Julia Gfrörer is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and author. Her work is often transgressive, invoking occult themes within an ambience of subtly observed historicist concerns, in narratives generally characterized by "mumblecore dialogue, persistent overtones of horror and suffering, and unapologetic sexuality." She's been hailed as "one of the most promising artists of her generation" by Phoebe Gloeckner.
Background
Gfrörer graduated from Cornish College with a BFA in printmaking. Her thesis show explored depictions of martyrdom – a subject she has returned to frequently in later works . Moving to Portland after graduation, she met Dylan Williams in the process of consigning her DIY mini-comic about St. Francis of Assisi at the Pony Club Gallery where he happened to be working. He became Gfrörer's first publisher. Her first full-length comic, Flesh & Bone'', was nominated for an Ignatz Award for outstanding achievement in the form, and was excerpted in the Best American Comics anthology shortly thereafter.
Career
Gfrörer has been twice nominated for the Ignatz Award and twice featured as a contributor in Best American Comics. After experimenting with self-publishing and working with a number of smaller presses, Gfrörer's second graphic novella, Black Is The Color, was published at Fantagraphics after being digitally serialized on the Study Group Comics website. Fantagraphics published her book about the Black Death, Laid Waste, in 2016 which was released to general critical acclaim. Gfrörer appeared in Fantagraphics' Next Wave panel alongside colleagues Simon Hanselmann, Anya Davidson, Benjamin Marra, and Noah Van Sciver in 2016. She's also presented at PEN America's "Transcendent Obscenity" panel, and at the Parsons School of Art & Design while teaching workshops at SAW and exhibiting work at MoCCA and elsewhere. While Fantagraphics publishes Gfrörer's major works, she continues to publish shorter works and collaborations under her own imprint, Thuban Press. In 2016, Thuban published No End Will Be Found, a harrowing novella set during the Würzburg witch trials by author Gretchen Felker-Martin whose work continues to appear under the imprint. Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins were selected to curate and edit the second volume of 2D Cloud's annual anthology Mirror, Mirror in 2017. More recently Analog Self-Publishing has been released as a starter-kit for aspiring zine and comic book artists, the Visions trilogy, and All-Fucked Up.
Selected works
Graphic novellas
Flesh and Bone : after returning from a black mass, a witch meets a forlorn young man who has come to ask for her aid in reuniting him with his dead lover. Selected by Alison Bechdel for inclusion in Best American Comics 2011.
Black is the Color : a 17th century sailor abandoned at sea by his shipmates endures, and eventually succumbs to, both his lingering death sentence and the advances of an amorous mermaid.
Laid Waste : as corpses accumulate around her in a plague-ravaged medieval city, a young widow named Agnès must weigh her obligations to the dead and dying against her desire to protect what little remains.
Minicomics
Vision
Analog Self-Publishing
Dark Age: a pair of lovers in a primeval age explore a deep cave.
