'Hellmouth'.
Julia Gfrörer is an American comic artist and illustrator, who gained a cult following with her highly original dark gothic tales. The stories are often set in historical eras with themes like shame, suffering and transgressive sexuality. Characters live in miserable circumstances and endure horrible events. Gfrörer is often classified as a horror comic artist, though this term is too narrow for her unique body of work. In many ways, its mysterious look is closer to ancient picture stories from ages long gone by. While her name is associated with depressing stories about the human condition, she has also made more light-hearted comics. Stories from this latter category can be described as twisted fanfiction adaptations of her favorite novels, films and TV shows. While Julia Gfrörer publishes in the small press scene, she has also launched some of her work online, while Fantagraphics released her graphic novels 'Black Is the Color' (2012), 'Laid Waste' (2016) and 'Vision' (2020).
Artwork for 'The Deep Ones' (2014), a mini comic by Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins.
Early life
Julia Gfrörer was born in 1982 in Concord, New Hampshire. Her name is German and ought to be pronounced with the "eu" sound (like in the English word "urge"). Since in English many pronounce it as "gfrairer", she has often joked that her last name rhymes with "despair", which fits a recurring theme in her work. Her parents were liberal Quakers, who divorced when she was young. Mostly raised by her mother, a Jungian psychologist, Gfrörer learned a lot about dream analysis and symbolism from her. Since her mother wrote articles for magazines, Gfrörer also attributes much of her writing talent to her. Julia's father was a documentary filmmaker and one of her earliest jobs was helping him out with camera work and editing.
During her youth, Gfrörer enjoyed reading medieval romances, gothic novels and occult stories, and developed a fascination for stories about Christian martyrs. Interviewed by Phoebe Gloeckner for The Comics Journal of 10 March 2017, Gfrörer explained: "What's always been interesting to me about those stories is this narrative of physical suffering being redemptive. You enumerate these horrible, torturous experiences that this fictional person has had, and then that proves that they were really worthy, it proves their love for God or whatever. And in medieval romances and stuff, which are written in a similar way, where the trials that the lovers go through prove that their love is really special. And that's such a beautiful, romantic, and seductive idea, that isn't reflected in reality, I think. The suffering that you go through doesn't necessarily mean much about the quality of the thing that is causing you to suffer. It's probably not necessary."
Originally, Gfrörer had an interest in languages and philology. While studying French and Latin in high school, she learned Mandarin Chinese from a foreign exchange student and took a summer course in American Sign Language. As she wanted to become an Egyptologist, she also learned to decipher hieroglyphics. Eventually Gfrörer felt she wasn't really suited to study languages, she moved on to study Illustration at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. After graduating with a double major in printmaking and painting in 2004, she began exhibiting her work in galleries around the Pacific Northwest. In several interviews, Gfrörer confessed not being much of a comics reader. Her own comics are more influenced by illustrators and engravers. During her college years, a comics class was given for two semesters by professional cartoonist Ellen Forney. This marked the first time Gfrörer tried to make a mini comic, based on a story from the 'Little Flowers of St. Francis'. Among her graphic influences were painters, illustrators and graphic artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, the Victorian Age and early 20th century, among them Aubrey Beardsley, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz, Maxfield Parrish, Alice Neel, Harry Clarke and Aubrey Beardsley. In terms of contemporary artists, she loves the work of Maurice Sendak, Chloe Piene and Junji Ito. In terms of comics, she has named Tony Millionaire, Dame Darcy and Eddie Campbell as inspirations.
'Too Dark to See'.
Early comics
When in 2007 Gfrörer moved to Portland, Oregon, she had just finished a mini comic about St. Francis of Assisi, 'How Life Became Unbearable'. When she took it to the Pony Club Gallery to consign it, she met Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comics, who became her friend and mentor, inspiring her to create longer stories. Another early cartoonist friend in Portland was Sean Christensen, and both he and Williams introduced her to the local comics scene. Already as a teenager, Gfrörer had been self-publishing her writings and comic zines under the imprint Thuban Press. Her pencil-free and instantly inked comic 'All the Ancient Kings' (2008) brought imagined interactions between cultural icons like Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, Warren Zevon and Leonard Cohen. A similar cameofest were the three issues of 'Ariadne auf Naxos' (2009-2011), published under Tim Goodyear's Teenage Dinosaur imprint, in which the cartoonist befriends her favorite characters from literature, history and pop culture. Among her other early zines were 'The Anthology of Doubt' and 'nus in Blue Jeans/Venus in Furs', all characterized by the same gallows humor, self-inclusion, and scribbly drawings.
