“Heaven”: Katie Skelly’s New Hypnotic Graphic Novel, Breaking Out of the “Cool Girl” Archetype, and Exploring Horror in a Supernatural Strip Club

Transmission 408: Interview with Katie Skelly

Katie Skelly is an award-winning comics artist, writer, and illustrator whose work fuses the visual language of pulp fiction, exploitation cinema, horror, and pop culture into psychologically rich graphic narratives. She began making her own comics in high school. After graduating from Syracuse University with a B.A. in art history and pursuing graduate studies at the City College of New York, Skelly launched her science fiction themed, Barbarella inspired series, Nurse, Nurse. She has developed a style that is at once seductive, unsettling, and unmistakably her own, exploring themes of desire, power, identity, and the inner lives of women.

Her notable graphic novels include Operation Margarine (2014, AdHouse Books), for which she received the inaugural Emerging Artist Prize at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Festival in 2015. Her debut hardcover graphic novel, My Pretty Vampire, was released by Fantagraphics Books in 2017 and is renowned for its “dramatic colors” and “sense of mercurial motion.” Drawing on the atmosphere of Dario Argento‘s horror films and the early comics of Jean Claude Forest, the narrative follows a young vampire who ventures into the contemporary world, exploring her identity and desires through a series of dreamlike, sensual, and at times brutal experiences.

Her bibliography also features The Agency (2018, Fantagraphics Underground) and illustrations for Twisted Romance: Heartbreak Incorporated (2018, Image Comics), written by Alex de Campi, which was nominated for a 2019 Eisner Award for Best Anthology. In October 2020, Fantagraphics released Skelly’s historical graphic novel Maids, based on the lives of convicted killers Christine and Regina Papin.

A leading voice in contemporary independent comics, Skelly co-hosts the influential Trash Twins podcast with Sarah Horrocks, where they discuss cult films, comics, fashion, and art with insight and an unmistakable love for the strange. She also co-hosts the beloved comics analysis podcast Thick Lines with Sally Madden. She is also a frequent critical voice in The Comics Journal.

In 2019, Skelly presented her first solo exhibition, Skellyworld, at The Naughton Gallery in Belfast, showcasing original artwork, paintings, sketchbooks, videos, merchandise, and a tarot deck. The exhibition highlighted her diverse influences, including Japanese manga, bande dessinée, science fiction, and 1960s to 1970s B movies, alongside her fascination with transgressive exploitation genres. Her work has additionally been featured in group exhibitions across the United States and the United Kingdom.

Whether examining the minds of mid century French murderers in Maids or diving into the psychedelic world of a captive vampire in My Pretty Vampire, Skelly’s output remains dangerous, beautiful, and fiercely smart, continuously expanding the possibilities of graphic storytelling. She returns with “Heaven,” published by Fantagraphics, a vivid, neon drenched desert noir that marks a surreal evolution in her celebrated career. The book serves as a fascinating transition point, as Skelly has noted that it marks the official end of her signature “cool girl” era.

Featured image: © Jaime Hernandez
Official site | Fantagraphics | Instagram

The title of your last work suggests certainty, but the book seems fascinated by ambiguity. What kind of “heaven” were you trying to interrogate?

I’m interested in perfect places that can’t exist.

How did shifting from the domestic density of “Maids” to the surreal landscape of “Heaven” alter your approach to paneling and dialogue pacing?

To be honest, not very much I think. No matter what I’m doing it’s still filtered through my voice, so it was a matter of translating a new environment into my language.

Katie Skelly is well known for her striking, transgressive stories that fuse vintage B-movie aesthetics with razor-sharp explorations of female agency and psychological dread. 

Color in your work often feels psychological rather than descriptive. How do you decide the emotional palette of the scene, can you tell us about this creative process?

I feel my way through color and just know when it looks right. I’ll start with one big color – typically a red because it’s my favorite – and build out from there.

Your work evokes exploitation cinema, pulp, and underground comics without ever feeling trapped by them. How do you maintain that distance, avoiding simple reenactment in favor of genuine influence?

It’s that same matter of translation. If I were going to tell this type of story, how would I do it naturally as opposed to trying to recreate everything about it? I meditate and I think that helps fill in the gaps.

The contrast between your clean, minimalist style and the story’s cosmic horror is striking. How did you realize that this uncluttered, pop-art aesthetic would be the perfect vehicle for the book, rather than following the traditional route of shadow-heavy grit associated with this genre?

I work to my limitations – the style is something that formed over time trying to tell the types of stories I wanted. I wouldn’t want to draw a shadow-heavy story so I don’t write for a story where that would be necessary.

The book resists turning any character into a simple hero or villain. While the setting is dangerous, you find room for agency and sex-positivity and even optimism. Was avoiding moral certainty important from the beginning? How do you walk that razor-thin wire between depicting dangerous environments and offering a valid path toward self-determination?

Yeah, I don’t think I would ever drive a story towards a moral certainty because that isn’t interesting to me as a reader. Life is dangerous and self-determination is all we have, in my opinion. That’s always front of mind for me.

Her latest graphic novel, Heaven, marks an ambitious new chapter in her work.

Your protagonists are searching for freedom without necessarily becoming “empowered” in the conventional sense. Do you distrust tidy narratives of liberation?

Yes, I do.

Your work has long explored physical desire. The visual atmosphere in “Heaven” feels seductive before it becomes mysterious . Did this book change the way you think about the relationship between desire and the unsettling?

I don’t think it’s changed much for me but I hope it’s affecting the readers.

Horror details arrive quietly instead of explosively. Do you think dread is more visual or narrative?

Dread is more narrative. I fear things I have never seen. When you can visualize it, it’s no longer unknown, even if it’s horrible. It has dimensions.

Katie Skelly’s signature style: sleek, Euro-comic elegance mixed with unapologetic, transgressive pulp.

“Heaven” serves as a farewell to the ‘cool girl’ protagonists letting the world in. When you were writing and drawing the final chapters of Dolly’s journey, did you feel a sense of grief or relief? How did knowing this was the end of a specific creative era change how you approached the book’s resolution compared to My Pretty Vampire or Maids?

It’s the same instinct that leads me to create in the first place. When it signals it’s time for change, it’s time to change. I’m ready. It’s a good feeling.

Was there a page or sequence that made you realize you had become a different artist than the one who started the book?

I knew I was really cooking drawing-wise in those last two chapters. That was a flow state I hadn’t hit before and now I know the exact feeling I’m seeking out next.

“Heaven” also raises questions about influence, belonging, and identity that are relevant in the age of online communities. Your characters seem trapped by the stories society expects them to inhabit. Did that connection occur to you while making it?

Not especially but I try not to create and analyze at the same time. I can see that now that I have distance from it.

She holds multi-hyphenate status within the indie comics community and explores how critical analysis intersects with raw creation.

Photos and images courtesy of © Katie Skelly

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.