http://www.illusiontv.com/features/andrea-grant/

ANDREA GRANT

CD: You describe your comic book MINX as a “female driven urban fable”-What
exactly do you mean by that?

AG: MINX relies heavily on legend—the characters allude to archetypes in
classical and Native American mythology. In the comic book, these
archetypes are removed from their traditional context and placed in the
fast-paced pseudo-reality of the modern world. MINX is devoted to the
portrayal of women as bold and complex individuals that perpetually
challenge a society unwilling to make room for them as heroes.

If you examine my body of work as a whole, it focuses on women’s issues and
re-interpreting the range of feminine emotion, which is complicated and
multi-faceted. There is also a lot of humor in the work, created by playing
to stereotypes and then breaking them down. I think women relate to my
characters because they are flawed heroines; Minx resents being chosen to a
higher calling and having no choice in the matter.

CD: Even though Minx has elements of the fantastic the characters are based
on real people in your life, and MINX bears a striking physical resemblance
to yourself. What made you want to incorporate your friends and loved ones
into the comic stories?

AG: I’ve always been obsessed with the lines between fantasy, reality, and
dreams. Native Americans believe that when we dream our soul is actually
traveling to another dimension. It’s been scientifically proven that our
nervous systems can’t tell the difference between an imagined experience
and a real experience. MINX was cathartic, created right after I emerged
from a very dark period in my life. I was young and had just left an
emotionally abusive husband. I was in the process of mentally deprogramming
my brainwashing—I had been brought up in a fundamentalist Christian
community. I went through an intense spiritual death and rebirth, and I was
starting over with nothing, clawing my way out of a cave. I began to
connect to Native beliefs through my father, who had experienced the
classic ‘Shamanistic breakdown’ which resulted in his refuting Christianity
to become a medicine man. MINX began as an alter ego that I felt safe
working with creatively as I sought to find my voice as an artist. Minx is
an archetype of the empowered, modern woman that challenges tradition while
embracing sexuality and femininity. MINX is a very personal project—both a
conceptual self-portrait, and a response to the way that the
celebrity-obsessed media often corrupts the truth and distorts the
boundaries of fantasy and actuality. The world of Minx is real to me,
albeit a hyper-reality. Minx is a representation of my own vivid Dream
world and interior landscape. Influences include mythology, fairytales, and
the duality of human nature. I cast my friends as characters because they
are diverse and colorful, and they inspire my imagination. When I throw
parties, it’s incredible to watch the pin-up girls interacting with the
rappers, the punk rockers taking tequila shots with the suits, the fashion
designers dancing with the skater kids. People are always asking whether
they can be a character in the comic, and it’s going to take YEARS to
include everyone in the various storylines!

CD: Sometimes MINX’s hair is white blonde, and sometimes it’s black. Does
this represent the duality of human nature or-does she just like switching
it up?

AG: Minx’s ever-changing hair does represent the duality of human nature.
Her hair initially turned white while she was in the coma, signifying the
trauma of her death and rebirth experience. The blonde hair also represents
a certain purity of heart/innocence and the hesitation to fully accept her
warrior calling. She has a conscience and it’s hard for her to kill. She
has anger towards those who have wronged her, but she is uncomfortable with
her feelings of revenge. When her hair darkens, she is reconnecting with a
primal energy and her Jungian shadow self is coming forth. She makes her
own rules, and there is no guilt. When her hair turns black, her chief wolf
Blue also turns black. I am interested in hair as a symbol of
transformation because three of my favorite myths are Rapunzel, Samson, and
Medusa. These are characters punished for their beauty and power, and when
the hair was cut off or turned into snakes it represented psychological
transformation and the death of innocence.

CD: You have a fascination with Native American mythology- did you work
that into the comics?

AG: Minx the character is part Native, as am I. Therefore Native American
mythology plays a large role in MINX—not only in terms of archetype, but
also to drive the plot. Ley lines often act as a sort of impetus for the
schema— simply put, the bad guys need to gain access to the ley lines, and
Minx and the good guys hold the key. The Native community is largely
under-represented in comics. I was raised ‘white’ so I didn’t grow up on
the reservation, but I traveled to pow-wows with my father and witnessed a
despair that saddened me—in contrast to the flashes of pride that occurred
during ceremonial dances and drumming rituals. It’s a beautiful culture
that has been massacred and taken advantage of for decades, and the people
are still recovering from that sorrow. There is a huge problem with drug
and alcohol addiction, and a high diabetes rate because Indians are not
built to consume the same foods as Caucasians. There is a high suicide rate
among the youth and an alarming pregnancy rate. I think it’s because a lot
of these kids cannot see their way out of the misery that can come from
growing up in an insular community that holds the pain of genocide in their
memory. It is my hope that by creating a comic that re-interprets some of
the traditional stories, Native people will feel inspired and represented.
One of my favorite writers is Sherman Alexie (most famous for Smoke
Signals, the film adaptation of his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven). But there need to be more writers coming out of the
Native communities and breaking the silence of our mythology.

