Queer Comic Creators Spotlight: Phil Falco & Kat Calamia

Phil Falco and Kat Calamia of Lifeline Comics join the show to talk about building a queer comics universe together — from Slice of Life to their vampire book trilogy — and share how they write, collaborate, and connect with fans.

Lyrics By: Jessi Hersey

Music By: A J Music

Art By: Zummi

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Listening to voices, stories can be strange. It's good to open up to new stories and finding backstories of how people came to be only to free the mind of what blinds us with only a glance gives us a chance to see people be who they truly are, from silent voices to shining light, stories that inspire awareness and change. I welcome you to Jesse's stories, unheard voices. I don't know why I'm being weird today, but I am. So today we get to speak to Phil and contents. They are queer creators. I'm thankful to be getting more on this channel. So if you like supporting not only true crime, but supporting queer content creators and just hearing voices of those you don't always hear, unheard voices, please like, subscribe, leave a comment down below of what else you'd like to see and who else you'd like me to interview. And now let's begin the interview. If you two could introduce yourselves and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, I'll start. I'm Kat Kalamia. I am the co-owner of Lifeline Comics. We write a lot of queer books, we write a lot of comics in general, and we do their slice of life by being our webtoon. And we do a lot through Kickstarter as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Hi everyone, I'm Phil Falco. I am the other co-owner of Lifeline Comics. Like Kat mentioned, uh, we have a big focus on queer comics. You know, we Kat and I are both queer and we love telling queer stories and giving others the opportunities to tell queer stories. So, and then you know, some based on webtoon, bisexuality, hair, apology. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

And aces and aces and arrow. I knew I was like trailing off.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

You remember more than we do. Yeah, this is a six line. We just recently finished packing it, and we're I just had a flashback to yesterday though when we were fulfilling and we were looking for that cover.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I really like this cover personally because I'm also queer, so any queer content such as that's my queer content, we can oh, I love I like that that the title tells you what it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It does, it's straightforward to the point.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

When I signed on, so I think that's a superpower to be straightforward and well, not everyone likes that, but that's if you deal with me, that's what you get. So you're welcome, both of you. You get that for this entire interview. We'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, we will.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

What started the journey of writing queer comics?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

That's interesting because me and Phil actually wrote comics separately for a little while because we we had a friend from college, a mutual friend. So Phil went to a different college, but was like a few blocks away. And I uh that I went to, we both went to school in New York City, and then your friend was you knew her from middle school, and I knew her from college, and we got we were like mutual friends for a really long time, and then we started seeing movies together, and then one day Phil was like, I really like comics, I want to make one, and he did, he made his own comic haunting, which was a horror book, and then we did a crossover with each other. It was a horror superhero crossover, and we had such a good time that we wanted to do more with each other, which was the birth of Slice of Life, and that was around the time we did Bivisibility or Bisexual Anthology, so it was kind of all a snowball of me and Phil working together and and just doing more and more queer comics.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

We we would talk about queerness, it was one of our favorite topics was queerness at the time. So, you know, after our crossover between our horror and superhero books, we were like, What what story do we both really want to tell? Like, oh, we want to tell a queer story and we want to do something in the webtoon space because we both read a lot of webtoons, and you know, Slice of Life was born from that and from it's still our baby, it's still our passion project. It's really like everything we love about queer stories, and then as Kat said, it kind of just snowballs from there after that. We we would do more anthologies, we have a whole line of like mature queer books in addition to Slice of Life, which is more like you know, more all ages, and uh yeah, no, we never look back. Our favorite kind of stories to read are queer stories, and you know, we we feel that there's just not enough of them, especially today when it feels like there's less queer stories now than there was 10 years ago, which is crazy. So we're very happy to to kind of fill that void that we we personally as readers and fans are are feeling in in the rest of media.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yes, I absolutely feel that way. That's why I purposely on Kickstarter, all I do is type queer and see what content comes up, and then that's how I originally found you guys is just that's how I found Slice of Light.

