Tommi Parrish × Jul Gordon
cartoonists in conversation
The following is part of a series of artist conversations that 2dcloud has commissioned. Many of these will be divided into 2 parts online and later collected into our various print publications. By signing up to our substack House on Fire you can catch them first. By becoming a paid subscriber you will receive an entire season of comics and books in print each year — somewhere between 5-10 titles — mailed directly to you in one burst.
Our current season includes: Nuie by Nuie, East District by Ash H.G., Egirl Magazine 1 ed. Katherine Dee, La Poderosa 1 by Powerpaola, Girls Gone Wild 1 by Katie Lane, Altcomics Magazine 7 ed. Blaise Larmee and Katie Lane, Mirror Mirror 4 ed. Airplane Mode.
This conversation between Tommi Parrish and Jul Gordon was conducted over email from the winter of 2024 to the spring of 2025, with some of the last images arriving into our in-box mid January 2026. I want to thank Tommi and Jul for taking part. Please enjoy :)
Tommi Parrish: My first question for you is about the material playfulness in your book Parc; what has your journey been in reaching a point where you combine so many different methods of drawing and painting into one story?
Jul Gordon: I knew I wanted to try working with color. Before, I always had worked mostly in black and white, so it was new to me and my technique developed during the process of working on the book.
Probably the different kinds of drawings are also due to the different phases of what I thought the book was gonna be during the making. In the beginning I planned it as an adaption of “the knight of the rose bearer” (Der Rosenkavalier), a comic opera written by Hugo von Hoffmannsthal.
I collected references of european gardens of the 16th and 17th century and also pictures of encyclopedias of plants from that time because Hoffmannsthal’s comic opera has references to the time of Maria Theresa of Habsburg. The scenery was supposed to refer to gardens and parcs from that time. I wanted an abandoned parc with soft colors like on ancient etchings .
Also it mostly doesn’t work well for me to draw something twice. So I rather have a change in how things are drawn than to actually draw something twice in order to align the style.
One thing that was an experiment for me was how I worked with the space in the story. Maybe that is also connected to your questions about the different styles. I found it important to be absolutely clear about the space. So I decided to built models of the parc and the other buildings in which the story unfolds and used them as templates for my drawings. This was a way to minimize the amount of opportunities: This is how the area looks like, the model proofs it. There is no doubt about it.
Attached you find another zine that I didn’t show you before. It’s called “It’s OK to give it a try”. It’s my latest publication, from winter 24.
TP: What was the driving motivation behind this one? I love love love the repetition, its so powerful.
JG: Drawing “It`s OK to give it a try” was part of a collaboration with the noise and performance artist Tintin Patrone (www.tintinpatrone.com). We made up this plan: I placed an ad on ebay (its attached to this mail) saying that I am looking for pets with a talent in music. I asked the people who reacted to the ad if I may visit them and their pets in order to record them. Some people contacted me and I visited two house-pigs with a grunting talent and a dog who was good at yowling. Then I gave the recordings to Tintin and she made a Sound piece from it. And I wanted to draw comics about what happened when I visited the people and their pets. The sound piece was published as a tape by the same publisher who published my zine, SofortBooks. It’s a small publisher and riso-printing office based in Hamburg: https://risofort.press/sofortbooks/
The title of the tape is “Well done”
I admire both Tintin Patrones work and also the publishing work of SofortBooks, it was nice to work with them.
When I visited the few people I felt very weird and stupid about what I am doing which is reflected in “It’s OK to give it a try”. Doing something, feeling ridiculous about it and somehow making it through the situation.
And also making it through the process of drawing a comic against all disturbing thoughts and feelings.
But also about the beautiful things that happened. I met one woman and her dog Cora, and we spent some time together, trying to make Cora sing. She invited me into her flat and was very open and nice. In the end, her partner even had himself made a tattoo of one of my drawings of the dog Cora.
TP: Woah, this is such a sweet idea; what a funny way to connect with people. Tell me about “same position different situation” to boost my memory? What are you working on at the moment?
JG: “same position different situation” is a collection of drawn dreams published by edition moderne and Colorama last year. I drew them mostly immediately after waking up. The challenge was to try to memorize as much of my dreams as possible and my rule was that it is not at all allowed to add anything to my memories.
This is the link to the english version published by Colorama:
https://coloramabooks.space/products/unbenannt-17-nov-_11-20
Currently I’m researching for something that I imagine as a vampire story. I am diving into all kinds of theoretical texts about vampires and develope a story meanwhile. I always loved vampire stories and now it feels like I finally allow myself to try to create one myself. So far, I think about a character that is and energy vampire who feeds on sucking peoples energy by telling them endlessly about his personal worries and problems. I am a bit concerned that the character is too close to Collin Robinson from the series “What we do in the shadows”. I love Collin Robinson and I guess I need to be careful not to create Collin Robinson Fan Art. Or why not, actually? Lets see.
Anyway, I am at the beginning of the process, and I hope the character will develope while working on it. Another character of my vampire project is the teenage sister of the energy vampire, who is “classic” vampire. They are called Kylie and Kurt so far.
JG: What are you working on?
TP: I do love the looseness of some of your work, and so great to make something with edition moderne and Colorama.
I have plans to make a book with Colorama too, but I’m such a perfectionist it takes an age for me to like an idea enough, let alone finish anything. I’ve been in this blissful working-out stage for a new book for a couple of years now, with lots of scrappy sketches, collages, and half-finished short stories but nothing solid to show for it. I want to go super experimental with this one, but I’m not totally convinced it’s not a nonsensical mess. It’s from a whole bunch of different perspectives, with interviews and scrapbook elements; basically, I’m trying to work out how to make books that don’t drain me dry quite like the last two big ones.
So anyway, I’m working on that next Fantagraphics book and probably a lot of those scrappy bits that I like will go towards the Colorama book.
Fanta is also putting together a compilation of my old unpublished work, so we’re designing that.
Also I’m adding to the book I made with Perfectly Acceptable before its reprinted. And, of course, finding ways to make money.
The big big thing is in April, I’m moving back to Australia to go to grad school. I’ve lived in North America for going on 9 years, jumping from visa to visa, and the instability and stress of it is absolutely unhinged. Anyway, in a month, I will start my master’s degree for two years, hopefully leading to me quickly getting teaching gigs/ stable income. I’m pretty freaked out about it all, but it’ll ultimately be a good thing.
JG:Wow so many big plans. I’m totally looking forward to your new books! And Colorama and Fantagraphics are two of the best publishers I can think of.
Moving after 9 years sounds like a huge thing.
^ Parc by Jul Gordon is available for purchase from 2dcloud here.
^ A print version of this interview will be included in Mirror Mirror 5, coming in the summer from 2dcloud.
^ Future installments from this series include conversations between Wilfred Santiago × Ash H.G., Inés Estrada × Powerpaola, Connor Willumsen × Henry McClellan, Jake Terrell × Émilie Gleason, Apolo Cacho × Junwoo Park, Jason Overby × Katie Lane, Blaise Larmee × Brianna Perry, Kristina Tzekova × Andrea Bjurström, Tara Booth × Andrés Magán, amongst others.
These conversations were communicated via various forms. Some will be text with images, audio + transcription, video, English and Spanish, and some are communicated only through drawings.
The idea for this series was taken in part from a conversation between Aidan Koch × Austin English which we initially coordinated nearly 10 years ago. The formatting of the Lack podcast between Benjamin Studebaker and Nina Powers was another inspiration.