CD: MINX has some werewolf like traits, why do you think so few werewolf
tales have female protagonists?

AG: Most fantastical creatures are traditionally typecast by genre.
Werewolves, vampires, mummies, and zombies were initially portrayed as men,
while witches were the female version. To some extent, this makes sense
since men are stereotypically portrayed as more violent and aggressive
(hence the monster-like qualities) while a woman-gone-wrong was considered
to be more conniving and manipulative than simply aggressive. Clearly, we
do not respond to or understand gender the same way today that storytellers
did in the past. Minx has werewolf qualities without being a sadist; she
represents if not only the strength and resilience of a werewolf, but also
alienation from being on the fringes of society, from being different.
Gender is not the only thing misrepresented in folklore—so is the very
nature of any divergence from the norm.

CD: MINX is published through your own label Copious Amounts of Press. How
difficult is it to be an Indy comic publisher when the comics industry is
dominated by the big two; DC and Marvel?

AG: It’s challenging but there is also something extremely gratifying about
retaining control. Of course the dominant companies try to muscle out the
independents in a Goliath versus David battle. We live in a capitalistic
society and the large companies are always going to have wider
distribution, more giveaway items, unlimited funds to spend on
merchandising. It’s not going to change. And I am a fan of Capitalism so it
would be illogical for me to criticize the system because I want films and
video games and merchandise for MINX. Yes, there are politics and so the
independent creators need to up the ante in order to compete and showcase
their unique style and point of view. There is an authenticity in our work
that touches the readers, but I do believe that production values have to
be high for anyone to even take a second look at a book when there is so
much competition. However, DC and Marvel will never be as avante gard as
the independents, because really beautiful work is born of struggle and is
not predictable. You can take more chances when there aren’t millions of
dollars at stake and a board of directors breathing down your neck. They
will never be as dangerous because they are trying to appeal to a
mainstream target market in order to make the most money possible and they
are afraid to touch on a lot of things. Independents are dangerous because
we have nothing to lose and the work has a raw, uncensored quality. So ‘the
big two’ can spy on us in an attempt to steal our ideas, but they will
never understand the things we intrinsically know because they are not
tapped in to our collective unconscious.

CD: Speaking of DC you were recently in a battle with them over using the
name MINX for your comic-has that issue been resolved?

AG: Yes, it was resolved. The support I received from The New York Post and
the Indy community was amazing.

CD: In addition to being a writer and publisher, you’re also a model and
Photographer. Which end of the camera do you prefer to be on?

AG: Lately I prefer to model because of the collaboration with brilliant
photographers who are also interested in telling a story. I have been
working on the first of The Pin-Up Poet art books, which has meant
traveling to shoot with some of the best photographers in the scene. This
book project is a re-invention of classic female stereotypes in a
postmodern context, a visually appealing and contextually complex
reflection on the cultural perception of women, the evocative exploration
of how women view themselves versus how they are viewed by men. The women
in my poems are modern in totality—they drink too much vodka, smoke to calm
their nerves, hide behind the armor of black clothing and lingerie. These
women are at once lustful and neurotic, they burn cookies and they can’t
sleep. They are both predators and victims, empowered by their choices to
leave unhappy relationships, but lonely and haunted by the ghosts of old
lovers. Most importantly, these revelations are paired with exquisite,
highly stylized photographs, suggesting that a woman wearing garters has a
wealth of memories, secrets and love affairs hidden under her veneer of
glamour—and the juxtaposition of these two components is both beautiful and
fascinating.

CD: Like your character MINX, sometimes you’re blonde and sometimes you’re
a brunette. In your opinion, who has more fun?

AG: I initially bleached my hair as an act of defiance, as a symbol of the
transformation I had gone through when I started a new life. Hair sometimes
turns white from shock, and I always liked that I was visually expressing
my suffering and then contrasting it with the notion of a stereotypical
bombshell. But I had to fight for intellectual credibility as a blonde, and
men always wanted to save me, which was irritating. I have more fun as
brunette because it reminds me of my Native origins, and I am taken more
seriously in business. I save myself.