The following is an interview with cartoonist Soizick Jaffre and Stacked Deck Press’ Tara Avery regarding the recent launch of a Zoop crowdfunding campaign for the graphic memoir, A Good Sport, in collaboration with Stacked Deck Press. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Jaffre and Avery about the creative process of bringing Jaffre’s journey to life on the page, what readers can anticipate in terms of backer rewards, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on the recent launch of your Zoop crowdfunding campaign for your graphic memoir, A Good Sport! What inspired you to share your story with readers?
Soizick Jaffre: I wanted to share about my experience of the Gay Games. I just thought it was interesting subject and would make a great book. I immediately shared that idea with Tara from Stacked Deck Press. My experience of the Gay Games 10 in Paris in 2018 was obviously very positive, and also very emotional due to the presence of athletes from all over the world, including Africa. I discovered the true meaning of the games, that is to create a bridge to friendship. But I had no idea how it would turn out to be a memoir about sports in general.
BD: In balancing the writing and artistic duties of the project, what can you share with us about your creative process in bringing this personal narrative to life?
SJ: I both write and draw. First, I work on the general architecture of the book. I define the concept of the project, and a very basic story outline. Second, I write the first chapters, but not the entire book, I start composing a layout for those chapters, and I create the pages right away. There is no storyboarding for me, and no penciling in my craft. I just go ahead and work around the text with the most important aspect of a comic book: the visual narrative. I need to see it now! The text is key and comes first, because you are telling a story and it must be well written and organized. But comics are about the dynamic of the visual art that brings out emotions in the reader.
Once I have placed the text, composed the page and that I start drawing and working on my colors, I enter a different level of consciousness. Hence the surreal imagery in my work… I always listen to a podcast or some documentary, sometimes music. I therefore block all thoughts and I am trapped into that other story I am listening to, that has nothing to do with mine, except maybe on an emotional level, and I work on my art right away, without any second thought. I need to get into a mood and stop intellectualizing my work. I need to let it all go. Coloring is my favorite part, by the way. It’s a hallucinating experience for me.
When I am done with those pages, I continue working on the book, revisiting my outline and general idea for the book, based on what I have produced, that caused some happy “accidents”. I write the next chapters with a new sense of what this book really is about. I follow the same process, but I keep going back and forth between the first and the second part of the book. It’s like a maze I am exploring. It really works like a puzzle. The main message and the theme of my creative piece do not change as the plot development evolves. New elements provide the story with unexpected symbolical value. In A Good Sport, the bird element, for instance, gradually became a central leitmotiv, a key pattern, I did not initially anticipate. I like to use the image of quilt making when it comes to my creative process. In the end, I hope readers will enjoy entering my poetic maze and access the emotional message of the book, one piece at a time. The intricacy of the patterns requires attention to details, and that allows me to manage my tendency to get lost in the details or to procrastinate. That’s the reason why I work fast, on bits and pieces together, and just sow along the way. It’s really about geometry, not just numbers. It’s not accounting, it’s a game. It’s about creating the lines, shapes and surfaces, that will encapsulate your message. The result, hopefully, is a complexity of meaning that mirrors the complexity of human experience.
BD: At Fanbase Press, our #StoriesMatter initiative endeavors to highlight the impact that stories can have on audiences of various mediums. How do you feel that your story may connect with and impact readers?
SJ: I have always loved reading or hearing about other people’s experiences, and other people’s personal stories probably have helped me far more than I realize, throughout my life. Autobiography offers an alternative viewpoint with intensely individual experience and a world of totally authentic and unique people, whom we can identify with. Autobiography is also fiction, subjectively, because it’s remote and it is not your reality, and also because, objectively, the truth has been distorted, willingly or not, by the author. What’s always genuine though, and always true for the reader on a deeper level, is the human emotional experience. I trust that many readers will relate to my emotional experience, that is universal. The story I am sharing about in this book is almost secondary.
BD: In light of the crowdfunding campaign, are there any particular backer rewards that you would like to highlight for our readers?
Tara Avery: Our backer rewards for the Zoop campaign showcase Soizick’s colorful and energetic artwork. The pages in A Good Sport which lead off each chapter are great examples of illustration on their own, and we will be offering archival prints of them. Soizick’s clever logo design for the book, which incorporates a cheerful cartoon bird depicted in the story, will be offered as a sew-on patch that can adorn someone’s jacket, jeans, or bowling shirt. We’ll also be offering some of the usual fan-favorite rewards such as enamel pins and signed sketches from Soizick herself.
BD: Are there any other projects on which you are working that you would like to share with readers?
SJ: I will have a short story published in the next Revue Planches in fall of this year!
TA: Revue Planches is a French Canadian anthology series focused on arts-first comics.
BD: Lastly, what would you like to tell fans who want to learn more about the Zoop campaign for A Good Sport and your other work?
TA: The easiest way to learn more about the Zoop campaign is to go to zoop.gg/c/agoodsport and sign up for updates. We’ll also have an interview with Kurt Sasso at Two Geeks Talking coming up on March 8th for those who would like to hear a more in-depth conversation about A Good Sport and the experiences that led Soizick to create to this incredible book.
You can also find a story of hers in another Stacked Deck Press publication, ALPHABET: The LGBTQAIU+ Creators, from Prism Comics. It’s available at the Stacked Deck Press website and through Amazon.
