Our Creator Interview series returns with Youtuber and prolific creator Jennie Gyllblad. Creator of many comics, but more known for Skal, Jennie has been creating for a long time, and focused on a wide breadth of comics. Biographical, fantastical, it's a bit of everything! Jennie also creates content for her JennieGyllblad YouTube channel, giving back the community and providing a space for discussion of the medium and industry. With that let's dig in.
GlobalComix: Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you started making comics.
Jennie Gyllblad: Hej! My name is Jennie Gyllblad – I'm originally from Northern Sweden, but I've been living and working in the UK for well over a decade now. I'm a full-time self-published comic book creator.
I've always been making comics and art, but it was never seen as a career, it was more like an outlet for me to draw my own fictional stories and embarrassing real-life events. Comics functioned early on as a sort of diary that later turned into “Jenspirations” that were posted on places like tumblr back in the day. I also read a lot of comics and consumed anime as a kid, so naturally I wanted to make my own stuff because of that! I especially fell in love with hand-drawn comics and am very inspired by creators who do traditional inking, painting and collage.
Being kind of “a nerd” back in Sweden meant I hung out with people who played computer games and pen-and-paper roleplaying adventures. So naturally I was drawing short comics of whatever happened in gaming sessions. This transferred to online spaces later on when I was roleplaying on a Neverwinter Nights server and used the connected forum to post comics of my characters from that world. That's actually how my webcomic Skal was born!
Spice art and comics naturally followed all of this from my teenage years up until now – I very much did that stuff just for myself and showed nobody. My cringe teenage fantasies were locked away in cupboards – Thank god there was no proper social media back then for me to recklessly post on!
GlobalComix: You’ve got lots of different projects uploaded to GlobalComix, do you have any that you
are focusing on right now?
Jennie: I have my tiny fingers in many pies at once! It's basically how I stay afloat as a creator and keep my brain relatively sane. So at the moment I'm uploading a lot of our back-catalogue of comic issues for By Man & Angels – A Space Opera comic written by Pedro La Barba and painted by me.
But I'm also busy finishing up my next installment of Jenitales: Vegasm, which is my most popular work for some reason... It's erotica, hah! I'm currently putting the whole book together and once it's been sent to my original Kickstarter backers I will be making it available on here as well!
My webcomic Skal will be back on the work-desk after that and I intend to update that more frequently! It had to take a back-seat while I was catching up with other commitments. There is also more horror work on the horizon, not to mention the newest project about my grandmother's life in Sweden during World War 2.
As you can probably tell, “focusing on one comic” isn't really something that's in my vocabulary.
GlobalComix: You’re also a YouTuber! How do you manage your everyday life with comic creation and being a YouTuber? (Thank you for the video you made about us with your feedback, by the way!)
Jennie: Yes! And I'm also a twitch-streamer (Jeninator): Basically, if there's a place for me to yap, I'll probably be there! Youtube is very much a hobby that I do whenever I have the time and inclination to – I love video editing and just getting to talk (Bless/Curse adhd), and when it comes to indie-comics industry shenanigans, there's always a lot to get off my chest. I've also been asked a lot of questions over the years about how I make a living doing comics as a self-published creator and so on, so I'm using YouTube to pass on some of that knowledge – if it can be helpful to at least one person, I'll call it a win.
I tend to talk about platforms a lot (it's a bit of an running joke on twitch), so it was only natural to take a look at GlobalComix from the eyes of an indie creator - I'm glad you guys liked the video!
The key to balancing this relatively newfound hobby of YouTube with my actual comic making is to keep it a hobby, never an obligation.
I already have so much to handle with scheduling, deadlines, admin, marketing and creative pressures in comics – YouTube should never become that. I'll upload when I feel like it, and I'll post whatever I want (but let's be honest, it's mostly about art and comics because I'm work-damaged).
GlobalComix: Is there any specific advice you’d give to creators who would like to start their own
YouTube channel?
