THE SPRAWL
Annie Thesia
See it On Campus: Level 2
The Sprawl is a comic-size book on a black X-stand on top of a plinth! Shouldn't be too hard to miss. It's in the center of the comic nook next to Continuing Studies. It's accompanied by free stickers if you would like one.
Visitor Info
Drew Richman was in a band. He’s now online. Very online.
In 2005, users congregate on a forum for extreme music subgenres called ‘The Sprawl,’ dedicated to anything from harsh noise wall to grindcore. Everything sonically transgressive will do. Hiding away in the back alleys of said forum is user kittyempire, who poses a question to his brethren in the noise rock subforum: ‘Is Drew Richman from Thrillseeker gay?’ Many chime in to voice their opinions, but the person the Sprawlers least expect is Drew himself, and by bumping over the first domino in a wild chain of events, kittyempire and co. learn much more information than they ever needed to know.
Told primarily in text-heavy black-and-white panelling, set online in forums and chat rooms, The Sprawl is an 19-page comic written and illustrated in the Summer of 2025 as part of Cauldron Books and Comics’ Discovery III (organized by Prof. Amory Abbott), throughout Annie’s final year at ECUAD. Originally designed as a spinoff of an extremely graphic horror short story penned in 2023 called thri11s33k3r featuring Drew and another protagonist by the name of Faris, The Sprawl takes a look at the opposite side of the tale told through those not in the know, the public who are only witnessing what the villain wants you to see.
STATEMENT
I stand by this for the majority of my work. The Sprawl is about the closest to PG-13 I get.
Built on the suburbs of the West Coast, the backwoods outside of Canada’s capital city, and for a time, the urban concrete of Los Angeles, I came into my own with the experiences of both hard-liberal and hard-conservative towns that led me to a complicated relationship with my own identity. This had me reckoning with my own feelings of who and what I was, and through the growing pains of self-discovery, I learned that my love for horror and my understanding of my own identity came together into one festering, vomitous need to create filth that would (hopefully but probably not) make John Waters recoil.
I am a believer in anti-censorship and am thoroughly disgusted by the cleansing of queer sexuality and identity in contemporary media; when queer identity becomes PG-13 we become removed of our personhood and our identities are reduced to nothing but fodder for polite society. Queer identity should continue to actively dismantle media tropes built by the straight and cisgender, which means queer stories should not cave or conform to a Friends episode or a Disney movie. At its very historical basis, being queer is about being outcast, being filthy, and going against the grain. If I don’t make a conservative gag, then I’m not doing my identity right.
I found myself frustrated with a lack of queer, trans, femme and female representation in the extreme horror and splatterpunk subgenres, a long-time love of mine, and decided that this had to be rectified about 8 years ago once I really dedicated myself to the practice of comics, and occasionally, short fiction. The Sprawl aligns with this mission statement of sorts, mayhaps a mini manifesto, as a short comic exploring the rather grim underbelly of what we don’t see on the web as enacted by queer-identifying characters.
-Annie Thesia
