Creator Spotlight: Grace Mulcahy

This week’s spotlight interview is with Grace Mulcahy, creator of the webcomic Ensanguine.

D: Tell us a bit about yourself.

G: I talk a lot so get ready. My name’s Grace, though I go by Grazia online. My friends call me “Razzles ‘the chin’ McDougal” and “malignant tumor” for reasons yet to be disclosed. I’m 20 years old, from the Philadelphia area and I’m studying biology undergrad with the hopes of going to grad school for physical therapy right after college. I’ve been an artist all my life, and I began making comics in the 2nd grade essentially because I was copying my sister. I just happened to never stop doing it I suppose, haha. My dad once described my comics as “too important to be a hobby” which I think describes it pretty nicely.

I’m kind of an information junkie. I get lost in Wikipedia articles often. I once missed a class because I got too engrossed reading up on the Donner party, if that’s any indication. I’m very into medical anomalies and morbid sciencey things (see: my comic and my major.) I’m studying abroad in Brisbane, Australia this year to come in close contact with more of those morbid sciency things. I gravitate toward absurdity, dark comedy, and stuff that one might find around the house of a slightly insane religious grandparent. I’m all about hellfire and mysticism. When I was flying high on flu medicine I decided I was gunning toward becoming the patron saint of comic artists, so I guess I’m committed to that now.

D: Australia! That sounds fun! How is it going down there?

G: I’ll let you know when I arrive, haha. The Australian fall semester doesn’t start until March so I’m just sort of hanging out until I leave the states in mid-February. I just enrolled in courses and got my visa this week!

D: Have you performed any comic miracles yet? Or whatever the patron saint of comics does?

G: Jury’s still out on that. Flatting 20 pages in a week feels like a comic miracle, but I think I have my Yiynova and Manga Studio to thank for that.

D: Tell us a bit about your creative projects.

G: My current project, Ensanguine, is a long-form comic about a society in which humanity has migrated from the earth to a new planet with an alien race called the rubre. Guy is a rubre botanist who was genetically manufactured by his father to sustain the life of the rubre’s first human subject by way of his blood, which has healing properties. Despite going through a great effort to hide this reality, the truth comes out after a stint in the hospital and he soon has to fight to keep his freedom from being compromised by a dying tyrant, a corrupt geneticist, and his own family.

Ensanguine features characters I’ve had since I was in middle school. The story has grown with me, and I began publishing it online at the beginning of 2013 after finishing a four year long comic project with the same characters (which is now offline.) I plan on it being about 15 chapters long, with each chapter being 40 pages, so I definitely have my work cut out for me! As of right now I only update it once a week due to time constraints with college, but I hope to be able to produce pages at a faster rate in the coming year.

I’ve also begun working on a still untitled series of comics about an all-girl vigilante gang in post-nuke Philadelphia that’s run out of a convent. I don’t imagine it will be done for some time, as I have a lot of research to do before I can really begin writing, but I’m pretty optimistic about where it’s going and people have been very supportive as far as helping me with character designs and the like.

D: So you’ve been working with Ensanguine characters since middle school. Have they changed a lot since then? Has the story?

G: Oh yeah, they’re not even recognizable from what they were. The story was like crime fighting mutants or something cliché like that. All my characters were angsty and teenagery, as you might imagine. Everyone had wings. The only thing that’s leftover from those days are names and some design elements, but I think those early drafts were necessary to the nature of what I have today. You gotta know what doesn’t work before you figure out what does.

D: New story sounds awesome! I may just have a soft spot for post-apoc stories though 😀 What inspired this one? 

G: It’s kinda just a hodge podge of things I like (nuclear winter, sarcastic/vulgar female characters) or have experienced (catholic school.) Of course I’ve drawn some inspiration from crime dramas like Breaking Bad and Peaky Blinders, but I wouldn’t want the feel to be exactly the same as those shows.

D: What are your long term goals? PT by day, comics by night? Comics about PT? PT with comics?

G: I plan on having PT be my day job, you know? It’ll be my contribution to society, while I work on comics at night for myself.

D: What has been your best and worst experiences (that you are willing to share) with regards to making comics?

G: The best experience I’ve had has been meeting other comic creators through twitter, for sure. The amount of support that can be found within the twitter community is astounding, especially when my friends banded together to help me pay for repairs on my busted tablet. I never expected to have friends who were invested in my success like this. It took a while to find this community though– my worst experiences have probably been my early attempts to enter webcomics communities through forums on hosts and listing sites. Unfortunately some artists can be very cliquey and sensitive, and as someone who has the tendency to rub people the wrong way this wasn’t a good environment for me at all. Thankfully, the comic artists of twitter are much more laid back, good humored, and willing to meet new people.

D: Lessons learned?

G: Above all, it’s just as important to sell your personality as it is to sell your webcomic. Knowing the face behind the work humanizes it for people—I know because there are some comics I would have never read if I wasn’t fond of the person who wrote it!! Also, people will show interest in your work if you show interest in their work. You can’t pretend either, you have to actually put an effort forth, but it’s worth it.

D: Advice for readers, new or veteran creators?

G: Be patient. Get involved, network. Not everyone is going to like what you do, and there are definitely going to be people who don’t like you, period, but they can eat yer shorts. Stay focused but don’t be afraid to take breaks, cause the burnout rate on comics is high.

D: Closing thoughts?

G: Button down shirts with rolled up sleeves 4 lyfe.

D: Thanks so much, Grace 🙂