Ashley Robin Franklin is a 33-year-old queer cartoonist and illustrator from the Rio Grande Valley on the U.S.-Mexico border, now living in Austin. Her debut YA graphic novel, The Hills of Estrella Roja (Harper Collins/Clarion, 2023), is a spooky adventure story about two young women who team up to uncover the mysteries of the rural outpost of Estrella Roja.
Kat Fields, a college freshman, has ditched spring break and heads there to investigate the local lore for her podcast Paranormal Texas, catchphrase “Y’all stay spooky!” 18-year-old Marisol “Mari” Castillo is in town to attend the funeral of her grandmother, estranged since Mari’s mom cut ties with their family and left town.
Estrella Roja recounts Mexican-American folktales about lechuzas, witches disguised as owls. But the spine-chilling adventure tale is also the backdrop for the sudden thrill of young love when Kat and Mari discover feelings for one another. And the diverse queer representation throughout is as vivid and varied as the rich colors with which she tells the story.
Lambda Literary Review spoke by phone with Franklin in Austin about her artistic journey, comics, and local paranormal lore from deep South Texas.
This review has been edited for clarity and length.
Erasmo Guerra (EG): As someone who grew up with that old story that owls are evil witches in disguise, you turn the tale on its feathered head. Was this the lechuza story you were told as a kid growing up?
Ashley Robin Franklin (ARF): My mom told a really scary version of it, and I know there’s a bunch of different ones out there, like the one about lechuzas going after drunk drivers. I don’t know if you’ve heard that one. But the one that my mom told me that she heard from her mom went something like this: if you’re a kid and you’re out after dark, and you hear whistling behind you that if you whistle back, they’re gonna get you and eat you. And just the idea of, like, the whistling—I don’t know, that’s so scary to me. And I’ve heard another version where people say that a lechuza will cry like a baby instead of whistling, which is also very scary. And, yeah, they make you think there’s a baby in distress, so you approach, but it’s just like the owl mimicking the sound.
EG: Well, I, for one, am super grateful that you re-told this story with a queer spin. How did you get your start in cartooning?
ARF: I’ve always been interested in drawing and storytelling. My dad is a high school art teacher, so I was always encouraged to do art, even as a little kid, and I read a lot, too. Then I really got into manga when I came across the volumes of InuYasha and Ranma 1/2 (about a “half-boy, half-girl” martial artist named Ranma), both drawn by Rumiko Takahashi. And I was just like, Whoa, I didn’t know comics could look like that because I’d only seen newspaper comics, like Garfield. This was a totally different way to see the medium. And I got really into it and spent all my time at Waldenbooks at the mall. I would just sit there and hang out for hours. I got into InuYasha specifically because the main character is a young girl. And it just like was way more accessible to me. I could see myself in it a lot more than I could see myself in like, you know, Doonesbury or whatever.
I already knew how to tell stories, and I had a background in art. It just clicked. And I was like, I can do this.
EG: How did you develop your craft?
ARF: I kind of stopped drawing for a while after high school. In college, I went to school for English Lit, and I got a lot more into the writing aspect of telling stories. And then, when I was in grad school in San Marcos at Texas State, I discovered some indie comics in the library. Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. And, like, I experienced all over again that feeling of ‘Whoa!’ And, I don’t know, I just started channeling all the things I had lost for a bit when I was in school, and I channeled that creative energy into drawing again. I was like, okay, I’m gonna read more comics, start drawing more. I checked out a lot of comics from the library and went to Half Price Books. I was just taking it all in. And I got interested in drawing comics. I already knew how to tell stories, and I had a background in art. It just clicked. And I was like, I can do this. I did my first—not full-length, but, like, completed comic project—maybe, I think, in 2016. That was 12 or 18 pages. But it was a full story from start to finish. I still have some copies lying around. And, yeah, it’s not great, but I can see the seeds of the kind of work that I would make later, you know?
EG: You had the book printed? Like, at Kinko’s or something?
