The Rat Chronicles

I’ve ordered a new book – Kyosai Kawanabe’s prints. They’re gorgeous, gory, and utterly fascinating. I showed my partner and within the third page or so there’s a graphic of a guy having full on anal intercourse with another guy, then a beheading, then a giant cat with two tails. It’s a fun and terrifying visual journey and good inspiration for my story.

Of my two female rats (sisters), Lucy is the perennially shy one that still acts like it’s an alien abduction when I try to pick her up. She treats me — her Rat Mom — mostly like a creepy older male co-worker and runs away when I try to pet her, but lately I’ve found something that helps her enjoy my company a bit more.

Talking.

She really, really enjoys being talked to. I noticed that when I sit about a foot away on the floor, at eye level or lower, and just whisper sweet nothings to her, her whole body relaxes and she starts bruxing and boggling in happiness.

So lately, I’ve been reading stories to her, chatting about daily goings-on, and paying her compliments like “You’re so pretty” and “Such a good cute rat!”
But those topics got old, fast, so I update her a lot about political news.

Needless to say, it looks very weird to outsiders.

I’m making a new comic and I hope it’s going to be a good one. Rika is shown here meeting Kurako, the fox demon, in her demon fox form. Kurako is a bake-kitsune (化け狐） or a type of supernatural demon-spirit that has magical powers including transforming into people and deceiving people for decades. While the vast majority of demon foxes are evil/semi-evil manipulators, Kurako’s intentions are a bit more unclear, as she takes on a kind of mentor role to Rika — an awkward, clumsy, low-self-esteem young woman with a strong sense of cultural displacement (she grew up during her formative years in Japan, and despite never really fitting in or being accepted, she still identifies strongly with Japanese culture and struggles when she comes back ‘home’ to Canada).

 

 

I’m working on a new and improved comic for this year’s VanCAF, but here’s a sample of the Rat Chronicles (Vol. 1) about a ratty girl and a patient boyfriend who tries to domesticate her.

 

When I was a kid, I grew up with legends and stories from Japanese folklore. My childhood was imbued with it: my mother told me about how people’s souls turned into beautiful blue-green flame when they died, and that she saw these herself when she was a child on her way to the outdoors toilet (homes in Okinawa didn’t have toilets back then if you weren’t wealthy).
“Everyone around me said the hino tama (flame of people’s souls) was scary, that it was frightening to come across, but when I saw them I wasn’t freaked out at all. I thought they were so pretty,” my mom told me.
This is a work in progress of some of the demons who enter my story, Rika and the Hundred Demon Tour (still debating if it should be “March” instead, as per 百鬼夜行。The Japanese version of my text would be 百鬼旅行、or Hundred Demon Tour)..