Meet Sina Grace

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sina Grace.

Sina, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Santa Monica, and I always have to add “rent-controlled Santa Monica” because that area has changed so much in the last 20 years, and the vibe there doesn’t reflect what I came up in. I’ve always wanted to make comic books as a kid… I literally say “comic book illustrator” as my dream career in my fifth grade yearbook!

That passion stuck with me through high school, as I basically juggled doing art for the school paper and yearbook with shifts as an editorial intern for a comic company in Century City. By the time I was heading into college, I was self-publishing zines and basically tricking every teacher/ professor into letting me shift assignments towards my dreams of making comic books. In college (UC Santa Cruz), I started doing local conventions and getting more work out there. At one point, I took a quarter off school to apprentice under a comic artist in Ventura County. Whenever people ask me about why I work in comics, my best answer is: the more I learned, the more I wanted to continue and evolve. Maybe it was blind ambition, maybe it was big Leo energy, but I kept pushing myself and working harder on all kinds of projects until I was juggling duties at Editorial Director for Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Imprint and drawing comics for Image Comics… all before I was 25 lol. I set out to work entirely freelance in 2012, and while there have been intense hand-to-mouth moments, I’ve never looked back.

Now, I’m living in Los Feliz, and am able to pay rent entirely from writing and illustrating gigs. The journey has taken me to wild places- I wrote an iconic Iceman series for Marvel Comics that got written up in The New York Times (twice! In print! Whaaa!?), I’ve created visual assets for most all of my favorite musicians, my personal fave being for Jenny Lewis’ On The Line album rollout. I’m currently wrapping up a series called Ghosted in LA, which serves as my love letter to Los Angeles and a kick-ass YA riff on Melrose Place… but with ghosts!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are sort of three different areas an artist can be attacked on: their physical health, their options for opportunities, and the reception of their statement. I definitely have hit some road bumps in each department. A few years ago, I’d gotten hit with a massive depression as well as developing a disorder in my esophagus that left me 28 pounds underweight. After the surgery, I was in major credit debt and struggling to produce work that was up to the standard my editors and collaborators expected of me. It was a long road, but I found my way back (no cute story there… just the slow burn of time). When I first went freelance, I was saying yes to any opportunity that would help keep the bills paid, but I learned after a while that it was creating a weird perception (or lack thereof) with regards to what my voice contributed to modern storytelling. When you have a knack for all aspects of making books (down to marketing and editing), folks don’t know how to categorize you.

That was a major hurdle, taking on the mindset of “if it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a fuck no,” but I honestly am way for the better as a result. People now have a sense of who I am and what my voice is when they read something with my name on it. Which brings us to the third area of attack… how people react to the work. When I was writing for Iceman, Marvel had already outed the titular character as gay, but I was brought on to “add flesh” if you will. I was immediately trolled and judged super harshly by a movement of close-minded folks who call themselves c*micsg*te (I don’t want to spell out the name because I don’t want them to find this article and come back for me again). Iceman was canceled and brought back due to bigger picture sales (collected edition, digital sales, etc.), but Marvel was pretty apathetic the whole way through. I posted a public essay on my Tumblr last Pride about getting the heat on both sides and how I had to stand up for myself during the whole process. It was incredibly scary to stand up to the largest publisher in my industry, on a public platform… the same week their competitor DC Comics had offered me work for the first time. Like, that was such an awful conversation to say “Thanks for offering me a gig, you may need to check with your bosses and see if they are comfortable hiring a guy who just publicly badmouthed Marvel Comics.” Luckily, I’ve been in comics for nearly 15 years, so the editor who went to bat for me felt like my reputation spoke volumes over one bad experience.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
While I mainly write and draw comic books, I’ve branched out at different points along the way into other forms of storytelling. I guess this makes me an artist instead of an illustrator? I’m mainly known for being able to tap into slice-of-life small moments and juxtapose them against superhero/ colossal contexts. No matter what, I’m just always excited about using any and all mediums to express some manner of joy. I love entertaining people, and I love creating space for folks to feel something sincere. I wrote, produced, and starred in a web series a few years ago called Self-Obsessed (based on my graphic novel of the same name), and what made me so proud is that it’s completely and utterly *me.* I love gay bears, and I love local lady punk bands… so in the first five minutes you see me at a bear orgy being held in my friend Isabel’s backyard in highland park. Then, in another episode, I meet the man of my dreams at a show where Feels is performing. All of my work is implicitly political, because I’m just trying to portray the world from my lens into any project, and I forget that I’m kind of a weirdo Persian gay dude whose penchant for heels or handbags reads as gender ambivalence. Nowadays, I’m slowly challenging myself to mess with music… mainly because I deeply admire the charisma and power musicians have over an audience, and I’d love to play these dumb songs about blowjobs for the 15 queerdos out there who’d care.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would have not taken Yearbook as an elective and focused more on art for the school paper, then I would have never ever started as an Econ major in college. Even today, I still deal with the same problem I’d want to rid myself of ten years ago, which is avoiding distractions that don’t lead to having more comic strips/ stories done. That said, so many beautiful opportunities have come from all the skills I gained doing dumb shit like storyboards for movies, restaurant layouts for business owners, logo designers for small brands. It’s a tapestry! I guess I’d just be nicer to myself about the side quests, then.

Contact Info:

• Website: Sinagrace.com
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credit:
Ghosted in LA is courtesy of Boom Studios, “Sheytoon” EP photo by Anthony Foster

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