Posted in: Comics, Image, Indie Comics | Tagged: Chrissy Williams, Golden Rage

A Brief Chrissy Williams Interview Regarding Golden Rage

Here’s a short interview with Chrissy Williams, writer of Golden Rage, comics editor, and poet. We talk (err, type) about a couple of scenes.

Published Sun, 09 Apr 2023 13:32:10 -0500

by James Hepplewhite

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I read Golden Rage #1 (from Chrissy Williams, Lauren Knight, Sofie Dodgson, Shayne Hannah Cui, Becca Carey, and Joamette Gil) when it debuted in 2022 and the collection in February 2023. A scene in the first issue stuck in my head, and that scene was old woman bathing. I literally never saw that before. The sexualization of young women bathing, sure. But that scene was new to me.

Here's a short interview with Chrissy Williams, writer of Golden Rage, comics editor, and poet.

If you're not sick of the elevator pitch for Golden Rage yet, could you tell us what the comic is about?
It's "Battle Royale meets The Golden Girls" – old women deemed useless to society and abandoned on an island to fight to the death and make friends and dessert. Really though, it's a comic about grief, fertility, family, and female friendships.

In an interview with Popverse, you sounded annoyed at yourself because you decided to write the first couple scenes of Golden Rage #1 in relative darkness. I want to push back on that because the change in the color palette for the women taking a bath was one of the reasons that scene popped big for me.
I want to make the process as interesting and easy for the artists involved as possible, and asking our colourist Sofie Dodgson to start with half an issue of brown rock walls didn't feel like the best use of her talents! Although to be fair, she did an utterly gorgeous and amazing job with it. She has a gift for fire. And certainly, the transition from oppressive night terrors into the friendlier day was one that felt useful.

In that same Popverse interview, you said that it took you longer than it should've to pitch a comics series. How long has Golden Rage, in some form, been in your head?
Ooh, since 2015, which is when Mad Max: Fury Road came out. I was inspired by the community of take-no-shit amazing old women we see in that film, and thought, "More of that, please."

Thinking about the end of Golden Rage reminds me of the end of China Mieville's Iron Council. How much of Golden Rage's ending reflects the material reality of attrition and sales, and how much was the story?
Golden Rage was wholly written and drawn before Issue 1 even came out, so it's just the story I wanted to tell.

Talk about the genesis of the clown sequence. It felt like one of the series' most significant risks and biggest payoffs.
Aw, thank you. I spent a lot of time thinking about how this community of women might work and how they might really try to engage with wrongdoers, prioritising the concept and process of reform ahead of punishment. Art is about reaching out, making connections with people, and affecting people. I'm very interested in clowning's capacity for taking us by surprise, and I wanted to try and do the same thing in the comic. Indie comics strike me as a great place to be playful. Hence the seven-page clowning sequence.

I noticed the tension between characters saying, "Is too late for sorry," next to "It's never too late to be kind." Was that something you had in mind initially, or was that a happy accident?
Yep, there are a few things that are reflected in that way. It's one of the advantages of writing the whole thing before publication.

To the best of your knowledge, do you know anyone who bought or preferred the Spawn variant to Golden Rage #5? I must know: Who is the crossover Golden Rage/Spawn reader?
Remember that episode of The Golden Girls where Spawn moved in with the girls for a while? Because he's originally from St Olaf, and so was he friends with Rose? And then the whole storyline was about Dorothy going to get back with her ex-husband Stan, but then Spawn objected, and Sofia threatened to gut him like a fish, and much hilarity ensued? I guess it's connected to that.

You are also an accomplished poet with multiple collections in print. What are you working on next in that field?
I'm still writing poems too. My last collection LOW had a lot of poetry connected to clowning and improv, exploring them in a different medium. I hope there will be another collection in the next year or two. I recently taught a class on writing poems inspired by David Lynch films and found all the research for that that is really inspiring personally, too. I suspect that means the next book will be even weirder than the last one.

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