Artist Greg Fox is a creative staple in Out In Jersey magazine, and has been for years. His story-filled comic strip accompanies every issue we send to print. Kyle’s Bed and Breakfast is Fox’s super-queer saga of merging personalities and observations about the gay world.
This route was forged by Fox all on his own. While many colleagues battled between working with comic giants like DC and Marvel, Fox decided to make material he wasn’t already seeing.
Fox created several gay-centered stories, many of them the first comics of their kind, that unapologetically explored the ever-evolving life of the gay man. Fox spoke with Out In Jersey about inspirations, the current state of comic books, and how you can always expect more stories on the way.
You create so many stories, but what’s your story?
Greg Fox: Well, I always wanted to do comics. When I was around 12 years old, I made the decision that I really wanted to draw comics. I was focused on superhero comics, DC and Marvel, and even that seemed kind of fantastical, like I could never actually do it. I didn’t really know what the path was. Comics weren’t even treated seriously in schools, so it was always just my thing that I did on my own.
I was doing comic strips for my high school paper and my college newspaper, which was a little different from what I really wanted to do. I wanted to do superhero stuff, and comic strips felt like a different genre, more humor-based, so it didn’t seem like the same path.
After I graduated college, I took a little detour and did a rock band thing for a couple of years, because I was also playing music. I figured if I didn’t do it then, I’d never do it. I was working in a music store at the time, and the comic stuff kind of crept back in. I started drawing cartoons and making signs for the store, and that led to someone asking me if I wanted to do a comic strip for a music magazine. I ended up doing a rock-and-roll comic strip for a couple of years, and that eventually led into doing comic books.
I was doing comic books professionally for about five years, mostly with indie companies. But I started getting frustrated because I wasn’t seeing any LGBTQ+ content in comics at the time. This was the ’90s, and the big companies like DC and Marvel just didn’t want to touch that. I wasn’t seeing myself reflected. So I started writing my own comic strip on the side about a gay baseball player, what his life would be like. It started small, but I kept building it out, adding characters, turning it into a bed and breakfast setting.
Around that same time, the comic industry hit a slump, and I decided to take a break. I got a job at a bookstore, which really saved my sanity. I was around people again, working normal hours, and I could come home and work on this new comic without the pressure of deadlines. I started submitting it to regional LGBTQ+ magazines. A lot of them said, “It looks good, but we don’t print comics.” Then Genre, a national gay magazine, took a chance on it. They ran a few installments as a showcase, and once that happened, other magazines started picking it up. That’s how it really grew.
Sounds like you carved that path for yourself.
GF: Yeah, my original goal was to work for DC or Marvel and just draw whatever script I was given. But the problem was, I wasn’t writing my own material. Sometimes the work was interesting, but sometimes it really wasn’t. There was this baseball biography series I did for almost a year. It was just boring. When you’re working 12-hour days, you really have to love the material, or you’re going to go insane. That’s why I started doing my own thing on the side, to keep my sanity.
You’ve been doing this since the early 2000s. Are there any storylines or moments that still stick with you?
GF: There are so many. What’s funny is that readers all have different favorite characters. Some people love a character, and others hate that same character. There’s one character, Price, who’s very manipulative and kind of malevolent. Some readers really hate him, but others love him because he’s so devious. For me, he’s fun to write because he’s the opposite of who I am. The cast has grown a lot too. It started with four guys, then five, and now there are about 11 or 12 regular characters.
Why are comics such a great medium for storytelling?
GF: I guess it’s hard to describe why, but just that synthesis of the two forms, it’s so good. I just really appreciate the art in itself. Like, I’ll be reading the superhero comics, which I still read and still draw some stuff for, and if I don’t like the artwork, it can be really difficult for me to enjoy it. I mean, I appreciate lots of different artists and different styles, but if the artwork doesn’t seem up to a good level, it just kind of ruins it for me.
