When we meet for the interview, one of the first things I notice about cartoonist Rae Whitlock is the Bubbles T-shirt she’s wearing. “Were you able to make it to Bubbles last year?” she asks me.

“No, but it’s on my calendar for this year,” I tell her.

Bubbles Con is one of the newer annual comic book festivals in Richmond. It grew out of Brian Baynes’s comics and manga fanzine of the same name; 2025 will mark the second year of the convention’s existence.

“Bubbles is awesome. The focus is really on the panels and the discussions. It’s nice to see comics being taken seriously as an art form and to get to participate in that way rather than having to be worried about making sales and hawking my wares behind a table.”

Last year, Whitlock spent nearly every weekend traveling to comic cons all over the country doing live readings, meeting other comic book artists, and yes, hawking her wares—the latest of which is “Goldfish” (2024), the first issue of a dystopian, feminist friendship tale. “’Goldfish’ part one is one part of many parts. There’s a long story to tell. My focus for this year is getting part two ready to publish. So, I’ll probably be doing less events and more sitting alone in my house and drawing.”

“Goldfish” is Whitlock’s first comic printed with a risograph machine which she worked on in collaboration with the Richmond press Clown Kisses. “I have always self-published, meaning I pay for the publishing myself and get someone else to print it. I never printed risograph before and there’s a pretty big learning curve. I hired Clown Kisses to print it for me and I provided some assistance. I don’t know a lot about how to use the machines properly, but it was fun to add a level of materiality to this comic which I drew digitally. My primary medium for years was just, literally, any pens that were lying around and any paper that was lying around. I was really not precious with my materials and actually didn’t buy art supplies, didn’t allow myself to buy art supplies.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, that changed. Her comic “Dear Rachel Whitlock” (2021) is mostly acrylic paintings with some collage elements. “And then I did a book called ‘I am of the Nature to Die’ [2023] and that is a collage of sketchbook pages, digital illustration, and found paper. That [book] was kind of like a bridge because ‘Goldfish’ is completely digital.”

Experimenting with media feels intrinsic to her work. In 2023-2024, she created “Worldwide Field Guide,” which was part-art installation, part-performance, and part-comic book. Whitlock asked participants to draw or write about an object in their environment on index cards, and then she created zines and installations with the cards, displaying them in art spaces in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. It was a way to get people to connect with their environment by asking them to pay very close attention to something around them.

“I think of my work as trying to answer a question that comes up for me, and part of the challenge of answering the question is finding the correct medium. It’s almost like a matter of translation,” she explains. “I can have an idea and it could come out in different mediums at different times. There are repeated themes that I visit—probably other people notice them more than I do. Sometimes it feels like the idea or the project is existing in some ether, and I’m just trying to grasp it out of there. I have to get it into the right body when I bring it into this physical world.”

One of the themes in Whitlock’s work is connection, whether it’s tethering an idea to the physical world or exploring the bond between people—even strangers.

Her comic “Dear Rachel Whitlock” is a kind of love letter to all the Rachel Whitlocks out in the world (her full first name is Rachel). These Rachels are strangers with whom she feels a bond, not only because she’s mistakenly received their mail and Uber receipts. But it isn’t just thematic in her artwork, it is something she cultivates in her work as an art teacher.

“I really fell into teaching by accident. I’d say it started when I was in grad school in Chicago, and I took a job in the writing center doing one-on-one tutoring—it turned out I really liked it.” She currently teaches classes at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.

“A lot of adults are there because they’ve gotten lost from their creative practice in some way, and they’re wanting to reconnect with that creative part of themselves. I can relate to that. I’ve had big chunks of my life where I completely stopped making art. I had no engagement with it, and it felt bad. I really love being able to bring that to people and help them combat the shame that is associated with art, the fear that stops us. Art is a singular way to express yourself, and I think everyone deserves to experience that.”

You can find Whitlock’s comics locally at Velocity Comics and Small Friend Records & Books.