This weekend is the 11th annual Flame Con, the world’s largest comics and pop culture convention focused on the work of LGBTQ+ creators. As part of this year’s show, Flame Con, with the support of sponsor Kickstarter, continued its SparQ program. According to Flame Con, SparQ aims to amplify the work of marginalized voices in the comics community. This year, Kickstarter made a goal of elevating the voices of rising transgender and nonbinary creators. Three up-and-coming artists were given free table space at Flame Con to share their work with the community, and in the runup to the convention, we got to talk to all three.
Matt Lazorwitz: Thanks for sitting down with us (in a virtual setting, anyway). Please introduce yourselves!
Fran Sundblad: I’m Fran Sundblad, she/her. I am the creator of the webcomic series Tiff & Eve, which is a slice-of-life strip following a trans woman named Tiff as she navigates the trials of her new gender with her boisterous best friend Eve. You can enjoy their adventures on my site, FranSundblad.com.
Julian Cormac: Hi! I’m Julian Cormac, they/them pronouns. I can be found at feralroyal.bsky.social and on my website, feralroyal.com. I’m an artist who mainly finds interest in dark, messy fantasies of all different stripes.
Silver Johnson: Meowdy! My name is Silver, and my pronouns are he/him. You can find me here: linktr.ee/blacksugarpill.
Matt: What are some of the first comics you remember reading?
Fran: I have absolutely loved newspaper comic strips ever since I could first read. I would check out loads of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes books from the library until I’d eventually read them all and had to move on to Peanuts, The Far Side, Dilbert, Foxtrot and Pearls Before Swine. I was reading newspaper comics by the treasury up through high school. I think I only read one actual comic book when I was young, but you couldn’t tear me away from comic strips. I was glued.
Julian: The actual first comics I remember reading are newspaper strips, a format I don’t have much fondness for these days. I had one of the thick Calvin and Hobbes books, and my cousins had a bunch of Garfield collections. There were a lot of those Archie Comics digests floating around my house, and a Tintin book, I want to say it was Tintin in America? A mixed bag of good art to show a kid and complete slop, basically.
Silver: I think the earliest comics I can recall reading were Bone and Calvin and Hobbes. I adored those comics so much as a kid and still recommend them to people today.
Matt: What drew you to create comics?
Fran: I see what you did there.
I’ve been desperate to create comic strips for practically all of my life. When I was younger, I think it’s just because I thought comics were a clever way to tell a joke, like with The Far Side’s single-panel cartoons, but now I really appreciate the medium for being able to portray characters and stories in ways other mediums can’t.
When I transitioned after college, I started making comic strips again, but with a trans character named Tiff. Tiff’s been a great way to process my transition and make cracks about it. I like being silly, and having a place to make light of my experiences as a trans woman has helped me immensely. And it seems I’ve found a lot of people who really appreciate it, too.
Julian: Storytelling, most of all. I love drawing, and I love making a million drawings, but I need it to be in service of a bigger narrative to be truly in my element. Plus, comics are an art form where the flow of time is completely in your control as the artist. I love the ways that I can mess with time, information, history, internality, all of these things that I would really struggle to convey if I was limited to only prose or a purely audiovisual format.
Silver: My art is more focused on illustrations, but every now and then I like to draw one- to two-panel comics of my original characters. I get a lot of inspiration from media I enjoy such as video games, TV shows, comics, etc. I always found the art in them fascinating, and felt motivated to create works of my own through their inspiration.
Matt: What artists do you jam on personally?
Fran: Gosh, is there enough room for all of them?
When it comes to traditional newspaper comic strips, I am a big fan of Stephan Pastis, Bill Amend and Dana Simpson, just to name a few. My current favorite is Will Henry, whose Wallace the Brave series has really charming art and delightfully lively characters.