I worked in a bookstore when I took that break from the comics industry after my first five years. I worked with a lot of real serious literary people, you know, who were just book readers. I remember sometimes I would mention comics, and some of them would get really disgusted: “It’s not at the same level of literature.” And I was always like, “Really, have you actually tried reading one?” I understand it’s a different form and format. But it has real value in its own way. Give it a try, I guess that’s what I would say to people.
Do you plan out the stories ahead of time and then draw, how’s your process?
GF: It’s very planned. I learned that pretty early on. You really have to do everything way in advance. Most of what I do is write these stories in seven or eight episode storyline arcs, where I’ll focus on one character and make it their kind of spotlight story. I put those aside and I have this master list of all the different storyline arcs. Then, every six months or so, I’ll sit down and plot out what’s going to happen in the next six months.
So then I’ll go to that list of all the storyline arcs and I’ll try to mix and match, you know, who hasn’t gotten the spotlight in a while and how would this balance with that storyline and would they be clashing and which characters are involved in both. So it can be kind of complicated sometimes, but it’s fun. It’s an interesting thing to do. But it is very much involved in that. It’s really essential that I have it planned out in advance.
I think this is true for all writers, comics or otherwise. You don’t really know what you have until you’ve given yourself some distance after writing it. I remember reading something Stephen King wrote about this. I think he said six weeks, something like, everything he writes, he puts it in a drawer and doesn’t look at it for six weeks, so he can come back to it with a fresh perspective. That really resonates with me. I don’t know if it has to be six weeks, but for me it’s so true.
Sometimes I’ll get really into writing, and I just write in notebooks. I still do it all longhand. I’ll write out these storylines, seven or eight episodes, and it’ll seem really good at the moment. But when I look back at it right away, I think, “I can’t really tell if this is good or not.” I’ll put it away and look at it a few months later, and then I’ll know. I can look at it and say, “Oh, this is actually really good.”
I’ll surprise myself. You know, “I didn’t even remember this part. Oh, okay. This is good. Yeah.” And that’s why it’s kind of hard, like what you were saying about possibly just drawing first and then writing, because then everything would be too fresh. I wouldn’t be able to look at it objectively. It’s too new for me to really judge it.
”I think in some ways it’s good just to get stuff out there. I mean, that’s what I kind of did.”
Do you have any advice or tips for the next generation of artists, and queer artists?
GF: Wow. Yeah. It’s kind of tough. I mean, it’s so weird, but certain things have gotten a lot easier and then certain things have made it even tougher to get your work out there. In some ways, it’s so easy now because you can just do your comics and post them, you know, online and on social media. You don’t have that, like, when I was starting there was just this wall of editors you’d have to go through to get your stuff published.
You don’t see those gatekeepers anymore, and that’s really cool. But the downside is there’s so much stuff out there for people to go through that it’s hard to rise above the wall of stuff everybody’s seeing every day. So my advice is just do the work and put it out there. What I’ve seen with some artists is they spend so much time on it, and look, it’s good to put it aside to know if it’s good, but don’t be too precious with it. Some people will spend years theorizing and working out every plot detail before they launch anything, and then they want to make sure it’s all copyrighted so no one will steal it.
I think in some ways it’s good just to get stuff out there. I mean, that’s what I kind of did, even when I was very young, putting stuff in my high school and college newspapers. I was always just putting stuff out there to get a reaction, see what people thought of it. So I think that’s the move. Especially for people just starting out, just put it out there for people to see. You may not get all positive reactions, but it’s good to get a feel for how people respond to your work. Use whatever avenues you have: Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, whatever.
Find your avenue and continue with it.
GF: Exactly. And again, it’s getting harder. I think the biggest challenge I’ve seen over the past couple of years is AI. There are a lot of people who aren’t really artists using AI to generate work, and a lot of people look at it and don’t even realize, oh, that’s just AI.
I’m not saying AI is worthless or that you can’t do good stuff with it, but there are so many ethical issues around it, and it makes things really hard for people who are actually doing real artwork by hand. Like, I’ll be honest about my own process. All my coloring is done in Photoshop, not by hand, so I can’t claim everything I do is handmade. But I hand draw everything, and then I color it in Photoshop.
