The story of a person who feels neither man nor woman
Nino Bulling makes his comic book debut with 'The Flame,' in which he explores gender dysphoria and contrasts it with climate change.
BarcelonaNino Bulling's first fiction comic, The flame (Windows; translation by Núria Molines Galarza), begins in spring and ends in winter, but in the middle, the person who is its protagonist does not experience any journey or evolution. At the beginning, Ingken presents herself as a girl with a masculine gender expression who is in a relationship with Lily, a transgender woman. "I'm super happy," she says in the first pages of the work. But as her story progresses, a strange malaise gradually appears and grows larger. By the time the comic ends, Ingken has managed to tell herself that she feels neither male nor female and knows that this realization changes her life, but, on the surface, she continues to present herself in the same way as at the beginning. Through The flameNino Bulling (Berlin, 1986) reflects that gender dysphoria "is not a moment of revelation, but a whole process" that, when present, calls into question the identity of the person experiencing it and the solidity of their environment.
"I wanted to tell a story that clashed with the expectation that a character must go through a learning curve, with clearly recognizable causes and effects. In this sense, the reader becomes frustrated with Ingken, just as her partner, Lily, does," the artist points out. Looking at the gallery, everything seems as if it should be easy for Ingken: she has at her side a woman who has also experienced a transition process firsthand and who is determined to accompany her until she embraces the gender identity she wants. "Lily is very accepting and encouraging towards Ingken, but all that love almost suffocates her," says Bulling. The bond between them is also shaken by its peculiarities: it's an open relationship—more on Lily's part than Ingken's—that contrasts the freedom of one with the insecurities of the other.
Bodies are one of the story's central themes, both in terms of Bulling's visual approach and the way the characters treat them. The artist draws Ingken and her environment from a vague perspective, leaving room for the reader's imagination but also specifying certain elements, such as Lily's femininity or Ingken's breasts (which, at one point in the story, are crucial as she considers having a double mastectomy). One of the story's dilemmas is the fact that society isn't satisfied when a person verbally announces their gender dysphoria: it also demands that they modify their appearance. "There's a dialectical relationship between how you present yourself and how you feel. Unfortunately, we don't live in a gender-neutral world. As long as that's the case, your appearance is key to your experience," Bulling reflects.
The presence of drugs
Before considering cosmetic surgery, Ingken channels the discomfort of gender dysphoria through drugs. The flame It illustrates in detail the radishes and the scene queer from Berlin, where Ingken is searching for a way out of her situation. "At the time I was writing the book, I was using a lot of drugs, and that's why they're present. It's almost a cliché that the trans experience is closely linked to ketamine, because there's a connection between the dissociation you experience when you take it and the dissociation you feel with your own body," notes the artist, who adds that he's now distanced himself from it.
Ingken's discomfort is individual, but establishes a dialogue with the environment. Bulling draws a world in extinction, agonizing over fires and climate change, and where it's getting hotter and hotter. "I used that backdrop to contrast it with the pre-established idea that the body is natural. People can interfere with the planet, with nature, but, on the other hand, there's this motto that we shouldn't interfere with our own bodies. Why is the human body the only place exempt from our interventionism?" the artist asks. Before The flame, Bulling had worked mainly in the field of non-fiction with titles such as Cutas: Collected queer and trans comics, a graphic novel published with the Lebanese comics collective Samandal. Now he wants to continue exploring the themes queer through her work. One of the themes surrounding her work is the story of the forced sterilization of trans people in Germany, reproductive justice, and experiencing motherhood or fatherhood within the community.