For webcomics, Jacob Luther of @townytowncomics is equal parts hilarious and stupidly clever, @DeWackyPianist makes great animated comics. His character designs are fun, and he really likes to play around with cartoon physics/logic. @HolleringElk makes very impressive horror comics with jaw-dropping visuals. I could go on and list another 20, but I should keep this short.
Julian: Oh boy. I’ll limit this to currently working comic artists and keep it rapidfire, otherwise I’ll need an extra week and about three pages of small print to even begin answering this.
Otava Heikkilä’s making some really excellent, chewy work both in terms of visual panache and emotional storytelling. Momokuren’s The Summer Hikaru Died is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in gay horror stories. I consider Tatsuki Fujimoto the best mangaka I’ve ever read — Fire Punch, Look Back, Chainsaw Man: all killer no filler. E.K. Weaver and S.E. Case are two of my absolute favorite webcomic artists for (among other things) sincere, humanistic writing. Casey Nowak has this sumptuously vibrant style and has inspired me tremendously to push myself in both inking and general expressivity. Same for the work of Leo Fox, whose art in Prokaryote Season completely kicked my ass. Also, I picked up Ariel Ries’ new book Strange Bedfellows after reading their development blogs for it, and that is some really excellent work.
Comics, man.
Silver: Some of my top fav artists include Q Hayashida, Satoshi Kon, David Firth, Sinnykitty and Babezord. There’s also a ton of artists I follow online that inspire me all the time.
Matt: Is this your first Flame Con? If not, what are some of your best Flame Con memories? If it is, what is a favorite memory for any con?
Fran: I actually haven’t been to many cons. It’s my first Flame Con and only the second or third con I’ve ever been to. My first con was the first Webcomicon in Detroit in ’24. Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine was there on tour promoting his new book. Listening to him tell stories of trying to make it as a cartoonist had me riveted. Pastis is a personal hero of mine, and seeing him in person was like having a childhood dream come true.
If you want a sillier story, also at Webcomicon I managed to knock over one of Julia Kaye’s books on display and then spill the contents of my purse over her table. I quickly picked everything up and then fled in embarrassment.
Julian: It’s my first Flame Con, yeah! There are so many lovely moments I’ve had at cons I will feel really bad for leaving anyone out, but my favorite memories consist mostly of the little random moments of connection you get with people passing by. Once I had someone stop at the table because I was selling some washi tape with a brain pattern, and they were like, “Oh, I’m a neuroscientist and I love bullet journaling,” which completely blew my mind. I love how comics events bring in such a variety of people.
Silver: This will be my first Flame Con, and I’m super excited for it! A queer-focused comic-con is right up my alley.
Matt: What are you most looking forward to at Flame Con, professionally and personally?
Fran: Professionally, this is the first con I’ve ever tabled at, and I’m excited to display my recently released Tiff & Eve book. I’m looking forward to seeing a fan or two and maybe meeting some new ones.
Personally, this is going to be the first big comic convention I’ve ever been to, and I’m very eager to see what they’re like. I’m also due to meet up with several friends at this con, including Alex DiStasi from the webcomic “I’m Still Alex.” She’s a hoot.
Julian: Professionally, this is our first time tabling a fully fledged con with our debut graphic novel The Vow, and I’m thrilled to get to talk it up to people! Earlier this year, we tabled a few local one-day events, but I consider this The Vow’s proper convention debut. Also, I had the chance to whip up some new work to set out alongside The Vow, and I’m looking forward to showing that off.
Personally, there’s a lot of other artists in attendance who I’m really excited to meet in person! There’s a great mix of people whose work I have been following for a while and can’t wait to pick up and people who I’m online pals with but haven’t yet seen in the flesh.
Silver: I’m an artist who’s also very passionate about creating and exploring other works of art, so I’m very excited to see the other tables in the artist alley. It’s the first spot I normally check out when I attend any convention as well. Making connections with other artists on a professional and personal level is also very fulfilling for me, too. I hope to also learn more about Flame Con in general and to potentially come back and enjoy it for many more years in the future.
