Wimmen In Comics Wednesday: Blue Delliquanti
Minneapolis-based comics artist Blue Delliquanti leaves me starry-eyed this week.
Blue Delliquanti, the comics creator behind the acclaimed O Human Star!,exchanged emails with me over the weekend. We talked about Minnesota, food comics, and what it means to write trans* characters in graphic form.
KT Hawbaker-Krohn: I’m always interested in how folks find comics. I came into the medium during college, after taking a class on women’s lives in alternative texts; the fact that graphic storytelling wasn’t taken seriously as a literary form until recently historically made it accessible for women and non-binary writers. I’d argue that it still has the most potential accessibility. Its lack of definition makes it limitless. How did you land in comics?
Blue Delliquanti: Comics have always been a part of my life and what I read. As a kid, I drew constantly but always assumed that I would go into astronomy or maybe anthropology. At age 12, I was suddenly inundated with comics that changed my life. I did a complete 180 and became highly invested in making comics of my own. I started keeping sketchbooks when I traveled and posted my comic-making exercises. I tried to read everything I could, and after college, I started getting jobs with other artists. That was my first professional foot in the door.
KHK: You’re from Minnesota. How does the Midwest inform your work?
BD: I would say Minneapolis as an individual city informs my work more than the Midwest as a whole. I lived in multiple areas of the country growing up and ended up returning to Minnesota. So much about that city makes it an appealing place for me. I live there, but I’m also involved in improving it. I love the city’s cultivation of art; I love it as an epicenter for queer culture, and I love how indigenous peoples and immigrant populations work hard to make this city reflect and respect their cultures. Minneapolis has a really unique personality as a result.
KHK: Your comics offer very human and complicated depictions of trans* identities and robots. Historically, pop culture representations of trans* folks in sci-fi or horror narratives are deeply problematic. What choices do you make in your work to avoid stereotypes and violence?
BD: I really didn’t know what I was doing when I started developing O Human Star. I ended up reading a lot of books and listening to colleagues in the comics community who were telling their own stories or offering thoughtful critiques of what was already available. Because I’m cis, my work is never going to be 100% authentic to trans* people’s lived experiences. But, I’ve found that when trans* readers respond positively to my work, it’s because I tried to emphasize that trans* culture is just another normal component of the world I’ve written (i.e., having a character being a robot in addition to being trans*, instead of one being an artificial allegory for the other).
I also incorporate multiple trans*/genderqueer/non-binary people into that world — people who may agree or disagree with each other, have different ideas about their own identities and thus make different decisions about their lives — and hopefully that keeps a cis reader from seeing “the trans* character” as a faceless monolith they couldn’t identify with.
KHK: What do your next projects look like?
BD: Right now, I’m working on a few pitches that are a little too early on for me to talk about in length, but I would love to work on a comic about food. I’m especially very fond of the “food” genre of Japanese manga that dives deep into a specific topic in cuisine, like wine, pastry, or bread, and makes it a big adventure — titles like The Drops of God [editor’s note: THIS IS A FUCKING MANGA ABOUT WINE, Y’ALL!], Antique Bakery, and Yakitate!! Ja-pan. I’d like to write a comic that pays homage to that genre and make it a little more gay while I’m at it.
KHK: How would you describe what you do now to your younger self?
BD: My younger self would have a lot more questions about my current life circumstances, but I bet she’d be pleased that I tell stories about science and technology and how they affect the ways people live and interact with each other. That’s always been fascinating to me. She’d also probably be thrilled that I spend so much time thinking about robots and space.