Jennie: This is going to sound very generic and obvious: But you should be making what you want to make. Following trends and trying to pressure yourself with posting-schedules and algorithm-bait is probably just going to make you feel terrible. At the end of the day, what you put out there will hopefully find its way to people who want to see it. So for me, I use YouTube mainly for two things:
- As a casual outlet for me to just talk – a lot (Comic-making is silent at the end of the day, and I need to run my mouth like a motor somewhere).
- As a place to post more structured helpful videos for fellow creatives in my field (or people who are thinking of getting into comics). So that's where you'll find the platform reviews, the TOS talk, the comic making guides etc.
This can change in the future if I want to experiment with other things. I think the key here is to not overthink it and go with the flow. Try not to be too precious and perfectionist with your channel. It's there to have fun with and for you to learn by Doing The Thing. The first few videos will probably be cringe, but that's the same with comics. You need to make the pages to get better at it.
I think using YouTube to try new things is really fun and honestly what it's there for. If something doesn't scratch that creative itch, you can pivot to other things. There's no harm in that! And with every smartphone basically functioning like a proper camera and mic now, you can just get started ASAP with very little up-front cost.
If you're thinking of doing more video editing in the future, I recommend Davinci Resolve. It's free and has no watermarks or anything. It's also used by proper professionals in the video making industry, so it's legit good software. This does mean that you need a computer that can handle it though, so that's the one drawback! But yeah, everything I've learned about video editing and YouTube posting has come from YouTube itself, for free. It's a great platform for this reason.
One thing I would say though: If you do any kind of “challenging” art, like erotica, keep in mind that YouTube is very harsh when it comes to censoring nudity and even talking about these subjects. So that's why I'll keep referring to it as “Spice”. And final advice that you probably hear from everyone: If one of your videos pop off for any reason: Don't read the comments. Take care of yourself and have fun!
GlobalComix: What sort of anime, manga, comics, or cartoons have inspired you along your artistic journey over the years?
Jennie: As a kid I was flicking through comics before I could even read. Donald Duck comics (Or Kalle Anka as he's known in Sweden) was a staple in our household. From there I went over to Fantomen and whatever else my relatives had lying around. Even if it wasn't really suitable for me. In primary school I pivoted over to anime and manga. I remember bringing a 3x3 eyes VHS to my after-school club to watch with a bunch of 12 year olds. If you know that anime, you know it's not suitable for children! I turned out fine though.
My taste has always been really varied. I would go from horror and gore over to romance, drama and comedy. My first traced anime fanart was of Chichiri and Nuriko from Fushigi Yugi – The latter being a queer character who I had a major crush on as a kid before knowing that being queer was like... A thing.
Teenage Jen was a member of an anime club so we would watch shows like Utena, Dragon Half, Escaflowne, Gundam Wing, Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin and El Hazard.
I didn't grow up with American comics and shows, so it's always kind of funny when people online find out I work in comics and then realise I know very little about those. Some American-made comics did make it into my reading rotation as a young person though: Strangers in Paradise. One of the comics that made me cry. Another comic that made me sob uncontrollably was Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is also another really heavy autobio-comic that I recommend, but only with the warnings that it includes a lot of dark mental health themes.
Nowadays I also love manga like Chihayafuru and Bakuman. I just eat up internal conflicts and interpersonal drama. I'll take that anyday over big world-ending storylines and fantasy politics.
For inspirational comic-art – I look no further than Blacksad, Bride Story, any Junji Ito manga, anything painted by Dave McKean, JH Williams III and David Mack. Plenty of traditionally painted European comics by Cinebook also sit on my inspiration shelf. Speaking of European comics: There's a whole world of spice there too!
For learning how to make comics, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was basically my bible at Uni.
GlobalComix: What is your favorite moment that you’ve written/drawn in any of your comics so far?
Jennie: I love the drama and the struggles, it has to be this moment between my two main characters in Skal:
GlobalComix: When creating a fantasy story, it can be overwhelming keeping track of all those details in the world itself. How do you plan and keep a fantasy world consistent?
