We chat with creator Megan Kearney about Corpse de Ballet: A Graphic Novel, which is a fresh tale of dark academia and brutal competition.
Hi, Megan! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
HI readers! I’m a Toronto based cartoonist and writer. I’ve been making comics as a career for the last fifteen years or so. On the side, I teach in the animation and sequential streams at a local arts college. I love fairy tales and spooky stuff like urban legends and ghost stories, which is where a lot of my work springs from.
When did you first discover your love for writing and illustrating?
The real crystallizing comics moment was when I was around six years old and having a sleepover with my cousin in my father’s den. Our sleeping bags were right next to the bookshelves, which were exclusively populated with naval history…except for one Garfield book and one Calvin and Hobbes book. I remember crouching by the little wall-plug nightlight trying to read them and just being blown away that someone had thought of putting words IN THE PICTURES.
Your latest graphic novel, Corpse de Ballet: A Graphic Novel, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Toxic friendship or ballet ghost?!
What can readers expect?
Bad Times at Ballet School. Actually, maybe that should be my five words? Also, a lot of winking references to early 19th century German gothic fiction, but it’s fine if those go over people’s heads. I know they’re in there.
Where did the inspiration for Corpse de Ballet: A Graphic Novel come from?
A lot of different things went into the mix, but a lot of it started with finding a big stack of ballet magazines at a flea market years ago. With so much photo reference, I knew I had to do something with it! Some of the story came from my own experiences at a highly competitive arts college, but as I’ve said elsewhere, it’s hard to make drawing Looney Tunes characters seem spooky so the setting had to change. Other inspirations included perception-warping anime like Perfect Blue and Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the original Suspiria — the ultimate surrealist dance school nightmare!
Were there any scenes or characters you really enjoyed exploring?
Any scene where I got to actually depict dance was a joy. The human body in motion is a fascinating thing, and ballet is such a rigidly defined set of motions. I trained as an animator, so finding the extremes of each gesture—the key frames — was central to nailing the scene. I wanted to draw something someone who knew ballet would look at and think “Ah, she was watching.”
Did you face any challenges whilst writing or illustrating? How did you overcome them?
Scripts never come easy for me but Corpse de Ballet was an especially hard one. The whole process felt like wringing a barely-damp rag, trying to get just one more drop of plot on paper. Research is a big part of everything I do, so when I was really dried out I would hit the library for ballet histories and biographies, or read up on famous cases of foli a deux, just to try and put a bit of water in the pump. Music is another part of my process. I make a soundtrack for every project. Sometimes going back to that and paying close attention to the lyrics can yield inspiration. In the end, I think I owe the most to my writing group, The Secret Sunday Society, who are always ready to talk me through writer’s block!
This is your solo graphic novel debut! Can you share with us a bit about your process in this coming together?
While Corpse de Ballet is my first solo project with a large traditional publisher, I self-published for a long time before I became agented, so I more or less had a workflow that I knew worked for me —thumbnail draft, pencil draft, inks, shading and colour. I hadn’t scripted so tightly before, though. My story process used to be a lot looser, more organic. Scripting was really difficult.
What’s next for you?
Corpse de Ballet had such a prolonged editing period I actually had time to draw a whole other book while waiting! Too Hot to Tango will be out from Abrams in early September, a double release year for me! Too Hot to Tango also has a dance theme, but otherwise it’s a completely different thing — a feel-good summer camp romance that writer E E Salo and I pitched as “Nobody puts Baby in the closet”.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I know I’m late to the party, but this year I fell hard for Martha Wells’ Murderbot series! Learning-To-Human is pretty much my favourite trope, whether it’s aliens, ghosts, androids or monsters. I’m cross that my family wouldn’t let me name our puppy Perihelion.
In comics, I’m really looking forward to the second volume of Eguchi’s Stop!! Hibari-Kun from PEOW2. It’s a slapstick comedy from the 1980s with a wonderfully incorrigible trans girl as the lead. Some parts have aged worse than others, but Hibari herself is a delight.
