Kura is a disabled Lao trans creator whose webcomic, No Future, has become a community favourite. Kura sat down with me to talk about what it means to create content, but also the complexities and worries of being openly LGBTQ as a creator.

Good… what time is it for you? Good morning? Good evening? How are you doing?

Evening right now, I’m very much a night owl so that’s when you’ll usually catch me up. Could be better, could be worse. There’s a lot happening in the world right now so it’s been hard to sleep or do many things, but I’m hanging in there just like everyone else in these times.

Unlike many creators, you had a complicated relationship with comics as a child. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

Comics were a banned object for me in my early years. My mom saw them as satanic and evil, so I wasn’t allowed to touch them. The first time I actually got to read one was when I went to my cousin’s house on my dad’s side. Dad’s family did not follow Mom’s Christian rules, so even though she controlled what happened at home, she didn’t have that gip when we went to see our relatives on my dad’s side. My cousins were not very tidy, so they would leave their comics all over the place. The issues I would find would be random numbers, and the series would also be all over the place. X-men, Spawn, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dragonball, Ranma, Sailormoon. Just whatever random vol. and series I managed to find laying around.

I loved them all even though my English as bad and I didn’t know many of the words. Even the ones I could not read because I did not know the language I could still see the story, and could still follow what was happening. I loved the pictures, how the characters could be a still drawing but you could still tell they were moving. How you could see the characters talking. The weird action poses that you would never see someone do in real life because it was either silly or just impossible to do, but just looked so cool when it was drawn in comics.

Without realizing it, it became my favourite storytelling medium, even though it was also one I was hardly ever exposed to due to it being a banned medium in my house. Mom eventually lightened the rules on what was banned in the house, letting me read the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, one of the few she decided to not be satanic.

With that in mind, it’s very brave to have decided to start creating comics yourself. Why did you decide to make them for your own?

I wanted to write stories, but my English was not good enough and I was not taken seriously. People refused to read my stories because they just assumed I could not write for many reasons: I was not good at English or grammar (I grew up learning broken English, as English is not the first language of either of my parents) or I had dyslexia and other learning disabilities or I had a low grade school average and was kicked out of high school. I was already an artist and they believed if I could draw I could not write because you could only be one of the two and telling me to just stick to drawings. I was pigeon-holed as an artist very early in my life to the point most people thought it was the only skill I knew how to do.

As a result I ended up combining my art skills with my writing and making comics, because it was the only way for people to look at my work. I’d like to say I started comics because I loved the storytelling medium, because yes, I did love the medium, it was one of the few storytelling mediums that I could read without issue or feeling stupid for losing my place while reading, but I never really had intentions to be part of it until I felt like it was my only option.

I just wanted the chance to have my stories heard, and because people refused to see me as anything other than an artist telling the story through drawings was the only way I would be able to get people to even consider my stories.

Can you tell us a little bit about your favourite comic project? I know that you have quite the story behind its creation.

My favourite comic project is the one I’m working on right now. I didn’t think it would be or how important to me it would become. It started as a physio comic. My health was getting very bad as the doctors put me on and off different medications to find one that worked for me. My arthritis was getting worse everyday and I was starting to lose control of my arm.

I was losing my ability to draw.

Making comics was my job, and drawing was the only thing of value people saw in me. I could not lose that ability.

So, I decided to start a new project, a daily drawing exercise in hopes that the consistency would mean I could keep control over my arm. It was a black and white comic with the most simplistic designs that I could tolerate doing. (I loved details and focusing on details, but it was too painful to draw and to work too long on them. I was trying to ween myself out of adding too many details).

The story and characters were all the ideas I was told I couldn’t publish, or that I was too scared to keep in my other stories. They were the concepts that people told me to throw out, or I told myself to throw out because I already knew I would be told they would not be acceptable.

I had no intended audience for the comic, no age range or filters, because I honestly thought no one would care to read it, especially when the art was so horrible. (The first pages were REALLY bad and have since been redrawn, I was in a lot of pain and had very little control anymore when first starting)

I didn’t realize that my story and characters would resonate with people, I also did not realize just how much I needed to tell those stories that I was constantly being told that I could not tell, or that I had to change.

What do you love about this comic? Which characters do you love in it? What’s the setting like?

There is a lot that I love about this comic, it’s the plots and ideas I thought I could never use cleaned up and finally given a chance. The thing I love the most though is personal and likely never to be seen by the majority of my readers. Which was part of the process of how I made the script for it.

Starting out I thought I was just lazily throwing a story together, as I was just going back to old thrown out scripts and concepts and taking ideas and characters from them, it was intended to be a physiotherapy comic that I didn’t think anyone would read after all, so I didn’t want to spend too much time making a whole new story, universe and cast of characters like you do with every new story you write. What I failed to realize was among these old scripts and rejected and discarded ideas, I also had stories when I was depressed, had trouble finishing things, or would stop writing something because ‘I couldn’t figure out how to make things better’ for my characters. So going back to them, fixing them, cleaning them up, and finally having ideas on how to make things better was very eye opening for me. For me I think it was a very real sign of my experiences as a person, it was like listening to myself vent about everything that was hurting me, making these things important instead of ignoring them or throwing them away, and then growing from them. What I thought was not going to be a lot of work turned out to be a LOT of work, it was a huge mess of all kinds of plots and stories to try and organize and cut up into one after all, but it was also a lot of self growth and understanding.