Jennie: I guess the blessing/curse of adhd has forced me to continuously re-read my own comic Skal to make sure I don't forget or miss anything important. In the early days I used Scrivener to keep track of all the things with different sections for Worldbuilding, Characters, Plot, Themes, Story-beats and so on. Now I'm moving a lot of this work over to my physical bullet journals which also allows me to collect my various story-doodles that used to be scattered around my studio.
To avoid being overwhelmed, I think it helps to remind yourself what you enjoy the most with your fantasy stories and then focus a lot of your attention on fleshing those aspects out. Are you all about the world building? The politics? Maybe you want to explore religious or philosophical perspectives? For me, it's character development and emotions. So I live for the drama between the people in the story and how their characters change as times goes on. The fantasy setting is part of it, but it's not my focus. I think comic making functions a lot like pro-wrestling: Play up and focus on your strengths while disguising and minimizing your weaknesses as much as possible.
I'm also careful not to over prep things. I want to have the freedom to wiggle the story around a little bit if something develops differently when I'm actually drawing the comic pages themselves. I have the main beats of the story already laid out and I know how it ends, but all the paths in between those beats are allowed to be a bit fuzzier so I can have fun with it!
GlobalComix: What’s next for you? Any new projects coming up that you’re excited for?
Jennie: A lot! I'm jumping back on the Skal train, I'm doing the new cyberpunk comic called RedFan (over on Patreon), and I've got a couple of horror shorts that I'm itching to get started with.
But the main thing is definitely Farmor Stina. It's something so absolutely far left field of anything I've done to this point and I'm legit terrified, but it got funded on Kickstarter, so it's happening now!
What is this Farmor Stina thing? In short: It's a biographical comic of my grandmother's life in Northern Sweden during World War 2. We discovered her diaries when we cleared out her house after she had passed away, and... Oh boy. It's a lot. The content warnings for the project should give you an idea: War Crimes, Conservative Religion, Sexism, Nazis, Mental Health Struggles, Mistreatment of Minorities and Racism.
This comic is very challenging for totally different reasons than I'm used to: It's not fictional stories. It's real life events from my home-country, and real-life drama from my family, so I have to be very careful with how this is handled. There is a lot of research, fact-checking and asking permission to include things in the story.
GlobalComix: Do you have any advice for creators wanting to share queer stories, but are unsure or not confident about doing so?
Jennie: The first step to feeling more comfortable may be to get yourself a pen-name/pseudonym. The internet has many (oh so many) flaws, but the fact that we now have the ability to share our stories anonymously without having to rely on publishers and companies to hold the door open for us, is huge! So, I'd encourage you to make your stories and share them under a separate username to start, to see how you feel about it.
Also, seek out parts of the internet that are queer friendly. Be it parts of tumblr, discord servers, creative twitch-streamers (there are SO many queers over there! Come join us!) or, in my case: Mastodon. Mastodon has a big focus on safety and online privacy, so there are a lot of people in the LGBTQIA+ community over there. I feel safe posting there, whereas before I would literally tense up before sending out tweets.
Finally, if you have the community around you IRL, I really suggest finding real life queer spaces where you can talk about your ideas and stories with people who Get It.
Find book clubs, crafting meet-ups, gaming meet-ups, drag, wrestling, kink, you name it. There's such an overlap between comic nerds and all these different interests, and you'd be shocked how many of us are queer.
Please make your stories!
Thank you Jennie for your incredibly thorough answers and all the artwork you shared with us. It's been an amazing interview. If you, the readers, would like to keep up with Jennie online, here's a list of links for her social media profiles and website:
- Read Jennie's Comics here
- Follow Jennie on GlobalComix here
- Watch Jennie's videos on YouTube here
- Find Jennie's Instagram feed here
- Join Jennie's Livestreams on Twitch here
- Support Jennie on Patreon here
- Follow Jennie on Mastodon here
- Check out the website here