unknown 5:04

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

And then I did further research. I since there is a section where it's you can not message, but I guess have a choice of website or message person, and I went through the website so I could actually see everything you guys have done, and that's a long list. I got through most of the comics to see, but I also soon will be owning most of those comics, anyways, because I've joined most of the Kickstarters so far. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

That really helps us make these books possible too, is the Kickstarters and so and that support. We always say, especially when we do those, we do a lot of like prides and we do a lot of conventions after someone supports us. So a lot of times we'll say, like, that's how we make these comics, which is true. You guys are helping us put more queer content out there.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

We literally can't do it without you.

unknown 5:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Well, we gotta keep the queer content. Not that I'm advertising at all going or anything. Not advertising, but there will be a link to your guys' website down below for everyone that listens to the podcast and also on the YouTube channel when it will be on the podcast. I don't know because I'm switching all my interviews over, so who knows how long that will take. But it'll be there eventually. Yes, that's why I'm not giving a date, but it will eventually happen. Let's see. Oh, have you both always been in the industry of comic storytelling? Or where do you both come from?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

So I have in some shape and form. I I before this, I was a comic book journalist. That's kind of how I got into the field of comic books, and then I about two or three years ago started writing comics full-time. I never looked back. It's been a fun journey running a business and you know, telling your the stories you want to tell.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

She was also a YouTube comic reviewer since she was in high school, so literally since uh before you were even an adult, you were in comics professionally in some capacity. I studied writing in college, not specifically comics. And then, you know, I broke into comics in 2020, like Kat said before. Kat had already been publishing a comic. She had been working with a small publisher and they were crowdfunding their book through Kickstarter. And I was like, Oh, I've always been like a lifelong fan of comics. I I'm I studied writing. I'd love to, you know, get get into that as well. And you know, she gave me some of the benefit of her experience. And you know, since then it's it's been uh it's been a roller coaster, honestly. I I published my first book in March of 2020, so the world had just shut down and Diamond had just stopped distributing at the time. So uh it ended up being, despite horrible circumstances, a pretty good time to to run a first Kickstarter because a lot of people were looking for comic content, and you know, from there, I don't think we've gone collectively, Cat and myself. I don't think we've gone more than like three months without Chris crowdfunding something and releasing some sort of comic. And now we're at the stage where we release at least one a month, if not two. So it's been it's been really great. It's been a really fun journey.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Sounds like it. Let's see. Well, you already answered one of these questions. Who has been your favorite character that you guys have made together? Ooh, or multiple.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Like you could do multiple else. Multiple is a little easier.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I'll give a shout out to to our vampire Snow White from I was hanging her too, yeah. From our The Beast in Snow, our mature, the first book in our like mature series of books. And uh we just she's got like a really fun, snarky voice, but not in like not in like an unempathetic way. She's like still very much Snow White, still very much like the princess of the people and someone who's given so much of herself away that she has this like protective layer of like snark, but like when push comes to shove when she sees someone in trouble, she can't help but like drop everything to her own detriment and help them. And it's just it feels very intrinsically snow white to me, but also very our own. So she's always just a ton of fun to write. I really like her.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

I think Raven from Slice of Life, uh, I think she has become such a character that has evolved because she was going to be a villain of our book, right? When we started this, she was gonna be kind of mustache twirly villain who brought this anime character to life and didn't, you know, has some struggle because of it. But then throughout, we we made it more about life, and she became a I won't say Morley Gray, but I think someone who is really relatable because she had so many layers and and complications with Black and Lovable.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, she she's the the sister of the romantic lead of the book, so it's the book itself is about an anime character comes to life, like Kat said. And Raven is the super fan of the anime who has some struggles with her favorite anime character kind of evolving beyond her two-dimensional portrayal in the anime. But as Kat said, you know, she kind of evolved into her own person, which was really cool. And you know, she's she's flawed and complex and interesting and funny, and we uh we really love writing her. Good answer.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

