#guillozine

My friend and fellow comics-lover Ben Howard interviewed the Two Dead Queers team! 

We discuss our latest zine Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE as well as horror, art, censorship, the creative process, psychology, and more in this interview!

(See my better and more luxurious half answer like a professional and me answer like, well, me – the most inelegant mumbling motherfucker around! And then go read our free zine.)

My friend and fellow horror-lover Ben Howard wrote a really brilliant review of the first issue of R. E. Hellinger and my zine series, Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE – a review which not only talks about the source material (and, justly, praises it) but also discusses queer media, queer and indie comics, and the noted absence of horror and horror coverage in queer media spaces in favor of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

I could quote all my favorite bits of Ben’s review, though then I’d probably be quoting the whole dang thing, but I’ll leave you with some really nice highlights and let y’all check out the rest of his review on Under the Ink.

On GUILLOZINE:

R.E. Hellinger and K.M. Claude are here to fill this neglected nitch with a zine so gay, so dark, so utterly obscene to its core, Oscar Wilde will rise from the grave just to straddle it. 

One of the nicest things ever said about my art, possibly because it reaches deep into the core of what I want to do with my art and truly sees me:

I love Claude’s art because he realizes the inherent eroticism of horror that so many artists do not. Horror is the only genre that realizes the ties between death and sex. Even awful things can have a sensual beauty to them if you have the right perspective to illustrate it. And, boy oh boy, does K. M. Claude have it!

On queer media’s distant affair with the “other woman” horror:

A lot of the what gets attention in queer media these days, at least in our circles, is YA queer stories that take a lot of hints, aesthetically, to the likes of Steven Universe and many other kids’ media. There’s nothing wrong with that. I like that queer media just fine. But that shouldn’t be the dominant form of queer media. There are those in the LGBT community that crave darker stuff, media that explores queerness via blood, guts, and depravity. There should be as much room for John Waters as there is for Rebecca Sugar.

On GUILLOZINE as a whole:

I do love the fact both creators are fearless in their presentation of eroticism, even problematic subjects such as incest, pedophilia, etc. These are not subjects cheaply exploited, mind you. Even in its delightful sadism, Claude and Hellsinger explore painful subjects with keen insight, and, damn it, that’s what horor is about! 

 With Claude’s beautiful gorno art and Hellinger’s tantalizingly macabre prose, Guillozine fills in a niche of queer erotic horror that desperately needs to grow. You may not know exactly what the hell you just read, but I can guarantee it is unlike anything you have seen.

I’m gonna have to make a reviews section on twodeadqueers’ website because we just got an exquisite and darling long review by gutterlurker over on itch.io though I think it’s only accessible to the account holder but I copied it to @sugarbitz who is absolutely tearing up because people like what we’ve made.

Imagine that: people like what two queers who’re told we’re too queer for the mainstream world yet too weird, too gross, too strange and unusual for queer lit and queer comics have made.

Thank you all for your support of Two Dead Queers Present: GUILLOZINE

We are still waiting for KDP to link the current editions with the no longer available first editions so that anyone with an old link can easily find the latest editions.