Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sierra Barnes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sierra, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My debut graphic novel, HANS VOGEL IS DEAD, is definitely the biggest project I’ve taken on to date. Starting in 2015 as a webcomic inspired by my experience on a Fulbright in Austria and my undergrad research in Interwar German history, it has since grown over 250 pages and the first volume was released in hardcover this year. It tells the story of a German fighter pilot in WWII who dies during the Battle of Britain, only to reawaken in an afterlife of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales where he must unlearn the fascism of his life and become a better person. It’s a dissection of fascist myths through folklore, combining my love of history and folklore and comics into one book. Comics are an incredible medium with an incredible legacy in antifascist activism, and I love the idea of being a part of that history.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a cartoonist and history buff who makes comics and illustrations based on history and folklore. I have work out in several anthologies, including Mad Cave Studios’ Lower Your Sights charity anthology for Ukraine, Bad Neighbor’s Pub Crawl, and Arledge Comics’ My Kingdom for a Panel, many zines, and a graphic novel entitled HANS VOGEL IS DEAD, as well as several unannounced projects.

I was always interested in history and stories from a young age, and while I started my undergrad career thinking I would be a professor or a professional historian, I found myself drawn back to the comics I had read in my youth and started writing and drawing a webcomic on my own time in 2015. I love that I can bring my research and love of history into my work, and using both images and text helps create interesting ways of bringing these stories to life. I have a great interest in the in-betweens, the relationship between text and image, history and mythology, and my work reflects this.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I’m a storyteller: for me, the most rewarding aspect of being a cartoonist is telling a good story. I love talking to people at comic shows and zinefests who have read my work, or who are interested in the topics I write about. Sometimes I get feedback that gets right to my heart: like someone who told me that HANS VOGEL inspired them to learn German to speak with their Austrian grandparent, or people who tell me my work made them interested in looking into learning more about history or mythology. I want people to see what I love in history and stories, and maybe get to love that too.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Comics is all about being too dumb to quit. Resilience really is the best trait an artist in this industry can have: creating a comic takes a lot of time and work, writing and drawing and layouts and formatting (and reformatting!), and a lot of it is done alone and with you setting your own deadlines and bringing your own motivation. When I finished the first volume of HANS VOGEL and was sending files over to the publisher, I realized that several pages in the first chapter were a completely different size than the others and I needed to go through and completely rework the art AND go through the other 260+ pages to make sure everything else was the same size! It was definitely not the sexiest work I’ve done in comics, but it’s the work that needed done!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sierrabravoart.com/
• Instagram: @sierra_bravo_art
• Twitter: @sierrabravoart
• Other: Publisher’s site for HANS VOGEL: https://castironbooks.com/books/hans-vogel-is-dead-volume-1/

Image Credits
Sierra Barnes