Door Ajar Comics: Crossing The Threshold | BRAW Bursary
Door Ajar Comics has nightmares to thank for its inception, really. After august and I met in 2020, and she told me about a disturbing dream she had had (featuring a woman’s reflection in a window shushing her with a finger to its lips) which she had been hoping to turn into a comic, it was only a matter of time before we started our first collaboration. That initial idea spiralled out into When I Dream, It Feels Like Drowning, a surreal, dreamlike haunted house comic about dysphoria, dissociation and hallucination. We launched Drowning at Thought Bubble Comics Convention 2021, with the certainty that it wouldn't be our last.
The idea of uniquely trans horror is something both of us have grown more and more interested in as we have collaborated more and more. The thrill of horror comes (in part) from catharsis; the ability to see fears that reflect your own play out on the screen or the page, in a safe place at a safe distance. These fears, however, are not cultural constants, but vary depending on positionality. Whose unique concerns and anxieties are represented by horror? Who does it speak to? Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy and Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless, as well as the Contemporary Gothic stories of authors like Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enriquez, and Kirsty Logan, were huge inspirations in the way their horror explores marginality, whether it be in haunted houses embodying gender dysphoria, or curses reflecting female generational trauma. In this way, Gothic fiction becomes a powerful tool of representation, free to explore and exorcise the dark aspects of identity.
Crossing The Threshold, our anthology of trans Gothic short comics, is the culmination of all of this inspiration. As well as Drowning, the anthology features The Beast in the Woods, a dark folk tale or fairy story about a young trans girl challenging a spectral Beast who has been terrorising the girls in her village, and Love Not the World, a quiet but morbid story about a trans man’s apprenticeship in his father’s unique profession: an assisted suicide practitioner for vampires. The book will also feature two additional mini-comics: Flip A Coin, a dark game of chance, and Occupational Hazards, a forbidden tryst between vampire and hunter.
While Crossing The Threshold is not set to launch until around Halloween, we’ve been using our Shaper/Caper funding and advice to make some really exciting inroads into the project. Both august and I have been working like madmen writing and drawing, respectively, as well as fending off repetitive strain injuries, developing some of our marketing skills and developing Door Ajar on the admin side of things. This has included reaching out to potential stockists, booking and attending art fairs and markets galore, meeting some extremely cool people, investigating the gritty legal side of self-publishing, and even planning a launch event for the anthology. Watch this space as we continue these developments!
One of the most exciting things we’ve been able to do on account of our funding is put out an Open Call for submissions. While the anthology is going to primarily feature our work, we are planning to commission three trans/non-binary artists to create artwork inspired by the stories included in the anthology. The main reasons for this were twofold: one, because supporting other trans artists is always a plus, and, two, because paying people to draw our characters makes us feel like Jacobean lords, commissioning lavish portraits on whims. We have been absolutely blown away by the response to our Open Call, with people applying from all over the world - as well as plenty from Scotland. We’re currently sitting at 160 applications, and have absolutely no idea how we’re going to narrow it down (which is a pretty wonderful problem to have). We’re incredibly grateful for Danielle at Shaper/Caper’s guidance on open call best practice, and can’t wait to finalise our artist choices.
We are beyond grateful to Shaper/Caper for their support, and can’t wait to share the final form of Crossing The Threshold with you!
Door Ajar Comics is an independent, experimental small press based in Edinburgh exploring the Queer, the Gothic, and the Uncanny. Run by writer/poet, august (in the wake of) dawn (she/they), and illustrator and poet, Levi J. Richards (he/they), their work explores and interrogates the dark corners of the psyche and what may skitter there, just out of the corner of your eye.
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD will be a anthology of Trans Gothic Horror featuring three short comics that each explore how the trans experience interweaves with the horror genre through folklore, faith and the surreal. Each of these standalone narratives come together to paint an uncanny reflection of the ways in which we can both lose and find ourselves in between the cracks.