1st. I later discovered in Hindu that there
is a celebration for the goddess Kali on
that same day. I noticed common threads
through different cultures and wanted to
represent how cultures are merging; at
times in conflict, others in harmony.
Also, looking for that trickster archetype,
like Dionysus, that emerges in every
culture. For instance, in the second book, we
see Heyoka who is a trickster clown of the
Lakota. He even has horns like Dionysus or
a court jester.
WB: What was your method for pulling
all of this together into one story, look, and
narrative?
ZP: I learned a lot in school growing up
and for this I started seeing parallels. Like
with sacred geometry. Almost every culture
has a sacred geometry, numbers, that sort
of thing. They even look alike or are almost
the same thing, which I found interesting.
You’ll see a pattern in Greek cultures that’s
identical to a Mayan pattern even though
they were separated by thousands of years.
So, I was interested in those areas in the art,
which represents parallels in the culture.
WB: There is all of this abstracted art,
melding cultures, dream-like sequences,
but what is the concrete message you start
with or are trying to relate?
ZP: There are definitely many layers of
messages I am expressing. As for the queer
part of the story, I think there are a lot of
people in the LGBT community who suffer
from a lot of trauma, family problems, with
American culture, and are at odds with
the teachings of Christianity that queer
people are evil. I grew up as a Christian,
and then I discovered that there are many
cultures where queerness is seen as a gift
or unique part of the culture. That gave me
a lot of personal hope and wanted to expose
people to it who might not know about it.
Maybe it can give them hope or help them
understand the full spiritual context of
queer people.
Back to Dionysus, in the rituals men
would dress as women and women as men.
Queerness was a big part of that following. It
was all about breaking cultural boundaries.
Taking that a level further, queer people
seem to be the ones who notice and are
affected by problems with our society like
patriarchy and oppression, so there is a
political element to that as well.
WB: How do you deal with the critics
of some of these controversial topics and
ideas? How do you get past those moments
where something cuts you a little with some
hurtful words out of spite?
ZP: It definitely affects you as an artist.
With the first book, I had one person write
me some really mean emails. He said he
was a follower of Dionysus and thought it
was terrible how I depicted Dionysus, how
wrong it was I related it to being queer, just
everything. That really got to me. Then I
also get nice compliments, too. I try to write
those down and look back at them, the nice
stuff, when I’m feeling down or something.
As an artist I am dealing with a lot of
sensitive subjects and controversial things,
so I am going to get negative stuff back. I
just try to focus on the good stuff and read
those when it’s kinda tough.
WB: I know I’ve encountered it, trying to
sell a book and getting rejected time and
again until I just said screw it and decided to
put it out on my own. How are you defining
the success of this as you self-publish these
books?
ZP: I definitely try to separate the money
from success. I have put more into this
than I have gotten out for sure. I would
like to sell it, go bigger with it, and reach
more people. That’s not what is success to
me. Monetary gain does not equal success.
It is hard when you are self-publishing. It
can be discouraging when you feel like
you are doing this all by yourself trying to
find resources, get the word out there, print
more books.
I must have gotten like 50 rejection letters
when I tried to sell this; full-color graphic
novels don’t sell, you can’t release it as a
series, people don’t buy that, and all those
kinds of things. I realized that if you create
something you like, then there are going
to be other people who like it, too. There is
bound to be other people who like the same
stuf