Greetings Samantha Leriche-Gionet of Boumerie!
Hi there!
For those who are unfamiliar, what is Boumerie about?
Boumeries is a journal comic I’ve been doing for more than a year now! It’s a record of silly anecdotes in comic strip form. I draw three strips a week.
It reminds me more of Kid With Experience than a lot of other journal comics – it is like a slice of life thing as opposed to a daily list of events.
Oh, I love Jess Fink’s work! That’s flattering. Well to tell the truth, I started these on Hourly Comic Day in 2011, and since Hourly Comic Day is about making a comic an hour about what happened during the hour prior, I was wondering how to make the whole thing more interesting than just “Here’s what I did. Mostly, comics.”
Haha. That makes sense.
Then people told me I’d started something good and that I should keep doing it. So the webcomic was born.
Now do you read a lot of other journal webcomics?
I try to keep myself updated, yes! Lately I’ve been reading Caffeinated Toothpaste, Boredom Pays, Looks Like Rain, American Elf, Christopher… I also love Emily Partridge’s journal comics, but she does them more sporadically. But there’s a lot more out there I’m probably forgetting about right now.
There are. A lot of stories and a lot of perspectives. Now are you also a fan of print comics?
Oh yes, I’m running out of space on my bookshelf (it doesn’t help that my partner is also a big comics fan). I try to read more local stuff now (I’m from Quebec, Canada), but I can’t resist buying good comics in print form, even if they exist on the web. My latest book crushes are Mike Holmes, Ross Campbell, Faith Erin Hicks, Vera Brosgol, Jen Wang… the list goes on.
Now outside of comics, do you do any art or drawing?
Well, I’m an animator by trade and animating is what I do for a living right now, so if you consider that drawing, then that’s what I do all day! But lately I’ve been flooded by comic projects and opportunities which leave me little time for personal illustrations. I still try to find some time and work on something different every once in a while.
Are you able to share any of those comic projects that you are working on?
I’m preparing the second Boumeries book that should be out in July, but I’m also working on my first professional comic book, a graphic novel titled “La petite révolution” (The Little Revolution), published by Montreal-based Front Froid this fall. It’ll be in French, but I’ll do whatever it takes to release an English version one day. I’ve just finished the thumbnailing stage and should start pencils this week. (I did a related illustration today to celebrate the milestone). I’m also planning to start a webcomic with a good friend of mine, Cab, once we have enough time to sit down and talk more seriously about it. We’d alternate drawing pages. A collab comic of some kind.
Cab is your friend who is in the comics about FF7 on the computer right?
Exactly! We’ve been hanging out for too long now, haha.
I had that game too and mine bugged out on the first disc after that big materia speech.
On the Playstation? Or the PC version? Cab’s computer was the least compatible thing for a game of this magnitude. (Also it was in French, and the translation was terrible.)
The PC version.
That sucks.
Yeah. It was also 5 years after people stopped supporting it. What is “La petite révolution” going to be about?
It’s set in a fictional world that still somehow connects to ours (kind of an alternate timeline or something like that). The main character, a little orphaned girl named Florence, wants to be part of a revolution that is being plotted to overthrow the current dictatorship. It’s pretty different from my Boumeries… I don’t know what people’ll think of it, haha.
Is there anything else that you’d like to promote?
Well, I’m going to be at TCAF with my book (and a little zine), so if anyone’s going, drop by and say hi! I’m really hoping to attend conventions in the US as soon as possible. Right now I got my fingers crossed for NYCC, but I’m looking into SPX and MoCCA for next year. That would be fantastic.
SPX is a pretty fantastic show.
It’s not too far away from where I am, either. The one that’s absolutely hopeless for me right now is Stumptown — with no direct flights from Montreal to Portland (and also approximately a 10-12 hour flight), there’s no way I could afford the trip. Sadly…
Yeah. I’d love to do Stumptown but coming down and across from Canada can be difficult. Thank you for doing the interview with me Samantha.
No problem! Thank YOU!