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In anticipation of next month's deadline for submissions for the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant, we're going to run some spotlights on previous recipients. If you're making comics and you could use a hand publishing or promoting your work, we strongly encourage you to read up on the grant and make a submission!

Steve MacIsaac was awarded the QPG in 2005, the first year that it was offered, for Shirtlifter #1, and Justin Hall was the co-recipient, along with Tommy Roddy, in 2007 for Glamazonia the Uncanny Super Tranny. Hall has since joined the Prism Board as the Talent Relations Chair, and now helps manage the Queer Press Grant program.

Justin: So, Steve, how was it for you to get the Queer Press Grant? Did it feel like a kind of validation?

Steve: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I had just finished up four issues of Sticky with Dale Lazarov, so I already had some sense of myself as a cartoonist… But we had just had the book cancelled by Eros [the collection was later picked up by Bruno Gmunder] and I was nervous about Shirtlifter, as it was my first time writing a comic.

The Grant was also really important for me as an entry into a comics community. I had just gotten back from living in Japan for four years, and I hadn’t really met any other cartoonists yet. I was making my art in this almost complete vacuum, so the Grant was not only validating, it was a way to connect with other comics people. That was when I first met you, at that APE [the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco] where I was selling Shirtlifter #1, which I was able to print with my Grant money.

Justin: I had a similar kind of experience with the Xeric Award grant [the only other grant besides the Queer Press Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, created by Peter Laird of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles], which I know you’ve won as well. I was making comics completely on my own, in that kind of vacuum you mentioned, with no idea whether they were good enough for anyone else to ever care.

Winning the Xeric for my first comic A Sacred Text forced me to acknowledge that it was finally time to actually get my comics off my drawing table and out into the world. If I hadn’t gotten the Grant, I don’t know if I would ever have had the courage to actually publish my work. Or at least it would have taken me a lot longer…

By the time I got the Queer Press Grant for Glamazonia, I already had a firmly established sense of myself as a comic book creator, so it was a very different experience. Still validating, of course, but not in that same, transformative way.

Steve: You know, I was so naïve when I got the Queer Press Grant… I really thought that it was going to start me off on a self-sustaining career as an independent cartoonist.

Justin: What do you mean?

Steve: Well, that I was going to put out a Shirtlifter once every couple of months, and sell enough of them to make a living at it.

[both laugh]

Justin: That’s so sweet…

Steve: Yeah, I got over that quickly. [laughs] Still, the Grant has been really useful to me, besides just getting the money. I get to put it in every artist bio I write and every book I put out. Also, every time someone wins the Grant, I get a spillover PR effect when my name gets trotted out each year as the first of a list of recipients.

Justin: I think it also carries a bit of cache in a retail situation.

Steve: Well, I don’t know if people picking up your comic at a bookstore know what the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant really is, but it sounds impressive, doesn’t it? [laughs]

I don’t know. I mean, the reality is that it’s become harder and harder for independent self-publishers to make it in the comic book market. Diamond [the most important comic book distributor] has upped their threshold for initial orders from $2,500 when I started out to $7,000 now. That’s impossible for an indy self-publisher who isn’t Jeff Smith or Terry Moore.

Justin: Who doesn’t already have a big name in the field…

Steve: Right. So in a way, I wonder what the point is now for a Queer Press Grant or a Xeric. I mean, if you can’t get into Diamond, you can’t really make it into the comic book stores in any meaningful way.

Justin: So you have to go to the bookstores, or find other venues. Which is even more true for queer creators, I think. Many comic book stores are still leery of carrying LGBT material… which is one of the reasons that I’m so glad we have something like a Queer Press Grant to level the playing field even just a little bit. But really, a lot of us queer cartoonists have to essentially bypass the comic book stores.

Steve: The problem is that bookstores won’t carry pamphlet [saddle bound, as opposed to perfect bound] comics, so you have to have a big enough book to have a spine. Which isn’t easy for a new creator starting out.

Justin: Agreed. There’s also the web, and mini-comics [hand-printed comics, using a stapler and everything from photocopies to silkscreens]…

Steve: But the Queer Press Grant doesn’t cover those, does it?

Justin: Not necessarily. The majority of the applicants do have business plans that involve the traditional route of printing and distributing comics, but I agree that those are becoming increasingly impossible. I think any well thought out business plan is acceptable for the Grant, even if it’s thinking outside the box. We just want to know that we’re giving money to a project that will actually be made.

Steve: Speaking of which, where’s the Glamazonia book you got the Grant for?

Justin: Oy. Yeah, it has been over a year now, hasn’t it? The book has expanded a lot from the initial proposal. Right now, I’m looking at a full-color book of around a hundred pages.

Steve: Oh my god.

Justin: Tell me about it. It’s actually mostly done, except for the coloring, which is a whole new learning curve for me. I’m also involving other creators in it, which has its own set of complications. In the meantime, I’ve put out a batch of Glamazonia mini-comics with the Grant money, which is something.

Steve: And what are your plans for the book when it comes out?

Justin: Umm… Well, I want to sell it. [laughs] The reality is that Glamazonia is my most marketable property, which is not something I ever expected. I created her initially as an in-joke for gay comic geeks, and I never expected she would go any farther than that. But all sorts of people eat her up. She was on the cover of the S.F. Bay Guardian [an alternative weekly newspaper that’s not a gay newspaper], for god’s sake! I honestly don’t understand it. I thought my True Travel Tales would be my crossover hit, but no one really cares about travel comics, apparently. So I’m ready to capitalize on Glamazonia, but first I need a good, solid book of her material behind me.

Steve: Well, good luck with that. I’m just planning on plugging away on my Shirtlifter saga, with more big, beefy guys being really neurotic and talking too much.

Justin: It’s what you do. And we love you for it.

[both laugh]

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).