by MATTHEW WOODLEY

If you’re familiar with her work as a cartoonist, you could be forgiven for concocting a distorted mental image of Julie Doucet. After all, you would already be acquainted with the Julie of her autobiographical comics, the ever-frazzled one who wears her psyche on her sleeve, drawing tales of sex, drugs, cock and shock in a clutter of bold, blood-smattered strokes. That, it would seem, is her shyness turned inside out; the Julie Doucet who lets me into her clean studio on a sunny afternoon is all soft-spoken and smiles.

Doucet is one of the best-known comic artists in the world—a label that, in her case, usually comes attached with the word “female.” Her gender isn’t as relevant in comparing her to others as it is in the neurotic feminine psyche she portrayed for 10 years in her Dirty Plotte (French for “cunt”) series.

As funny as it is unsettling, the most grabbing parts of Plotte are the dream sequences that pop up throughout. She masturbates on a space ship, appears in a man’s body and gives shaving a shot, eats her penpal’s penis (“Hum, it’s just like sausage.”) and gives birth to a cat. The dirty dreams were collected in the book My Most Secret Desire, and this month, on its 10-year anniversary, re-released by Drawn & Quarterly with not-before-published material. This is just one of a stack of books published in both English and her native French, including an autobiography of clipped and collaged words and her celebrated New York Diary.

There’s one thing it’s taken people a while to catch on to though: Doucet hasn’t drawn a comic in seven years. In 1999 she got a grant that she used as an offramp from that world, which she remembers with little fondness. Now 40, Doucet is carving a different path—one with a much less self-obsessed angle. She’s left the dark and dirty for a style still similar in its cynicism and quirks, working mostly in collage and linocuts. As on bookshelves, her work can be seen in galleries around the world. For the many who still buy and read her comics, it’s been a bit of an adjustment. The Mirror spoke to Doucet about the still thriving world she left behind and the new one she’s building.

Mirror: Do people often tell you that you come across kind of different in person than the character you portray in your work?

Julie Doucet: (Laughs) Yes, all the time. But I’ve always been like this. I smile and laugh a lot, but you don’t really know me right away. There’s always a lot more to people than what you get when you first meet them.

M: Do you ever miss making comics?

JD: Well... no, not really (laughs).

M: You sound happy about your decision to move on.

JD: Oh my god, yes. I’m very happy about it. It took me quite a long time to figure out why and I’m not sure I even have because I feel my reaction is out of proportion. I really don’t want to hear about comics anymore, I don’t want to read them. And it’s not really about the medium anymore, but the crowd.

M: What do you mean by that?

JD: It’s really a guy’s world, and with comic nerds—in general anyway—all they talk about is comics. They’re not really interested in anything else and just not that open to things. Also I think it had a lot to do with relationships I had—romantic ones—that were very difficult for me. My only friends at the time were men and a lot of the men had a problem with me being more successful than they were.

M: Have you made any female friends over the years?

JD: (laughs) All my friends now are women. All of them.

PANEL PRIESTESS

M: Seven years after leaving the medium, you’re still looked at as a comic artist. Plus, with My Most Secret Desire having just been reprinted, there’s likely a whole new audience discovering your work.

JD: Well if new people are reading it I think that’s good. And I don’t mind talking about it because that’s what I did for 10 years, as long as I can talk about the other things I do. There are a lot of people who’ve been disappointed with me for moving to something different. A lot of people at first asked, “Is it really true?” They all said, “Ha! One day you’ll be back, in three years you’ll be back, in five years you’ll be back (laughs). I’ve never gone back—I just knew. Sometimes when I tell people what I’m doing now they just react like I’m crazy. You know, with success in comics it’s like you’ve become a priest and you just cannot quit. That’s pretty much it.

M: You had a show a couple months ago at Galerie B-312 of newer work, which I think reflects the style people have come to associate with you through comics, but without the plot. How was it received?

JD: It was mostly positive except for a couple people who said something like, “Nice drawings, but where’s the story?” It’s all about being passionate about what you do, and I never felt that way in comics. I mean, I would have really good ideas and be excited about them, but to sit down and draw was difficult sometimes. With printmaking I immediately felt an urgency that I’ve never felt before. I can’t stop.

TOUGH LOVE

M: I understand you’re also working on a new book of poetry.

JD: Yes, they’re love poems—very cynical love poems of course (laughs). It’s collage and similar to what I did in my Autobiographie, which was published in French and is being translated... For that I took pieces of sentences from French magazines like Elle because I liked the way they looked and some of the weird vocabulary they would use.

M: Can you make as good a living off your new work as you could with comics?

JD: Ironically, I still make all my money from comics. And I make all my money from Americans. Nobody buys art in Montreal. Unless it’s 10 bucks... But it’s much easier to live here if you’re an artist than anywhere else I’ve lived.

M: What else is in store for the future?

JD: I’m interested in writing, maybe just writing one day if I can get better at it. And I would love to make a movie at some point—based on my life. I actually started working on something a few years ago, but so far I haven’t really had good experiences with movie people.

M: Why’s that?

JD: I was working with a producer, but he was the screenwriter at the same time, which is apparently not a very good thing. I found that out at my expense. I was really naïve because I signed a contract, but there was a verbal agreement about how much I would participate in the writing of the script and I had very little control. So I had to get help from a lawyer and that project is no more. I have a good idea of what I want to do, but it’s very difficult not having control over a story when it’s your own life.

My Most Secret Desire, Drawn & Quarterly, hc, 212pp, $19.95

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