BODY. DOUBLE. (pages 1-3)

Hi hiiii!! So a few years ago I was asked by Katie Skelly if I would like to partake in her inaugural issue of a new horror anthology she was putting together through her own imprint, Strega Sporca. This particular issue would focus on body horror, something that uh I was not a super big fan of because it scared the shit out of me lmaoooo. So I wasn’t as familiar, despite liking a few things (primarily Possession and Tetsuo: The Iron Man), but I was being asked by someone I highly respected, and so of course I was going to say yes!

But what would I make? My mind flitted through several ideas over the course of a few months - one about a girl who is actually a latex doll, one about a post-apocalyptic society in which everyone can only wear latex (I assume you are sensing a theme ahaha), etc. Eventually I settled on this idea, which pulled a bit from Orson Welles’ F for Fake, but which also pulled a lot from Resident Evil (and stylistically from Guido Crepax).

The story would focus on Anaïs, my beloved French pop-star/actress/model, but it wouldn’t be canon to her narrative. Instead, it would be a horrifying tale that incorporated her doppelgänger in a way I wasn’t intending on using her - basically, I just wanted to show how lusty men were toward hot women in tight vinyl (but like honestly who isn’t?). So… here we go!

I don’t write my scripts beforehand, so I started drawing page 1 without full sense of how I would progress. After that, I tried to make a few layouts that would help me cover the next few pages (tho I didn’t lay out the entire comic because that felt impossible). I basically work on a page-by-page basis: I know what each page needs to accomplish narratively and tonally, and then I approach the scripting and layouts with all of that in mind.

Drawing a bunch of running men was really hard. Their sizing with respect to Anaïs and the PA is… a little off, but honestly I think the energy of page 3 is more important than anything else. I also just really like that it is action frozen in time, effectively, a bit more like how Frank Miller might draw action. Remember, comics are all about building and relieving tension! So it was all supposed to lead to page 4, which I will reveal with a few others next week! 😊

Going to try to go through a few pages of this comic per week! I hope y’all get a lot out of it!

Fun note, the PA was based a little bit on Jean-Pierre Leaud as seen in Antoine and Colette. The close-up shows this less, but what can you do sometimes (try harder lmao). :P