5 Questions with Mia Nie
Mia Nie is a Chinese-Australian comic artist, zine-maker, and award-nominated ex-poet. She has been published in Pencilled In, The Suburban Review, Comic Sans Journal, Strange Horizons, and Castles in the Sky.
Her work explores the complexities, contradictions, and deeply felt desires of transgender subjectivity. She is passionate about understanding queer history and imagining queer futures. Mia is currently working on her first graphic novel.
No.1
How did you come to comics?
I loved comics and manga growing up and I had this prestige fantasy of being a comic artist. I was really into Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series when I was a teenager and his whole ‘literary rock star’ image that was popular throughout the ‘00s. I wanted to make serialised epics, but I didn’t have the skill set or any idea about publication. I contemplated webcomics too, but it felt outside the scope of my ambition because I didn’t know the first thing about maintaining a website or building an audience. I was just an ex-deviantART kid with a pocketful of OCs and a head full of dreams.
When I entered university I became an amateur zine poet, a practice I started in the aftermath of a high school breakup. I was about as bad as you would expect a 19-year-old poet to be, although I did write one poem projecting onto Shakespeare’s Ophelia that was nominated for a Rhysling award—which is why I like to joke about being an award-nominated ex-poet. By 2014 I’d stopped making creative work altogether, but what was really valuable about making poetry zines was coming to understand that you can just ‘become’ a poet. You can be a crap poet, but no one can deny that you are a poet nonetheless. As critical as I am of bad art, I appreciate the confidence that comes with being able to make something and putting it out there.
I started making comics in the aftermath of another breakup in 2016 (yes, I’m a lesbian cliché). By this point, I’d become more familiar with indie comics through the zine scene, and ‘becoming’ a poet gave me the confidence to try ‘becoming’ a comic artist. My friend Marlo Mogensen had been making indie comics for a few years by this point as well, and I really admired his work (and still do, endlessly). My first comic was a zine called Little Magic #1, a domestic drama about two millennial lesbian witches talking about Final Fantasy for twenty-six pages. There was never a second issue.
No.2
Tell us a bit more about the graphic novel you’re working on under the Next Chapter scheme.
The novel is called SAMSARA DREAMIN’. It’s kind of a Thelma and Louise-style couples’ road trip through Buddhist Hell. The plot is centred around Red, a trans girl who reads too much, and Wolf, her monstrous boyfriend/bodyguard. They’re on the run from Hell’s authorities after escaping karmic punishment. Red’s narration carries the story’s tone; she has this comically tortured interiority. On the other hand, Wolf has no interiority apart from an obsessive desire to protect Red, having had his memories wiped as part of Hell’s punishments. Red loves and loathes Wolf, while he commits increasingly grotesque acts of violence in her name. The whole thing is really a psycho-romance in my own mind: Red is the most pitiable, pathetic version of myself, while Wolf gets to act out my monstrous anger at the wretchedness of the world.
I’ve been working on the manuscript for about year. The idea coalesced after visiting a Chinese temple during tremendous personal grief. I learned about a river in Chinese Hell which erases one’s memories, as the final destination all souls must pass through on the path towards reincarnation. It seemed like fertile territory for exploring ontological and phenomenological questions around queer and trans experience, as well as general existential angst. Denise Riley contemplates the same mytheme in its Greek form, through the river Lethe in her essay ‘The Wounded Fall in the Direction of their Wound’. In what ways are ‘who we are’ informed by our experiences, both painful and euphoric? What does it mean when those experiences are erased from us? That’s the stuff I want to think about in this comic, in an edgy-fun way.
But it’s also an excuse to vicariously live out the fantasy of having a feral monster boyfriend, although in this instance—since Wolf is also a version of me—you could say “the boyfriend is coming from inside the house”.
No.3
What was your first response upon receiving the email confirming your acceptance into the program?
I said “Wow!” in Christopher Walken’s voice.
Actually, it was announced to me via a phone call, and I was waiting for a call from my endocrinologist that day. So I was really just expecting to find out about my estrogen levels, and it came as a big shock. I was also in the thick of uni assessment season, so I had to push it from my mind and focus on getting that done.
I’m only just now getting to really sit with it and process everything. The main feelings are excitement and elation, with a healthy microdose of internal crisis at the pressure of minor recognition and goal actualisation.
No.4
What will the Next Chapter mean for you and your practice?
It’s a pretty huge deal! It means I don’t have to worry about finding work for at least another year. Before 2019, I’d taken an extended leave of absence from making comics because I was working full time in administration and logistics. Comics are an extremely time-consuming practice and it was unfeasible to maintain while working.
And while I liked the job, I hated not being an artist. I quit at the start of 2020 to really give being an artist a good shot. Unfortunately, this year didn’t go the way that I thought it would, but the program will really help me to make it work over the next couple of years.
I’m supremely excited at the idea of the program’s mentorship component as well, in addition to having more peers to work on large scale projects. The fact that the program also assists in taking the works to publication is an honest-to-god dream. I’m very excited to dig into it next year.
No.5
What are you reading at the moment? What authors or books inspire your work?
My favourite comic right now is Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man. The series hasn’t concluded yet so it could still be a dud, but so far it’s had a huge influence on the style and tone of SAMSARA. It’s preoccupied with a kind of ‘karmic angst’ which is right up my alley, and Fujimoto’s art is hypnotic (and close enough to my own skill set to pilfer for lessons).
I fell off with my reading in the last few months because of lockdown blues. I’ve just resumed everything I was previously reading where I left off: Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Jeanette Winterson’s FranKISSstein, and Torrey Peters’ The Chaser. Winterson is one of my favourite non-comics authors, along with Dodie Bellamy and Anne Carson. I adore their fuzzy, mythopoeic approach to autobiographical writing. I love philosophy as well; earlier this year I wrote a comic and an essay responding to some of Sara Ahmed’s writing, and SAMSARA heavily references Catherine Malabou. I’m endlessly inspired by other indie comic artists—too many to list, some of whom I’m lucky enough to call my friends.
Aside from that, I feel like almost every piece of media I consume ends up inspiring my work in some way. I guess that’s what happens when you read on recommendation and your friends have discernment; and also when you build a storytelling mode built on pastiche and reference, my own take on the hallowed tradition of queer bootlegging. A surprising influence on SAMSARA was Ang Lee’ Hulk film from 2003. Just the image of CGI Eric Bana’s grotesque green body, wreathed in darkness; Jennifer Connelly’s tremulous hands reaching out to touch him; both pulling away from each other, disgusted by the enormity of their monstrous desire. Delicious.
The Next Chapter is a scheme that gives writers time and space to craft a voice and a career—offering them support from mentors and peers, and the opportunity to experiment and develop their writing. It’s also about investing time and expertise in writers who reflect the diversity of Australian identities and experiences, and offering opportunities to writers from marginalised communities.
Find out more here.