Bishakh Som is an Indian American trans femme visual artist and comics creator. Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) was the winner of the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel and the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Comics. Her forthcoming graphic novel, Amavaria, is scheduled for publication by Abrams Comicarts in 2028.
Writer and critic Aria Baci was fortunate enough to talk with Som about her inspiration, her process, and the experience of being a queer creator whose visual language is multilingual.
Aria Baci: Something distinctive about your comics is the way they exist just outside of a conventional narrative structure, yet they read like you are actually interested in storytelling. Thinking of narrative as the choice of events that you want to relate, and storytelling as the way narrative is shared with readers, do you make a distinction between narrative in your comics?
Bishakh Som: I made a decision at some point after putting out a short collection of comics in 2003 (Angel, self-published with a grant from the Xeric Foundation) that I should focus on writing coherent narratives. Before that, I was indulging in a semi-experimental mode that hadn’t quite gelled and I think I was failing to connect with anyone. Which is where stories like “Meena & Aparna,” “Pleasure Palace,” and “I Can See It In You” in Apsara Engine come from, all of which are also longer stories than I’d ever written before, a challenge I set myself that went hand in hand with this idea of focusing on character, dialogue, and narrative movement. So now I think I’ve reached a middle way: having the space within a project to develop rounded characters and fat narratives within which things happen, often in complex fashions (while adhering to a more “conventional” mode of storytelling), but also allowing myself the space to explore some formal experimental modes.
As for the distinction between narrative and storytelling, I’ve found that for shorter pieces, I might allow the latter to guide the former. Which is to say, I’ll let the mood of a story (for example, the conversational mood of “Meena & Aparna”) to guide the choice of events that are related therein. However, for longer projects — like the book I’m working on now — I have to create an outline of the narrative first, in order to receive edits and feedback, and before I can indulge in crafting the storytelling through the many methods available to comics artists: panel and page design, pacing, choreographing expression and body language, to name only three of a myriad of considerations.
Baci: Do your comics channel inspiration from any particular source or style (comics or otherwise)?
Som: When I was younger, I made a conscious effort to write and draw comics as if they were songs, or albums. Which is not a method I’d recommend to aspiring comics artists — I think one has to lock in the basics of storytelling mechanics in comics before one can try slightly loopier things like making song-comics — but that is where my head was at then. Though I’m sure everyone is tired of me mentioning this, I will say that Kate Bush’s music particularly made me want to write and draw. I still have a one-page comic I did when I was 17, inspired by her song “Under the Ivy.” Later on in my adolescence, I was also inspired by certain musical subcultures — punk, goth, indie — that influenced the look of the characters in my stories at the time.
There were, of course, visual artists within and outside of comics that I admired, but I’m not sure I was ever trying to emulate them directly. I probably learnt a few basics of the mechanics of comics (anatomy, panel framing, what at some point was called “continuity”) from reading Marvel Comics and from reading How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, but I wasn’t too interested in creating superhero comics myself. I was drawn to some manga and anime at the time too (Phoenix 2772, Battle of the Planets, Captain Harlock) but again, I wasn’t trying to copy that style.
Baci: Considering your lived experience — born in Ethiopia to Bengali parents and mostly raised in Manhattan — do you think an artist’s visual language can be multilingual, recalling more than one cultural heritage in its design elements? How much does your cultural heritage inform your artmaking?
Som: Oh yes, absolutely. I am as much inspired by the South Asian visual culture I was exposed to (images of goddesses; Indian comics; the saris, bindis, and sindoor worn by my cousins and aunts) as I was by French, Belgian, and English cartoons. Even now, I’m taken by certain South Asian motifs (Bhangra and Bollywood dancing, for example) that may make their way obliquely into my stories, and sit comfortably alongside, or within, environments drawn from Russian constructivism or 1980s deconstructivism. I’d like to think the multilingual visual aspect of my work also helps to bust it outside of the idea of genre.
Baci: Spellbound is a memoir, so the autobiographical elements are clear. The anthology-style Apsara Engine reflects more subtle and complex queer experiences, but those experiences also seem personal. Does your queerness guide your comics writing?