Matt: Do you have any pets? If so, please tell us about them.
Fran: My wife and I have one cat who is a calico and is named Dabberella Yeetster (Dabs or Dabbers for short). She is a feisty, ferocious indoor tiger that loves to lounge on couch cushions, demand pets while I’m at my drawing desk, and sneaks her way into my filing cabinet. She is a furry little monster, and we love her.
Julian: Our household has three cats and two ball pythons. The latter, Dove and Giorno, I’ve owned since college; they’re lovely little critters. I’ve personally turned more than one person around on a light-to-moderate phobia by demonstrating that snakes are, more than anything, very chill and kind of dopey. Each of the cats has a designated favorite person who they are glued to, so if I’m ever discussing “my cat,” it’s probably Marceline. She is visually identical to all other fluffy black cats in the world, sounds like she smokes a pack a day and loves having her belly rubbed like a dog. Baffling animal. I adore her.
Silver: I do! I have a lovely black cat named Susuwatari (Susu for short). He’s my precious wandering sootball who loves to chirp constantly.
Matt: Flame Con is an amazing convention, a place where creators from marginalized communities can feel accepted, welcomed and embraced for being themselves. As an up-and-coming creator, how do you feel the industry as a whole could better support creators from these communities?
Fran: I am entirely independent and consider myself more a part of the webcomic world than comic books, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I publish my work almost exclusively to social media and hosting sites like Webtoon.
When it comes to social media, several companies like Meta have made it clear they don’t care about our communities. A month ago, someone commented on an Instagram post of mine that “Trans people should be exterminated.” On any other site like Reddit or Bluesky, reporting this would have had the comment removed and the user flagged. Not Insta. I was straight up told that calling for queer extermination doesn’t violate their guidelines. Adolf Zuckerberg does not care about us.
If the social media industry wants to show support for queer creators and their communities, then they need to, at the very least, stop encouraging people to be straight up hostile to us like that. They won’t, so what we need to do is find different avenues to get our work out there without social media, like email newsletters or Discord servers. If we want to support our communities, we need to find ways to subvert the algorithm and encourage our audiences to, as well.
Personally, I’m part of Sunday Comix Collective, which is a collective made of webcomic artists where we send our comics to readers by email biweekly. Fans appreciate it as it’s a way to still read the comics they enjoy without needing social media or fear of missing any strips.
Julian: Aside from comics I’m also in close proximity to the indie game development scene. My answer here is influenced by what I’ve seen play out in that industry, because I think across disciplines the big problems remain sort of the same. There should be more efforts to include and uplift marginalized artists in more tangible ways than just social media initiatives. Waivers for table fees (like SparQ!), grants for covering travel costs or print expenses — this is stuff that can really be make-or-break for someone who is struggling to get a foothold in the industry or justify carving out the time to work on their art. More infrastructure to support artists who don’t live in the U.S. (and particularly those who can’t safely travel here to sell their work at events) and more open communication about what are reasonable rates vs. what is someone taking advantage of your eagerness to make a name for yourself.
We can always be doing better, but I do think there’s a lot of moves being made in the right direction to support marginalized artists. For example, I really appreciate being able to table with SparQ’s help — we wouldn’t have been able to make Flame Con work without it! I’m also part of the Cartoonist Co-Op, which is an organization centered around bettering the labor rights of people in comics worldwide. There’s a lot of good work being done to help support marginalized creatives, it’s just a matter of finding where you can make the most difference.
Silver: I feel that representation in general is one of the most important things as it’s still lacking in many areas of the industry today, which is why I’m very grateful for events like Flame Con. Having more events like this not only helps bring the marginalized communities together, but also to encourage other communities and industries to do the same. More spaces/opportunities for our voices and creations to be seen and heard need to be provided.
Flame Con 2025 is Aug. 16-17 at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel. You can purchase your tickets HERE.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
