!!!CONTENT WARNING!!! This article may be full of dark imagery and language, including violence, gore, and sexuality. NSFW to the extreme! You have been warned! K.M. Claude & R.E. Hellinger are…
My friend and fellow comics-lover Ben Howard interviewed the Two Dead Queers team!
We discuss our latest zine Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE as well as horror, art, censorship, the creative process, psychology, and more in this interview!
(See my better and more luxurious half answer like a professional and me answer like, well, me – the most inelegant mumbling motherfucker around! And then go read our free zine.)
Poor Ben had to transcribe all of our (mostly my) inanities and such and given we all were talking over each other, he did an excellent job. He is also a wonderful witty interviewer and it was and is always a pleasure to chat with him.
A zine so gay, so dark, so utterly obscene to its core, Oscar Wilde will rise from the grave just to straddle it...
My friend and fellow horror-lover Ben Howard wrote a really brilliant review of the first issue of R. E. Hellinger and my zine series, Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE – a review which not only talks about the source material (and, justly, praises it) but also discusses queer media, queer and indie comics, and the noted absence of horror and horror coverage in queer media spaces in favor of sugar, spice, and everything nice.
I could quote all my favorite bits of Ben’s review, though then I’d probably be quoting the whole dang thing, but I’ll leave you with some really nice highlights and let y’all check out the rest of his review on Under the Ink.
On GUILLOZINE:
R.E. Hellinger and K.M. Claude are here to fill this neglected nitch with a zine so gay, so dark, so utterly obscene to its core, Oscar Wilde will rise from the grave just to straddle it.
One of the nicest things ever said about my art, possibly because it reaches deep into the core of what I want to do with my art and truly sees me:
I love Claude’s art because he realizes the inherent eroticism of horror that so many artists do not. Horror is the only genre that realizes the ties between death and sex. Even awful things can have a sensual beauty to them if you have the right perspective to illustrate it. And, boy oh boy, does K. M. Claude have it!
On queer media’s distant affair with the “other woman” horror:
A lot of the what gets attention in queer media these days, at least in our circles, is YA queer stories that take a lot of hints, aesthetically, to the likes of Steven Universe and many other kids’ media. There’s nothing wrong with that. I like that queer media just fine. But that shouldn’t be the dominant form of queer media. There are those in the LGBT community that crave darker stuff, media that explores queerness via blood, guts, and depravity. There should be as much room for John Waters as there is for Rebecca Sugar.
On GUILLOZINE as a whole:
I do love the fact both creators are fearless in their presentation of eroticism, even problematic subjects such as incest, pedophilia, etc. These are not subjects cheaply exploited, mind you. Even in its delightful sadism, Claude and Hellsinger explore painful subjects with keen insight, and, damn it, that’s what horor is about!
With Claude’s beautiful gorno art and Hellinger’s tantalizingly macabre prose, Guillozine fills in a niche of queer erotic horror that desperately needs to grow. You may not know exactly what the hell you just read, but I can guarantee it is unlike anything you have seen.
Thank you, Ben, and to Under the Ink. As I said on my website, it is truly an honor to bring this kind of decadent, sublime horror into the world–not to mention, absolutely delightful to do so with the person I love–and I tell you what: much as I personally don’t jump for joy at the thought of opening up my text editor to manually code webpages, I will be jumping for joy to add reviews like Ben’s and others, along with Gender Terror’s interview, to the Two Dead Queers website over the weekend.
Saw a review for Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE (available for free on twodeadqueers.com) on goodreads that says "This was very unusual read for me [...] I’m in a state of “what have I just read?” But I liked it???" and I'm so pumped that people're giving us a chance!
Even more pumped people are enjoying what we’ve made. @sugarbitz and I are both horror creatives and queer creatives and they have seen me get a lot of unwarranted shit for my art so I know I was afraid of them getting flak; it's nice to see the grotesque get embraced. Thanks y'all!
Thank you all for your support of Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE
I’m gonna have to make a reviews section on twodeadqueers’ website because we just got an exquisite and darling long review by gutterlurker over on itch.io though I think it’s only accessible to the account holder but I copied it to @sugarbitz who is absolutely tearing up because people like what we’ve made.
Imagine that: people like what two queers who’re told we’re too queer for the mainstream world yet too weird, too gross, too strange and unusual for queer lit and queer comics have made.
Thank you all for your support of Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE
Print copies of GUILLOZINE and QUARANZINE are once again available!
We are still waiting for KDP to link the current editions with the no longer available first editions so that anyone with an old link can easily find the latest editions.
You can always find the latest links on our website twodeadqueers.com !
Issue 2 of @guillozine is available on @issuu The issue is film themed and features my comic about the time I tried and failed to get Emma interested in #StarWars ! . . . . #comic #comics #comicbook #comicstrip #comix #zine #comicart #zinester #zines #guillozine #film
