A small group gathered last week at the Yorkton Regional High School to listen to Sophie Labelle talk about her experiences.
Labelle is a Canadian author, cartoonist, and public speaker. She also happens to be transgender and is best known for her webcomic Assigned Male. Assigned Male addresses issues of gender norms and growing up transgender.
Labelle, who has been touring across the United States and Canada for several months, said getting out and talking about her work and experiences started with a Facebook post where she said if someone wanted her to make a presentation “send me a message and I’ll make it happen.”
Labelle said she actually began drawing comics in school, stories focused on one of her brother’s teachers.
“I’ve been drawing comics since I was seven,” she said, adding her brothers had started the Comic Club, and that had her get interested.
The comic on her brother’s teacher “became my main social tool … it kind of protected me,” she said, adding even school bullies in some way respected that she was doing the comic.
“Comics have always been part of my life,” she added.
At one point Labelle said she had considered being a teacher, but her art and storytelling won out.
“My parents still don’t understand what I do,” she said, then joking she was “born in a teacher’s body,” but has transitioned to draw comics. “… Eventually I decided to quit school just to draw comics’ full time.
“What I wanted to do was tell stories, not to be an artist per se.”
Initially Labelle said she was creating work, but not sharing it.
As a result "my art didn’t evolve at all,” she said, adding she realizes now it was because she was not getting feedback to force growth.
It was when she began posting her work online, and feedback began, that she became better at her craft.
While today Labelle does computer generate the final art, it is the end of a process for her.
“Paper is still a very big part of my process,” she said. “I plan the strip on paper.”
Labelle said she also needs to be in a particular frame of mind to create.
“To get creative I need to get in the zone,” she said. “… Once you get into the zone you don’t know when you’re going to get out of it.”
Calling it an “intense process” Labelle said she typically goes to a coffee shop where she “stares into the void for a couple of hours … eventually the void stares back,” and she can start creating.
While Assigned Male does focus on transgender issues, Labelle said the material is not about her own experiences, or at least not directly.
“None of my comics are autobiographical. They don’t talk about my direct transition,” she said.
The cartoons while being educational achieve that element by being “very sarcastic” at times, with “bad jokes or terrible puns” all part of Labelle’s approach.
Still the comic has “trans and queer people as the target audience,” said Labelle. “I’m transgender and my characters are transgender.”
