Jukebox Comix #6: The Space Queen

Cartoonist Kelsey Wroten is young, talented, and she’s giving away her latest comic book. You can download a free PDF of Jukebox Comix #6 from her website. This issue features a story titled “The Space Queen.” Wroten describes it as “the plight of a young woman with a big, and as always, unreachable dream, and not to mention strange taste in men.”

“My inspiration for ‘The Space Queen’ is the proclivity for some people, including myself sometimes, to immerse themselves in fantasy life when reality rejects them, or they can’t find the success they feel they deserve in the ‘real world’,” Wroten said. “The heroine of my story brushes off everything that a ‘normal’ person would hold important — education, work, even sex — for fantastic versions of them.”

Wroten’s comics are literary and alternative, far from the superheroics that many people associate with comics. She says that she is heavily influenced by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World), whose stories feature oddball outcasts and surrealist elements. “I also really like Ariel Schrag. I think my content reflects the two,” Wroten said. “Schrag deals more with the close to home, emotional, details of her personal life, as she primarily does autobiographical comics.”

The 20-year-old cartoonist is currently a nominee for a 2011 ACP Cartooning Award in the category of Best Comic Panel/Strip. Her comic strip Sarcastic Animals appears in the The Campus Ledger, the student paper of Johnson County Community College. The results of the competition will be announced at the 90th Annual ACP/CMA National College Media Convention in Orlando on Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011.