Dudgrick meets….John Curtis Jennison
John Curtis Jennison has been making comics since 2009, when he began a series focusing on his medical adventures and his fight with cancer. Later, he published web comics based on his life as a waiter in Brooklyn, and has recently started a series of queer themed horror stories called Astonishing Queer Tales. In 2019, he released The Closet of Secrets #1, a queer horror anthology. In 2020, he released the MYSTIC MALE TAROT a queer masculine themed tarot deck.
In 2014, John became a board member of Geeks OUT where he edited their first print publication, Geeks OUT Presents POWER! An anthology of Queer Creators, with a focus on stories for young adults about power and overcoming adversity. Along with his work on Flame Con, the world’s largest LGBTQ comic and arts convention, I had the chance recently to talk to him about his life and work.
Dudgrick Bevins: John, tell us a little about yourself and your work.
John Curtis Jennison: First off thanks for having me! I’m a queer illustrator and storyteller who enjoys working mostly in comics and graphic storytelling. For the past two years, I have branched out into my other love: the occult. At the beginning of 2020, I released a masculine divine themed tarot deck called MYSTIC MALE TAROT, and as of last week I just completed a successful Kickstarter for an oracle deck, THIS DECK IS HAUNTED, that focuses the energies of ghost, spirits and spooky storytelling to help guide you in your day to day life.
DB: Do you see a relationship between your sexual identity and your affinity for horror and the supernatural?
JCJ: Absolutely! I think as I have gotten older I realized just how much of a connection horror and my own queerness has. As queer people we grow up scared. Fear of being found out, fear of being different, fear that we will never find others like us or we won’t find love. Part of me always thought that was why I was attracted to what is hiding in the dark be it monster, ghost or psycho wielding a knife.
It’s diverted that fear onto something that isn’t me or the “Gay Mister Hyde” that I was keeping from the world. In reality, I saw my queerness as the monster laying in wait to strike my victims, ’cause it was the beast hiding in the dark (or closet) for so long, waiting to jump out and scare the “straights.” Now I want to channel and redirect that energy to create works that include queer people in the story so that new generations won’t have those same feelings.
DB: Which of your horror works are you most proud of?
JCJ: There is a story in the first issue of THE CLOSET OF SECRETS that is titled LOVE AFTERLIFE. That story is very personal, and a mixture of a lot of who I am and how I came to be as the queer horror creator that I am. The story revolves around two teenaged boys who go off into the woods to cast a spell and inadvertently raise the body of a dead soldier.
A lot of that story is taken from my queer journey. As a kid, my friend and I loved movies like THE CRAFT, and we would go into the woods near his house and try to summon ghosts or find love. But, the story the soldier tells is close to that of a story about my grandfather.
No, My grandfather was not gay, but when I was in college I had not come out to my grandmother. We went out to lunch and I had planned to tell her that day. As we were sitting chatting, she told me the story of a man who my grandfather had been in WWII with. After the war, the man had told my grandfather that he loved him.
My grandmother said that my grandfather was kind and had let the man down gently. Years later, the man was found murdered, susceptibly because he was a homosexual. Then, my grandmother just looked me in the eyes, this conservative catholic woman, and said, “Just be careful, I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to my Johnny .” That was it. No big “NANA, I’M A FLAMING QUEER”. She just knew and wanted me to know she loved me and wanted me to be safe.
DB: In a way, you already are a horror host, but I’m curious, if you were a horror host a la Elvira, what would your persona be?
JCJ: Oh, My GOD! Can I please?! My comic is hosted by The Janitor who cleans out closets and spills spooky stories and queer secrets. I’m not sure he is the kind of host I’d want to be. I think I would take on the persona of Robin Graves; he has the male look of Elvira, walking around in a banana hammock and a cape with a skull clasp and long black hair, and skin as pale as fresh snow.
I’m always good for a corny joke so it would be perfect. It would be a must that I had a young twinky sidekick, a la Ronda Shear from the 90’s USA Up All Night. Sex appeal and the scare factor with just the right amount of camp.