ARF: I took this big folder of my original stuff to this place in Austin called Minuteman Printing. And I was, like, ‘Here, please make this into a book.’
EG: What did they tell you?
ARF: I think they were, like, uhm, sure. They’d done stuff like that before. Because we have Staple!, a comic festival here in Austin, I think that’s how I maybe heard about them. Like, someone else I knew had used them. So I think they were, like, yeah, we can do this. But they must’ve thought it was weird that I didn’t give them files. I was just like, ‘Here’s my art.’
EG: And when you went to pick up the finished book, what was that like?
ARF: Exciting. I remember taking pictures of it in my car with my phone and posting them on Instagram. Prior to printing these out, I’d gone to Staple! And had seen people doing, like, little floppies.
EG: “Floppies”?
ARF: It’s a piece of paper folded in half with, like, a staple, a zine-style comic. It’s not an actual bound book. But I was just so impressed that people were self-publishing and doing their own stuff. And, I don’t know, it felt like, okay, I could be one of those people, get a table, talk to people about your work—and I did, shortly after. I threw myself into the DIY comic scene.
EG: How did you go from the indie scene in Texas to getting a graphic novel published by an imprint at one of the big New York publishers?
ARF: I did lots more comic festivals and worked my way up doing local stuff and shows like TCAF, which is in Toronto, and Short Run in Seattle. I was meeting people and making more work. I did a 12-paper. And then I did a 20- to 25-page comic. So, I had been working my way up and had a couple of other ideas for graphic novels. The way that you usually publish graphic novels is with a pitch. You find an agent, and they help you pitch your book idea to publishers. Graphic novels are a bit different from regular novels in that you don’t need a completed manuscript. You can just have a pitch. I’d done a few unsuccessful pitches that, looking back, I’m like, Oh, those ideas were not ready. I just didn’t have enough to flesh out that idea. Or, like, I don’t know, I also probably wouldn’t have been able to finish the book. So I’m glad those pitches didn’t work out, actually.
EG: How did Estrella Roja come together?
ARF: I came up with the whole idea while I was on a cartoonist retreat with a few friends that I made going to festivals. This was in Oregon, right before the start of the pandemic. So, here I am, going to a different city, hanging out with all these people. And besides it being like the genesis for my book it was something I needed in my memory palace for when things got really lonely during the lockdown. Spending time with other artists and working alongside other people has always been inspiring to me.
It was such a strange time. Like here’s the thing that I’ve wanted for a long time—and it’s happening! But also, everything else feels like it’s imploding.
EG: In what way?
ARF: Like the energy of being around other people that are doing their thing, drawing or coming up with ideas. That feels contagious to me and exciting. I had the idea for Estrella Roja, like the kernel of the idea, one day, and I just kept thinking about it and ended up writing the entire outline on the trip. I wrote it in a sketchbook with bullet points. It wasn’t super tight, but I did get the whole story arc figured out, and I got really excited about it. It was like, “okay, I’m onto something. There’s something here.’ I felt I had enough of a story, and the characters were interesting enough. After the trip, I worked on the pitch and found an agent. As we were pitching the book to editors at publishing houses, that’s when lockdown started, and things got weird. It was such a strange time. Like here’s the thing that I’ve wanted for a long time—and it’s happening! But also, everything else feels like it’s imploding. The good thing about Estrella Roja getting picked up by a publisher is that I lost my day job due to the pandemic and then had to stay in my apartment, but at least I had this thing. I had deadlines that felt like structure when there was no other structure. So, it kind of just worked out in this weird but kind of perfect way where it’s like, suddenly, I had the time, and my full attention was on it.
EG: Your father is also an art teacher. Do you ever share your work with him?
ARF: Yeah, a little bit. Though, I feel like I usually just share with him some of my illustration work or the stuff I paint, which I just do for myself. If it’s a comic, it can feel out of context. He read the graphic novel, though, which is cool. He said he liked it and was like, ‘Okay, go make another one.’ And I was like, oh my God, it takes a long time, but okay.
Erasmo Guerra is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, and a number of other publications. He lives in New York City.