Som: If not consciously, then certainly by default. The fact of being a queer author and artist necessarily guides the work you produce, so I think it’s inevitable, isn’t it? At the same time, I never think the work, especially the newer projects, demands of me that I have to dedicate myself to making it queerer than it is. Most of the characters in my stories are queer, even if that is not spelled out, so the stories that they propel must be too. But again, because these are the kinds of characters I’m interested in portraying, the narratives follow suit in terms of being queer — but in a pretty organic way, I think. I never sit down and think “I’m going to write a queer story” or draw images with a certain aesthetic sense. These are inherent to my being, so they come out onto the page equally as naturally.
Baci: Do you letter your comics by hand? Would you consider developing a font from your handwriting?
Som: The only book that I’ve hand-lettered is Spellbound. Shorter pieces (Ground Crew, my collaborative comix/poems with the poet Vidhu Aggarwal, published by Belladonna* Collaborative) are also hand-lettered. For Apsara Engine, Drew Stevens, the graphic designer at Feminist Press, developed a font based on my lettering and it worked spectacularly. The letters have an elegance and warmth to them, such that people think it is hand-lettered! For my new book, I will have to take a similar approach. I think a lot of bigger publishers demand type that is editable in graphic novels.
Baci: In your graphic retelling of the creation of your first comic, which is one of the through lines in Spellbound, Anjali pencils, inks, colors, and letters by hand, but then goes into Adobe Photoshop for clean-up. How much of your real-life process is digital — or is that proprietary knowledge?
Som: Oh, not proprietary at all. I rarely go into Photoshop these days unless it is to clean up images or do small-scale editing. If I have to do bigger surgery, I’ll just redraw entire panels from scratch. And while I’ve used digital colors for illustrations and smaller pieces, I think my comics work will continue to be hand-colored. In any case, all my linework, both in pencils and inks, have always been by hand. I just don’t have the skill or desire to draw on a tablet and I’m comfortable sticking to what I know how to do, which is to use brushes and ink and watercolors.
Baci: On the topic of proprietary knowledge (or not), what can you share about your new book, Amavaria?
Som: This new project is inspired by certain visual documents (maps, travel guidebooks) that address ideas of travel and tourism, which was also at the heart of “Swandive,” a story that proposed ways of visually manifesting and immersing oneself in imaginary queer and trans utopias. Where “Swandive” reflected a kind of aura of queer light and beauty, Amavaria will excavate and unearth the cracks and thorns behind this reflection. The book is presented as a travel guide (though it cannot escape the fact that it is a graphic novel) to an imaginary, vaguely South Asian city-state populated exclusively by trans people.
In the mode of travel programs on TV and online, there is a host, or guide, who addresses the reader directly as she makes her way through the city. She is South Asian and trans herself but not from this part of world, which sets her up as a tourist and outsider. The deeper she delves into this trans utopia, the more she is distracted, waylaid and misdirected from what she thinks is her role as a guide, until we as readers become unsure of the coherence and validity of both the book and the project of the city that it proposes to describe. It is as much a story about the unraveling of a fragile psyche as it is an exploration of how queer and trans people can realize ideas of home, tradition, culture, and belonging.
Baci: Your comics reference music so often — Joy Division, Swans, Rabindranath Tagore — it seems like a natural career progression that you would eventually illustrate an album cover for a musical artist. Is there a musical artist you would want to work with?
Som: I would love to work with artists who continue to make the kind of gauzy, noisy but melodic music that I loved in the ‘90s and beyond (My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints). I think many of them are on the Sonic Cathedral label. There is a lovely synchrony between this kind of music and the imagery it brings to mind. I’m thinking here of things like the cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” album or their “Glider” EP, which perfectly matched a visual shimmer and frequency to the beauty of the sounds and rhythms of the accompanying record. This holds true for things like black metal or punk as well, though I wouldn’t be the person for those kinds of projects.
Baci: Do you have energy for other creative projects while you’re working on a book?
Som: I do have smaller commissions that I do alongside working on my own books. I have done illustrated essays (mostly about music) for the website HiLoBrow, for example. I also love making small paintings as gifts for friends. I was reminded yesterday of a piece I did for my dear friend Jeanne Thornton, which depicted her as The Empress in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.
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