I like that answer a lot, honestly. And I like characters with complexity, and I like the fact that at least of what I've read, because only what I've read so far is halfway through slice of life, and I like the tonality of kind of high school, at least. Or this one. I haven't read that one, that character yet. But I like that you're able to get a tone, at least for me personally. I like tone and characters.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, that's what we love too. We uh we always like we always put character first, sometimes even to our detriment. And when we're in the writing process, we kind of get like overloaded with like new characters or whatever, and the meme feels like, wait, let's go back to basics, and and every single time we go back to basics, you're like, this is the core of this character. But yeah, we we love character. That's like a lot of times how we figure out our plots are is through the character journeys and always helps us figure out the through line when uh looking at the character journeys, our main characters. That makes sense, and that's a good thing too. Let's see.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Oh, is there any other projects you guys are currently in the process of making?

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, we have one that's being announced on Monday. That's a cool project that's related to an IP that already exists, which is kind of cool. It's teaming up with another medium of some sort, so we're excited to announce that on Monday. And continuing our our titles that we have, we we have we've already announced this in other podcasts, but we haven't like officially announced, but you know, the ever afterverse our our mature titles are of course gonna cross over, so we're really excited to build that up. Yeah, what else feel do we got going on?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

We love vampires, so we have a couple of vampire books. We already talked about the The Beast in Snow or Vampire Snow White book, and then we have a vampire boy love book, it's a college set, a romance that launched a release. It's kinda launched a few months ago, and now it's relaunching also next week on Webtoon and eventually will make its way to Kickstarter. And I'll say we have one more vampire book that's coming in in January that we're really excited about that we actually didn't even write. It's what's one of the one of our first ventures into publishing another another writer, and we're really excited about that book. I think it's we think it's gonna be cool to have three like major vampire books, all with such really different feels. So I'm excited for that one.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Well, what's your guys' favorite part of writing? Well, yeah, I guess writing and being a part of three different vampire stories.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Like Phil said, I think it's really cool just how different vampire stories can be. One's the the story that's written by someone else is very much your more classic vampire, like it's more about exploring the past and and it's a little bit darker, uh, but has a really funny.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

So again, it's got a mob vibe to it as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

It's like a mob vibe, I agree. And then Beast and Snow, which we already, you know, talked about, is a fantasy. We actually made the book trying to figure out like what's a book that we would enjoy writing that a mass audience would like. So it's very much a vampire queer book that anyone could enjoy. It's not really particularly targeted to one person. And then RBL book, if you want to jump into that one, Phil.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

We actually Frankenstein that one together for a contest that Webtoon was running a few months ago.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

And we kind of have the webtoon out, but kind of don't. It was part of a contest, and we're trying to relaunch it because we don't want a part of the contest anymore because the contest has moved on to something else. So we're like, we want to do this project on our own now.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

So we very much something we've been doing a lot more the last like year or so. Like, we always love everything we write, we always make our way there. But early in our writing process, we'll say, like, what would make me the happiest as an individual? And we might not end up doing that because obviously we we want our books to be sellable and have mass appeal and you know, all of that. But for this webtoon in particular, Love It Second by the Vampire BL, we were just like we kept saying, like, as we were putting it together, like, okay, what else can we add to make this like so super exciting to you? Because I remember I got really excited for it early in in our writing process, and Kat was like, Yeah, I like it a lot. I was like, but what can we add to make you love it? It's like, oh, like if this this character, like, let's if we flush them out in this way, and maybe they have this relationship with this character, maybe they're some supernatural something or other. So I think that's definitely my favorite part of the writing process is kind of like unearthing the story and the characters and and continuously, especially when writing with the partner, asking each other, like, oh, what can we do to make take this to the next level? Which has been a really instrumental part of our process of writing together.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