So I’m saying, use the tools that are available. But with so much AI out there now, I see people posting comics-oriented stuff where they’re not really creating anything. They’re just putting prompts into ChatGPT or whatever, and that’s pretty much it. So that just adds to this wall of content, and someone who’s actually making a new comic, which may be really good, has to somehow rise above all of it. That’s the main obstacle right now.
How are you at spotting fake AI art?
GF: I can recognize it almost right away. You can kind of tell. Like, you probably can too. It looks like a nice drawing, but then the background is insanely complex. There’s no way someone sat there for five days doing that background by hand. It’s too much. But what makes me mad is, sometimes I’ll do a really complex background myself, and then I start wondering, is someone going to think this is AI just because it’s so detailed? That’s a frustrating place to be.
Well, we’ll be happy to report that you don’t use AI.
GF: Yeah, I should probably just put “No AI used” on my drawings. But I don’t know. I don’t want to just slam AI across the board. I think there are genuinely good uses for it. It’s just complicated.
It definitely is. Are you seeing any future possibilities or storylines for Kyle? Is there anything that you can hint at us?
GF: I have a bunch of things coming up. The strip runs biweekly, so that’s 26 episodes a year. But I write a lot more than that, so I have this stockpile of stories I want to get to. So there’s a lot in store. I’ll say this much: Kyle recently broke up with the coach he was dating. The guy was a baseball coach, a bit older than Kyle, and he got a job with the St. Louis Cardinals and moved away. Now, the coach is out of the picture at this point. But there’s going to come a point where Kyle and the coach really have to decide whether they’re officially broken up or not. And that’s coming up pretty soon. There’s also going to be something with Lance and Drew, two other characters who just had a Super Bowl storyline together.
But yeah, there’s going to be some friction in Lance and Drew’s relationship coming up soon. I also have a couple of things I haven’t fully decided on yet. Like I said, I’m just coming to the end of this six-month stretch, so I’m starting to map out the next six months. Sometimes I’ll sit there and think, well, I have all these stories. Which one do I want to feature next? Like last year, I had this whole storyline with Richard, a character who ends up in a relationship with a chatbot. The storyline was so detailed that I couldn’t really cut it short.
I did edit it down. It was originally something like 15 episodes long. I edited it down to about nine or ten episodes. But even then, toward the end, people were saying they liked the storyline, but I was still getting comments on my site from some people like, when is this storyline going to end? So I have to be very conscious. I can’t have anything going for too long. And I can’t focus just on one character, because people start to get antsy. They want to see the other characters. So yeah, that one was focused on Richard, so I have to give Richard a break now. Which is great.
Is there anything coming on the horizon?
GF: My next collection book is coming out soon. My last one came out the summer before last. I try to do a new collection every two to three years, but COVID stretched that timeline out. So now I have a lot of episodes built up, and the gap between this book and the next one won’t be as long.
It could be as early as this fall, or possibly next year. I’d love to mention my Patreon page, which has become a really big way of connecting with fans. It’s kind of for the super fans who want to get more involved. They get early episodes, behind-the-scenes content. I post things as I’m drawing, works in progress, all kinds of stuff. It’s a good look at the process. You can join at different membership levels. But yeah, that’s something I really want people to know about.
And thank you so much for taking the time and for being such a creative artist and being such a big part of Out In Jersey, too. You’re in all our issues.
GF: Thank you, Jonny. I appreciate your questions and your interest and your being so involved with LGBTQ+ media, which is a really cool thing to have out there. I’m on Long Island now, but I was actually dating someone in northern New Jersey.
Maybe it’ll be a setting that Kyle visits in a future comic.
GF: Yeah, I should have Kyle come to Jersey sometime.
Or he’s reading an Out In Jersey magazine copy. Very meta.
GF: I actually did have one episode where I showed a copy of Out In Jersey. Maybe your readers will spot it.
