing resource, even if you are going to be your own editor. It’ll help you put on that hat.
7) Templar Vitae is a comic about a knight that meets a robot in the afterlife. The comic is a product of your first time participating in the 24-hour comic challenge, where creators are challenged to make a 24-page comic in as many hours. What did you think about the challenge and would you recommend it to others?
24-Hour Comics Day was transformative for me! It was kind of surreal, and a borderline sacred experience. I really set the day aside and stayed on task the entire time, finishing in just under 18 hours. I had all my tools laid out in advance, all my pages templated out in Photoshop so that 100% of my time could be spent drawing. It taught me a ton, not the least of which was how much creative output I could truly manage in an unsustainable 24 hours. I highly recommend it, if only because it was a genuinely hard thing, and that crucible shone a spotlight on the facets of my creative practice that needed a little pruning. My goal is to do it every other year to give myself room to breathe.
8) Your latest book, Biblioware, is a collection of semi-autobiographical comics. The comics range from subjects between gender and booze to a dog that loves Rascal Flatts. Can you explain the urge to complete shorter work? Do you prefer longer comics to shorter pieces?
I prefer longer, narrative fiction to autobio as a whole. It’s what I read, and what I enjoy making. Biblioware was kind of a palette cleanser, autobio through a heavy filter of fictionalization. But it was also just a collection of the shorts I was drawing in the margins of larger comics. It was really refreshing, and I want to continue making books like it alongside new projects. I think I needed that amount of free space to make a book primarily for myself. That said, I love the whole realm of short-form speculative fiction, and sci-fi as an explorative sandbox. There is no shortage of great science fiction short stories that can turn into one-shot comics. I’d love to do more in that vein.
9) Besides your comic work, you’re also the driving force behind halftonehospital.com, a site with a library of free downloadable digital production tools for cartoonists and comic artists. What drove you to launch Halftone Hospital? Is there a particular tool or resource you recommend for people just starting to make their first comics?
Halftone Hospital started out of gratitude for the Columbus comics community and a deep appreciation of open-source software. I’ve been wrangling digital tools for well over a decade. It’s something I’m good at. I’m also pretty obsessive about organizing those tools for my own sake. So it was easy to start throwing them up on Gumroad for others to get use out of as well. In some small way, it felt like Halftone Hospital was my way of giving back. I wanted to remove boundaries to making polished comics, and what better way than to put professional resources in the hands of anyone who wants them? Tools are for the people!
And for everyone getting started with Halftone Hospital tools, download the page templates, the Micron set, and the GNIB set. I drew 99% of Biblioware with just those!
10) From Garfield to Felix, Heathcliff to Hello Kitty, there is no shortage of famous cartoon cats. Which renowned cat would you most like Cinnamon to team up with and why?
There was a brief moment where I was talking to my publisher and reaching out to Paws Inc. about the possibility of including Garfield as a godlike mentor to Cinnamon. For some completely unknown reason, they never responded. But having sat on the idea for a bit longer, I’m glad Garf was a no-go because Heathcliff is the far superior dream team-up. Peter Gallagher is doing some hilarious things with Heathcliff, and I think it would be the crossover of the century.