That's very cool. Sorry, I had a brain blank for a minute there. And then I was wondering what is your day-to-day process of just writing in general, of any of your stories or all of them. You can talk about all of them if you want to.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Our day-to-day is a lot of answering emails, and then when we're actually writing, I'll say it's plotting together and figuring out okay, where do we want to go with this and figure we we split the books in half. So I write half the book and then Phil writes half the book. We figure out, all right, who wants to write the scene, who wants to write that scene, and then we go in our separate corners and write those things and leave notes to each other. That's pretty much our our day-to-day in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

We like Katsa, we try to plot everything together so that we can make sure like both of our voices and everything we write. But you know, we've tried the whole writing, literally writing the scene in the same room thing a few times. And for us in particular, we think we do better kind of going to our own corners and getting to you know try different things and write by yourself and then come together after the fact.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

So that's like a monologue, it's hard to write that together. You kind of have to sit with your thoughts a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Every once in a while, I'll like accidentally or like not accidentally open a document while you're working on it, and you'll always see like you write a line and then you erase it, and then you write a line and you erase it. And it's it's more awkward to do that when you're literally sitting in the room together.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

So yeah, but that's like also the process, right? It's just like, okay, does it sound good? Does that sound good? But like you said, in person, that's so much harder because then when you say it out loud, it feels more real too. So you're like, Okay, I guess that's what we're going with. Like when you're in your own thoughts, you you just kind of get a groove.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

So well, I like the type of groove that you guys do, at least, even if it's awkward being in the same room of back and forth of that, especially if you split it in half. That's kind of cool and interesting to hear. And then, do you have a specific artist for each comic, or how do you choose your artist?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

We do, so every comic has a different artist, and honestly, it's all different ways that we've we've chosen these artists, either through Instagram or deviant art, even like when we were doing Slice of Life, the way we found our artists was that we were looking up just fan art for queer couples, and we found was it was it She-Ra?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I think it was like maybe she's either Supergirl or She-Ra, I think something like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

And we found Val that way, and it makes sense. Yes, exactly. It must have been She-Ra because I feel like we were looking for like sword lady type things, and that's how we found Val. And and she's been such a great collaborator and our longest-running collaborator. We've been working with her on a weekly basis for like three years, and it's fun because she's like from Italy, so it's cool that's like, oh, it's it's a worldly event that we're doing here, and then we do these anthologies to help find artists as well. So a lot of times that we use an artist in a short story, we might use them for a longer story. A lot of times that happens. That's how we found an artist for Beast and Snow. So yeah, it's all different things that try to find artists, even going to conventions, we do that as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

And do you guys have booths at conventions too, or just looking for artists?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

So we there are some conventions we'll go to just to be fans, like Flame Con in New York City. Um, it's like a uh smaller, queer, like focused convention. That's when we we tabled at once and we had a good time. But it's like, oh, I we were singing there, like I'd rather be walking around looking at all this stuff and not have to sell. So that's kind of like a treat to ourselves every year is that we just go and get to be fans, and then we do the same at San Diego Comic-Con. We rather like network there than uh be chained to our table selling. So those are conventions we'll like walk around and be fans, and then pretty much every other convention we go to, I think we table at for the most part. And yeah, we'll try to every con we've been trying, especially recently, we'll like get up and walk around, especially in the morning before things like pick up, to like look at all the art that's around us and see if we can connect with anyone who might be great for like a cover we have to do or you know a new project we have in mind. So it's uh great thing about conventions is getting to connect with people and be in the same room as a bunch of really talented people. So we've been really trying to make the most of that.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Or do panels too. We've done a lot of panels with Sandy Comic-Con, especially about Kickstarter. So that's a great way to get a different audience, but also just share your knowledge to other people. So that's fun. Do you have a favorite panel memory? Oh, I think it's really, really cool just seeing once the panel's over, how many people want to learn more about the thing you talked about. We recently did our own panel. Like we were usually guests at a lot of panels, so that we did one that we ran, and it was really cool just to see how many people were interested in the topic.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

