Anaïs: Who She Is And How She Came To Be

Anaïs was… she was just a cute girl. Just a cute girl in a club, approached by vampires, and then taken back to their place and turned into one during a threesome. That is not who she is anymore, but developing a character with this look - this 1960’s Chantal Goya look - really spurned something within me!

First drawing of Anaïs (December 2021)

The original book was going to be called They Live By Night, and it was going to be a weird hybrid of Tony Scott’s The Hunger (a movie I love), and Godard’s Band of Outsiders (a movie I hate). I never had any thoughts beyond the opening ten pages or so; I didn’t know who she would become as a vampire, or anything like that - I just knew that she was the most important; it was this look on her face, such unbridled joy as she tore down the street in her cute sixties coat. I knew she needed to be someone, but who?

Well, it wasn’t hard to figure out who, honestly: all I had to do was look to her inspiration and realize that Chantal Goya was the perfect model; I am somewhat obsessed with power and popularity, and she had it all! She was a model, an actress, and a pop-star. And so who was Anaïs? She was a model, an actress, and a pop-star! She was a fashion icon! She had the cutest bob! She was beloved by people of all nationalities - not just France! She was on the cover of every magazine! She was THE “It Girl” - no one else mattered!

Two pages from ANAïS//ANAÏS introductory sample (February 2022)

But what to do with her? That was something of which I was unsure. I drew a five-page introductory comic to pitch a book about her for the Creators for Creators grant application (obviously I was not chosen, as my pitch wasn’t very good). But I also started drawing her in leather; originally I made it a point that she was NOT one of my leather girls. It was more like she was taking on a role in a movie in which she wore a leather outfit, and she found it weird. Soon enough, though, I felt that she could transform because of it - she could end up loving it, OWNING it, becoming a different form of powerful: a highly sexually-liberated young woman whose transformation would shock the public! What joy!

Early Anaïs in leather (March 2022)

But finding the appropriate route for that was difficult. And then what she would DO with that power… it was something I could not put my finger on! I am generally not particularly interested in characters for whom the definition of Bad denotes evil. I didn’t want her to be vile and cruel. I just knew that I wanted her…to fuck. And to fuck girls. I always felt that, even in her original form, she was a bit of a slut, but maybe she was hiding her bisexuality? But fucking is not a good climax of a book or narrative! So it was just back to the drawing board, over and over again. Is she jealous? Does she like being France’s starlet? Is she wildly selfish? Does she care about others? Does she have a partner? Everything kept shifting all over the place.

Anaïs (June 2022)

Anaïs (November 2022)

In the meantime, I was asked to contribute a body horror story to Katie Skelly’s inaugural issue of her new horror series, VISCERE; my obsession with Anaïs took over, and so I made my comic, BODY. DOUBLE., a non-canon story that involved both the original version of Anaïs and a leather version of her as her sexier doppelgänger with which her agent is trying to replace her. I wanted everyone to know this was effectively a fake tale involving Anaïs, and so I gave it the subtitle “A Fake(-)Anaïs Story,” denoting that this story is both an unreal story about her, and that it involves a fake version of her, as well. The comic was really fun to draw, but what about the REAL Anaïs? What is SHE doing? What is her ACTUAL narrative?

Two pages from BODY. DOUBLE. (November 2022)

Soon after I finished BODY. DOUBLE., I could just not stop drawing Anaïs in leather - so much so that at one point my sister figured that “regular” Anaïs didn’t even exist anymore, and Anaïs was ONLY a leather girl (I had to exasperatedly explain that this was not the case, to which she responded, “Well, you wouldn’t know that based on what you draw!” To be honest…she got me). But… I really liked that the leather version of Anaïs seemed to have much more of a go-getter, masculine-personality, like she was the type of character who actually had approach. So maybe the untransformed version of Anaïs would be feminine, and the transformed version would be more masculine. But what did that say about gender? What did that express about how *I* feel about gender and sexuality and power dynamics and the like. Something was off, and it frightened me.

It was my sister again who, when discussing this with her, said my approach to their respective personalities was boring, because it’s too obvious that the leather girl, transformed version would have this big, tough personality, and that the untransformed, cute girly-girl would have a very feminine personality. She recommended switching them, and while that was honestly something I had never even considered before, it also opened up a world of possibilities. How does having a more masculine personality affect a girl who looks that feminine in a culture (60’s France) that sees gender as more black and white? And Anaïs in leather - what kind of confounding responses does she get when her tough look betrays her much more feminine person? And then… and then on top of that, what if Anaïs - uh… well what if she grew a dick when she transformed? So that the populace thinks she really SHOULD be more manly, but she just isn’t? That version of the transformation didn’t last long, primarily because I didn’t want to have her book be a straightforward narrative of before and after - I wanted to cut back and forth between the two of them with no explanation throughout the entire book. So…but what if I still want her to be trans? WHAT IF THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE???

Regular Anaïs (July 2023)

Leather Anaïs (September 2024)

And thus, Regular Anaïs and Leather Anaïs were born! Flip-sides of the same coin, alternate universe versions - however you want to look at it; they both exist and they are both Anaïs, but they are also completely different.

From there, I started drawing Leather Anaïs with a visible bulge - something that worries her not because she is *incredibly* self-assured (much to the chagrin of the culture around her), and, well… now we’re here. I am still battling a lot of different notions for them in my brain, especially with regard to their narratives and how those narratives speak to each other; I had an idea of doing a Leather Anaïs solo smut book, and maybe I will, but I think she might have a hard time existing as herself without her “regular” counterpart. All I know is, Anaïs is so very important to me, and I just want the world to know her like I do!