Rose Appignanesi in conversation with Leo Fox for SOLRAD:
“Rosa Appignanesi: I wanted to start by talking a little bit about the background to Boy Island. How did the project begin?
Leo Fox: During Covid there was quite a surge in people in the independent comic community serializing comics on Instagram, and I was quite interested in doing something like that because it was different from the way I worked before – sitting in my room by myself for ten months and then it’s done and out in the world. When I started writing the script for Boy Island, I wasn’t originally thinking, ‘oh yeah, I’m going to serialize this one,’ I was just on holiday and bored and thought let me give this a go. I’d written probably 75% of the script beforehand, which I don’t usually do. I would normally have written the entire script. And it was a good feeling, having to stick to a schedule and just put it out there without getting too in the weeds about it.
What went into the content of the story?
In terms of content, I guess I was at a fraught point in my own transition, and thinking increasingly about the scary landscape in the UK for trans people, the sort of endless discourse nightmare, and also endlessly bickering with my mom. And I remember I said to Allie, ‘I’m going to make this comic where all the girls live on one island and all the boys live on another island.’ And she was like, ‘That’s a shit idea.’
Allie: I didn’t say it was a shit idea!
You literally did though!
Allie: Well, I wasn’t that enthusiastic.
What made you go for it, despite Allie’s lack of enthusiasm?
Hmm. I think the stories I like have a kind of fairytale, mythological simplicity. Boy Island’s got this very basic premise that is almost a child’s view of the world. It’s a good elevator pitch, with a simple internal logic. That’s also what made it so good for Instagram – ‘oh, it’s about a trans guy on an island with the girls’ – you could jump into the story at any point. Lucille’s almost a non-character in that way. He’s just ‘the trans guy,’ and his mom could be any transphobic mom. They don’t have many traits beyond those archetypes. They’re symbols. Also, it just seemed funny. There’s something so fun and cartoonish about ‘the desert island,’ and I had these half-formed ideas about older comics with that kind of outdated trope. Like Tintin and Looney Tunes, which I read and watched religiously as a kid. And Krazy Kat – a lot of that takes place in this ambiguous sort of desert.
That feeds nicely onto my next question. You begin Boy Island by dedicating it to ‘all trans people everywhere. Safe travels!’ I’m interested in your metaphor of the journey, the ‘safe travel,’ as another version of transition. It’s such an old framework for storytelling – the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, etc – and I wonder what about it spoke to you in relation to Boy Island?
Because it’s kind of a cliche, right? It’s the thing people say about being trans, and I think making it hyper-literal in that way is kind of funny. That sort of hero’s journey, epic quest thing is such a cliche too, I thought it was ripe for satire. Actually, I originally envisioned Boy Island to be way more satirical than it turned out to be. I think it reads as very earnest, but it was supposed to be much more tongue-in-cheek. The idea of ‘transition’ as a journey from one place to another is so overly simplistic; it doesn’t feel true to my or anyone else’s experience of transition. So, I was surprised by how much people bought into the metaphor. People were commenting stuff like, ‘I went to Girl Island,’ or, ‘I would live on one of the islands between Boy Island and Girl Island.’ I was like, ‘Guys, it’s supposed to be that islands are a stupid idea! Stop investing in this as a real way to think about gender!’ But it is a compelling framing to buy into because, for the most part, it’s in keeping with the way we’re trained to think about gender.
Do you mind the earnestness with which Boy Island has been received?
No, I don’t mind. I think it’s good. If I had made something really cynical about my issues with narratives around transition, it would have aged worse. I’m really grateful that people have found it valuable. I was surprised by how willing people were to go along with it, but it was a nice surprise which encouraged me to keep making it. It was interesting though, in earlier drafts, Jounce was much more ambiguous – more of an agent of chaos than a symbol of transsexuality. But I kind of prefer the version of him that becomes the symbol of non-normative gender and sex.
Can’t he be both?
Yes, I suppose he can be both. I was going to say I didn’t want it to be propaganda, like, purely celebratory, but maybe I do want it to be propaganda. Why am I so scared of making propaganda? Hahaha. I guess because that’s what my mom would say about it.”
Read the full interview on SOLRAD’s website here!