Gfrörer's first full-length story was 'Flesh and Bone' (Sparkplug, 2010). While it was originally an eight-page comic for an erotic anthology, by the time Gfrörer finished it she felt it shared a closer resemblance to a horror story, and didn't submit it. At the instigation of publisher Dylan Williams, she reworked it into an entirely different 40-page story for Sparkplug Comics. 'Flesh and Bone' tells the story of a young man who seeks a witch's help in reuniting with his recently deceased lover. Gfrörer set the tale in a medieval past, because many of the story's themes, like religious paranoia, missing children, witches' sabbats and execution sites fitted in such an era. The work was nominated for an Ignatz Award in the field of "Outstanding Achievement", but lost to Lisa Hanawalt's 'I Want You'.
In her next mini-comic, 'Too Dark to See' (2011), Gfrörer further explored the theme of supernatural procreation. Mixing sex, darkness, coy humor and fairy tale elements, it tells the story of a mysterious feminine silhouette, a succubus, who visits a couple at night and forces the husband to have sex with her. The next morning he doesn't remember a thing, but he suddenly has a black growth, causing the young lovers' relationship to deteriorize.
'Black is the color'.
Black Is The Color
Gfrörer's next graphic novel, 'Black Is The Color' (2012) was initially serialized online on the Study Group Comics website and later made available in book format by Fantagraphics. The plot takes place in the 17th century, when two sailors are put in a lifeboat in the Strait of Magellan, because food supplies have run short. Out on the open sea, the sailor called Warren is soon the only survivor. Many scenes are slow on action, without much dialogue, to give a sense on how vast the ocean is and how lonely Warren is with his thoughts. One night, he is comforted by the mermaid Eulalia, who gives him new spirit and helps his mind drift away to more pleasant perspectives. To Warren, she is a friendly companion, even though what she presents to him are mere fantasies. Indeed, it's questionable whether she is even a benevolent spirit, as she asks him why he would want to stay alive, seeing that his existence hasn't been very fulfilling up to now. 'Black Is The Color' is named after an Appalachian folk song, once covered by Nina Simone.
'Laid Waste'.
Further graphic novels
The graphic novel 'Laid Waste' (Fantagraphics, 2016) was a bleak tale set in a medieval village during the Black Death. Agnes, a young widow with supernatural strength, has survived the pandemic and tries to continue her life while around her children bury their dead parents' bodies, dogs gnaw on decomposing limbs, and pits are filled with new corpses. Despite all the suffering around them and their unanswered question whether this is the end of the world, she finds some solace in the arms of her neighbor Giles. Four years later, Gfrörer's graphic novel 'Vision' (Fantagraphics, 2020) dealt with Eleanor, a 19th century spinster working as a maid for invalid sister-in-law. One night Eleanor hears a ghost in her bedroom mirror, who sympathizes with her tragic life. They develop a rather creepy friendship, where the mirror entity becomes Eleanor's closest confidant. The mysterious creature pressures her to release all her repressed feelings and desires. Whether this being is real or a sign that Eleanor is losing her sanity is an open question.
'Vision'.
Mini comics
While releasing her acclaimed gothic horror comics through Fantagraphics, Julia Gfrörer has continued to self-publish her own zines and mini-comcis. The anthology 'Black Light' (2013) collected four of her short stories about despair, eroticism, romance and tragedy. The first story, 'River of Tears', deals with a man haunted by his ex-fiance going downhill in a self destructive spiral caused by depression and drug addiction. 'All Is Lost' is a tale about an enchanted bear who must murder a child. In 'Unclean', a heartbroken young woman goes to bed with a bartender after her boyfriend dumped her, and in 'Phosphorus', a teenage boy is sexually molested by a female water ghost. Her subsequent mini comic 'Palm Ash' (2013) was a story of brutality, compassion, and martyrdom during the third century in Rome, when emperor Diocletian persecuted Christians. While writing this comic strip, Gfrörer included several details from her Latin text books from high school, all of which she had read for pleasure rather than research. The same year, Gfrörer contributed a two-page comic story about the Voynich manuscript to Hic & Hoc's 2013 anthology 'Unknown Origins and Untimely Ends: A Collection and Unsolved Mysteries'.