DB: As Robin Graves, what would be the first film you showed and why?
JCJ: That’s a tough one! Part of me wants to show Elvira Mistress of the Dark because, for the past few weeks, I have heard too many 20 and 30-something gay friends say they have NEVER SEEN IT! To me that is a tragedy.
But, I think the first movie would be the sexy, campy 1960’s film The Horror of Party Beach. The film has it all — Sexy men in tiny beach shorts, a leather clad biker gang, dance breaks and a cheap rubber suited sea monster! It would make for the perfect commercial break skits.
DB: Beyond The Horror of Party Beach, give us a list of your required Halloween season media (books, movies, music); the only rule is no Hocus Pocus.
JCJ: Well, since I already did my yearly watching of Hocus Pocus, I’ll go down the next few that are on my list. The Craft, of course, and I’m interested to see what the remake will give us in a few weeks. Other movies and TV include House on Haunted Hill (1959), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (Also lots of episodes of TFTC), Fright Night, Stir of Echoes, The Others… I could go on forever!
I have a huge list of comics that I’m rereading this year. Right now, I’m on a big Kelly Jones kick, and have been re-reading DC Comics’ Deadman mini-series that he and Mike Baron did in the early 1990’s. The thing that I didn’t remember, which is kind of disheartening to me, is there’s a lot of gay hate and racist comments that, frankly, didn’t age well.
I also plan to re-read all of the Hill House line of comics that came out this year. Basket of Heads was a great read, as was Plunge, which I read monthly and want to read in one sitting. On top of that, I’ll be flipping through all the old Vertigo Comic’s John Constantine, 1970’s House of Secrets, and House of Mysteries from DC Comics. Basically, anything I can find illustrated by Bernie Wrightson… and that’s just a few.
DB: We’ve talked a bit about your use of tarot. Can you tell us more about that?
JCJ: I started reading tarot at a young age, but never felt like I was very good at it. I put it away for years, and then one day, after being diagnosed with cancer, I found my old deck and really fell back into it. I started doing readings for myself, mostly, and this time around the cards just clicked. It was like I understood them in a new way. As I explored the many decks that were out there, I found the queer themed decks were limited.
DB: You even made your own tarot deck! Can you tell us a little more about that process and your most recent deck?
JCJ In 2019, I finished THE MYSTIC MALE TAROT, which is a Major Arcana only deck that focuses on masculine divine energy. Most of the decks I found focused on feminine energy, and the ones that were focused on queer men I found to be hyper sexualized.
Not that that is a bad thing, but it wasn’t what I was looking for in my day-to-day practice. Thus the MYSTIC MALE TAROT was born. I’m a big believer that if you can’t find the thing you want, make it yourself and this led to a lot of folks asking for it.
While I was working on the tarot deck I had the idea for something that was a little less queer-focused and a little more horror-oriented. As a lover of stories, I’ve always found ghost stories most fascinating. Every culture has their own version of ghosts — So many stories, so many different ideas and so many ways to think about what happens to people after they die.
I wanted to create cards that focused on those concepts and an oracle deck was perfect for that! It’s a lot looser in terms of rules than a typical tarot deck can be, and so THIS DECK IS HAUNTED opened up some fun ideas and concepts. I think people are really going to like the format, as I have played with a lot of concepts of what I loved about ghost stories growing up. A lot of the ideas are drawn from my love of comics, of course, but also of books like Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and other 80’s and 90’s media I absorbed.
DB: What are you working on now and where can we find you and your work?
I am mostly finishing up THIS DECK IS HAUNTED, and getting that off to the printers in the next two weeks. The book for that took on a life of its own, and I’m editing and revamping it as we speak. The hope is that it will be available for this holiday season — Fingers crossed! I am also working on more short horror comics that should see print in early 2021, so be on the lookout!
You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @johneecurtis, or check out all my goodies at etsy.com/shop/AstonishingQT