I love a lot of my characters, there’s so many different kinds of characters that have a home in my story that I was never allowed, or afraid to put in my others, with complications and stories that I am finally able to explore. Andrew I love because so human, a kid in a confusing world that just keeps getting more confusing, a kid that has to deal knowing that he’s going to die while still trying to live his life until that point, struggling to find what should be important to him in the time he has left. Hannah I love because she is brave enough to live in ways I could never at her age, facing fears and problems that would shake me to my very core and dealing with them in ways that I always wanted to. Nickolas I love because of his growth, he’s learning that he can change as a person and allowing himself to be vulnerable instead of always defensive or aggressive in an attempt to keep himself safe. Osiris I love because he is both a prideful yet kind person, who has been taught that the world around him does not reward kindness, and as such tries to adjusted himself to keep from being hurt or taken advantage of again. The struggle to deal with and balance one’s empathy where there are so many that would take advantage of it, and the struggle to know when your pride is either empowering you or blinding you a difficult one, and one he constantly faces. I could go on and on about why I love each character, but I will stop here to keep from rambling on forever.

Though playing host to a cast that also includes mythological characters, the comic mostly takes place in the city I grew up in in Canada, the year 2008 and onward. Revolving around a boy marked for death, as well as the people both human or mythic that his life affects.

Has your LGBTQ identity shaped the type of comics that you create?

Absolutely, even early on when I first started writing, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Storytelling was one of the few ways I could openly express myself through my characters, even if I didn’t realize it was doing it.

Queer relationships were common, natural to the point that I had to keep removing them and rewriting characters or scenes because I would catch myself writing them again. Even more prominent than that was the way I would write gender. There was always a character that was seen as the wrong gender, or presented themselves as a different gender, or looked like one gender but was actually another, or was born one gender but became the other gender later in life. It was completely subconscious, I didn’t realize I was constantly doing this until I looked back at my writing later in life. I was repressing my feelings what I wanted in my life, hiding it only for it to come out in my characters again and again and again.

After realizing I was doing this I didn’t stop myself. In fact I thought that if I kept doing this, expression these needs, and my feelings in my writing and comics, that I would never have to express them in my life, because I was too scared to do that, scared of how much harder it would make my life, scared of losing my friends and family, scared of everything. I convinced myself for years that living through my characters would be enough. Until it wasn’t enough anymore.

Have you faced any issues when posting or publishing your comics?

Rejection is normal. That is what I was always told. “Do you know how many times Harry Potter was turned down before it was finally published?” I believed this, so I tried not to let the constant rejection get to me. I just didn’t realize all the reasons WHY someone would be rejected, and that I fell under so many of them.

Even something as trivial as my last name would get me rejected.

The few times I did work with an editors, I always needed to make changes. There were too many things I needed to remove for the script to be acceptable. I would try to change things as requested, but as soon as I reached something I would not compromise on I would be ghosted. Trans PoC that didn’t get a chance to finish high school do not get the privilege of compromise. I should have felt worthy enough just getting the chance, and if I was not going to do as I was told then I really did not appreciate the opportunity I was being given, and it would very easily be given to someone else.

Self-publishing was not something I felt constantly locked out of, and quickly became attached to after trying, but it also had its challenges. Though there were less boundaries, I had to learn all the jobs needed to make a comic, not just the ones I had experience in. There was so much I didn’t realize went into things like lettering that I had to learn. I also had to be my own promotion, which meant that I had to be social. I’m not good at being social. I’m still not good at being social. My comic still suffers because of this.

Then there are the groups of people that read your comics, and the horror that comes with the wrong group of people that find and latch onto your comics. At one point I had a contract with a certain webcomic host for exclusivity. They handled the promotion of the comic for me, which I thought would be great because that was one of my biggest weakness. I don’t know where it was they advertised my comic but I ended up getting a lot of neo-nazi, and military / war idolizing readers.

I was horrified that the messages in my story were being taken in such a way. When I tried to explain that was not what my comic was about my words were taken out of context or twisted to fit their narrative. When I tried to be blunt and say that I didn’t approve of their views they attacked me in swarms and would get people from their community who didn’t even read my comic to ‘educate me’. They would find me and run me out of my own private communities. They got my home address and passed it among themselves. They would send me messages that would range from playfully suggesting ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I showed up to your house’ to ‘stop being lazy and update faster’ followed with my address or picture of my house from google maps to show me proof that they knew where I lived.

Continuing to work on that comic tore me apart, I still had fans that were not extremists that loved it, I wanted to continue for them, and I had been given a RARE opportunity by getting a contract with that webhost, which not many webcomic artists get.

But my message was not being seen for what it was by a very vocal and aggressive group of people, I felt like a horrible storyteller. How could I have messed up my writing so badly that it could be taken in such ways? I loved that comic so much, I love all my comics, but this one was attracting the worst people and I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop without endangering myself. Eventually the webhost went down, and without their support my comic releases slowed down until it eventually when on hiatus. Where it remains to this day.

(Continued in next episode)