My favorite panel memory is I think the actually the most recent panel we were on, we were at uh Flame Con, and someone in the audience would just start clapping after every single question, like every single answer. So, like there would be a question for the panelists, and normally, you know, you get like scattered applause and then like a clapping at when like everyone answers, but they would clap every chance they got and the whole room was in it, and it became kind of like the running joke where everyone would like kind of laugh and be like, This is such a polite panel. So I always I always laugh when I think that's funny.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Do you have let's see, your comic-cons do you have a favorite connection with whether it's fans, just business, or all the other?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

I'll start. I'll scatter. I think seeing the same faces over the years is always really meaningful. Like, you know, it's really great, obviously making a new connection, and like I very much treasure those. But the first thing that came to mind when you asked that question is that when we go to C2E2 in Chicago, every year without fail, there's one fan of ours who bought our books like three or four years ago. And every year she's like, All right, show me every new thing you've had since the last time I saw you, and she'll without fail just pick up everything. And you know, the excitement she has about the not just like one or two titles in our library, but she's like, No, I've loved everything you've put out, so I want to keep getting everything you're getting. That always is very like gratifying and feels like feel great in the moment. So I think that's my my favorite attraction.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, and same for like C2B2 has been a wonderful convention for that. We made our friend Elliot, who now writes comics that we randomly kind of ran into because he bought a haunting box, and then he I think the next year came back, and then we just started getting to know each other, and now we're friends. Like, literally, I went to Paris and we found out we were going around the same time, so we just hung out for the whole day. So it's like cool that someone who was just a customer who kind of passed by became a good friend that we we text often with. So I think that's really cool. Like, you never know who you're gonna meet. That's very true.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

And then the last question is where can everyone find you guys and any upcoming Kickstarters?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Oh, always got Kickstarters going on. Lifelinecomics.com for for really finding everything for us. We have a newsletter that we update a lot. But if you want to find all the things about us, that's a great place to follow us. It's Lifeline Comics, Cat and Phil Comics over there. If you want to plug upcoming Kickstarters, Phil.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah, yeah. My cat said we pretty much always have Kickstarters. We have a new surprise anthology coming in a couple of weeks that cat teased earlier. It's gonna be announced on Monday. Probably it's already announced by the time this is airing, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, very likely. We can announce it if you want, it's yeah, I don't mind.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, no, uh, the comic shop, the comic. So um, there was a a crowdfunding campaign last year for a sitcom set in a comic shop in a black-owned comic shop and you know, super funny cast. And they the creator of the show, Cheyenne, wanted to do a tie-in comic, like an anthology with stories from the world of the show. So it's like this really fun comedic, like comic uh based on a TV show set in a comic store, like like a lot of really fun meta jokes. There are a lot of really talented creators in there. So that's gonna be launching, I think, September 22nd, and we're really excited for that one. And then we have a witch anthology coming up, it's called Witch Horror Stories that was announced a little while ago. That's gonna come in mid to late October, and then continuing our our ongoing, so like Witches of Oz, our sapphic Glinda Wicked Witch romance that's gonna be coming in November. So always as I know a fan. Um always excited to continue that one, and then yeah, that's I think those are the the upcoming ones we're really excited about.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

And also there'll be links down below to all the above, just so everyone knows. And yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much for being here. I've got a story to tell, you've got a story to tell. Together we rise through our stories. Thanks so much for being here till next Saturday, 10 a.m. Eastern time. Peace. See you guys. Bye. Thanks so much for being here, everyone. Uh, I hope you enjoyed this episode with many more to come. If you'd like to help support and grow uh the podcast and even the YouTube channel, please not only follow, like, subscribe, but please leave a review on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to this podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Until next week. On Wednesday at 7 AM Mountain Standard Time. Catch you later.