In 'Dark Age' (Mocca, 2016), Gfrörer told a claustrophobic Adam and Eve-like story about a nude, vulnerable human couple in the harsh environment of nature. Nobody knows of their existence and they are seemingly alone in the world. When the man gets trapped in a dark cave, their existential crisis worsens even more. If the woman doesn't get him out alive and if she dies as well, who will ever know or remember them afterwards? 'Goodnight Seattle' (2018) reimagined the cast of the sitcom 'Frasier', confronted with the apocalypse. 'Hellmouth' (2020), serialized on the Solrad website, featured a woman looking for her husband in Hell. All dialogue was written in Latin, and the artwork referenced Hieronymus Bosch. In 2022, this story was included in comic book 'Devotion', a collection of five short comics about heterosexual romance. The other stories were 'The Sheets Were All Be-Bled' (2013), 'Counterweight' (2021), 'Lilith in Exile' (2013) and a new tale, 'Against Nature' (2023). In that same year, Gfrörer also relesed 'Tartarus' (2022), a futuristic art competition where humans collaborate with AI, and 'Vanitas' (2022), about a unicorn hunt and the struggle to preserve innocence.
In 2025, Fantagraphics released a collection of Julia Gfrörer's mini-comics in anthology format, 'World Within the World - Collected Short Comix 2010-2021'.
'Phosphorus'.
Style and themes
Gfrörer approaches her work as picture stories and avoids onomatopoeia as often as possible. She often works in black-and-white. Whenever she does use color, like in 'Phosphorus' (2013), she contrasts a monotone background color with details highlighted in spot colors. Gfrörer uses a lot of negative space. Rather than fill up every panel with imagery, she prefers her backgrounds to not distract from the characters and their actions on the foreground. The artist has a similar approach to her lay-outs. Most pages have only four to six panels per page. Some panels have little immediate action and function as atmospheric, monotone passings of time, which underline a character's isolation. In some stories, like 'Dark Age' (2016) and 'Vision' (2020), Gfrörer even made several panels black, to illustrate how a character is trapped in the dark or loses sight for a while. This gives her work a hypnotic, disorienting effect.
The black-and-white look also adds to an "ancient" feel. Comprable to old manuscripts, Gfrörer's characters have the same deadly serious and eerie expressions people often have on pre20th century drawings, engravings and paintings. Most of her stories are set in a vague past. Gfrörer is uninterested in summarizing historical events, but has used these historical eras as a backdrop to the lives of everyday people. On the same token, she doesn't romantize it either. The past is always a cruel era, where misfortune or early, horrible deaths are a grim reality. Even when she uses fantasy elements from fairy tales, myths or legends, it's never whimsical and wondrous, but terrifying. Creatures like witches ('Flesh and Bone'), mermaids ('Black Is The Colour'), water spirits ('Phosphorus'), ghosts ('Too Dark To See', 'Vision') and the Grim Reaper ('Laid Waste') remind of a time when people understood little about the world around them, opening the doors for fantastic fears.
Sexuality and horror
Julia Gfrörer's work is also notable for its frank but matter-of-fact depiction of sexuality, which she feels is often ommited from stories for no good reason. Yet she doesn't want to make pornography. Her characters have no idealized bodies or genitalia, but are regular people. The same can be said about the sex itself, which isn't always great, let alone titillating. Gfrörer uses nudity mostly to evoke vulnerability or discomfort. Interviewed by Zainab Akhtar for Comics Beat, published on 7 January 2013, she said: "Most depictions of sex in comics are so painful to read: they're insulting to women, they lack pathos, they're banal. No doubt the way I compose a sex scene is, at least in part, a reaction against the more clinical depictions I've been frustrated by in the past. I try talk about sexuality in a way that feels both truthful and erotic to me, that reflects my actual experience of sexuality, which means being ruthless in including whatever baggage is necessary to that end."
Some of her "erotic" scenes are quite disturbing. In 'Flesh and Bone', a man masturbates on his lover's grave. In 'Too Dark to See', a husband is basically raped by a succubus, while in her short story 'Phosphorus', a creepy swamp monster with glowing eyes forces a teenage boy to masturbate for her. When asked in a 24 December 2013 CBR interview by Alex Dueben whether she would consider herself a horror comic artist, she replied: "Possibly the relationship of my work to horror is similar to the relationship of post rock to rock music, in that I make use of a lot of the traditional instruments and structures of the genre, but my intent is to create something more textured and exploratory, less goal-oriented, more humane. I find my own work frightening, and I like when people call it "horror," but my stories tend to be anchored more by sadness than by terror. To the extent that I'm interested in conjuring emotions in the "fear" genre, I like creeping dread, contempt, self-directed disgust, the compulsion to extinguish oneself, a crushing sense of futility. I like those moments when you seem to perceive the world with perfect rational clarity and precision, and you see it for the black, remorseless chasm that it is. They might be more accurately called "tragedy" comics than "horror" comics."
Indeed, Gfrörer's comics are extraordinarily nihilistic and often controversial. What nobody can deny, is that Julia Gfrörer is a highly original artist, whose powerful images haunt readers days after they have read them. Although several scenes are highly uncomfortable and disturbing depictions of sexuality, suffering and death, there is also a macabre beauty about them.
Ladydrawers - 'Let's go shopping'.
Collaborations
For the magazine Truthout, Gfrörer collaborated with culture critic and author Anne Elizabeth Moore on the comic strip 'Ladydrawers' (2013). The comic analyzes women's international labor through a variety of professions. Gfrörer illustrated two episodes about the topics fashion and shopping. Other episodes of 'Ladydrawers' have been drawn by Gabrielle Gamboa. In addition, Gfrörer has made several comics in collaboration with her husband Sean T. Collins, who usually served as writer and co-editor. The couple edited the horror art anthology 'Mirror Mirror II' (2ndCloud, 2017), for which they translated excerpts from a medieval French heraldic text. Among the other contributors were Clive Barker, Nicole Claveloux, Simon Hanselmann, Carol Swain and Celine Loup.
The couple also adapted two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe into twisted pornographic mini comics. 'Pace Requiescat' (2013) is based on 'The Cask of Amontillado', and 'The Hideous Dropping Off Of The Veil' (2014) tackles 'The Fall Of The House Of Usher'. nterviewed by Minh Nguyen for aqnb.com on 16 October 2017, Collins reflected: "I think Julia has said before that when we excavate the sexual subtext of Poe, it's barely even subtext at all. His work seems to vibrate with a sort of ecstatic panic that is so close to arousal that it conjures up that sensation like emotional synesthesia. We're just coming out and saying so."
Among the couple's other co-productions are the mini-comics 'The Deep Ones' (2014), a chilling look at the reasons we fear open water, and 'Hiders' (2015), about teenage werewolves haunting the countryside. Gfrörer, Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin also made 'All Fucked-Up: Tales from the Roadhouse (Expanded Universe)' (2020), a mini comic featuring six erotic fan fiction stories based on the cult action movie 'Road House' (1989).
'The Hideous Dropping Of The Veil'.
Book illustrations
As an illustrator, Julia Gfrörer livened up the pages of Hallie Fryd's 'Martyrdom: The Coloring Book' (Zest Books, 2015), an odd book featuring stories about Christian martyrs, in which readers can color Gfrörer's images of suffering Catholic saints being executed. As she dryly said on her Tumblr page: "The attending stories will go down pretty easy at cocktail hours as well (...) Be sure to have more than one red crayon handy." Two years later, Gfrörer published another coloring book: 'Aristocracy: The Coloring Book' (Zest Books, 2017), where scenes of eccentric (and sometimes famous) rich people are given the same treatment. Gfrörer additionally illustrated Oscar Wilde's 'The Star-Child' (2012) in the Scout Books Fantastic Tales series, as well as Gretchen Felker-Martin's novel 'No End Will Be Found' (Thuban Press, 2016), set during the witch trials at Würzburg, Germany.
'Martyrdom. The Coloring Book'.
Written and graphic contributions
In 2009, Gfrörer designed a label for Arcana Perfumes. She contributed a drawing titled 'The 39 Ryan Goslings' to Runner Runner 2 (2013), a free anthology by Tugboat Press. Gfrörer additionally made a short comic, 'Spirit Hand', for 'On Your Marks' (2013), the official short-run small press fest anthology by Max Clotfelter. 'Frail Nature' (2013) was her contribution to the art show 'The Tortured Page' in Baltimore, Maryland, later collected in the anthology 'Best American Comics'. For The Comics Journal, Gfrörer has analyzed the comic medium in her column 'Symbol Reader', and she is one of the maintainers of the 'Comics Democracy' page on Tumblr. Under her own imprint, she has released 'The Thuban Press Guide to Analog Self-Publishing', with step-by-step instructions to make your own book without a computer.
Cartoonist Phoebe Gloeckner praised Julia Gfrörer as "one of the most promising artists/authors of her generation" and "a powerhouse. Learn to spell her name."
Illustration by Julia Gfrörer.