Gisèle Lagacé went from glam rock to R-rated webcomic to drawing America's favourite ginger teen

There's an alternate universe in which Gisèle Lagacé is a rock star. 

When she graduated high school back in the late '80s, the veteran comic book artist and writer was torn between pursuing her two passions: art and music. Initially, she decided to go with music. So the New Brunswick native packed her bags, headed to Montreal, and started playing bass in a band — a vaguely glammy, all-female pop-rock outfit called Barbarella.

By some metrics, Barbarella did OK: they recorded an album and got into rotation on MusiquePlus, French Canada's version of MuchMusic. But by other metrics, the band did less well.

"I wanted to be able to support myself," said Lagacé. "You're doing bars and clubs; you're never home. It's a really hard life."

She wanted to go to school for comic art. But at the time, there was no school for comic art in Canada, so she went to school for graphic design instead. She became a graphic designer to pay the bills, and in the early '00s, she started publishing webcomics. She published a couple of fairly successful series throughout the decade, before starting Ménage à 3 with co-writer David Lumsden in 2008. That's when things really took off for her.

"I quit my job as a graphic designer, because I was making enough money from webcomics that I could live off of it," she says. "That's when I say my career as a comic artist really began."

If you're not familiar with Ménage à 3, it's like an NSFW Three's Company, but updated for the 21st century and set in Montreal. (Lagacé is very open about the Three's Company influence. "I was growing up on that [show] as a kid," she says of the '70s sitcom.) The comic ended in 2019 but birthed a number of spin-offs, some of which are still running.

Surprisingly, it was Legacé's work on the R-rated webcomic that led to her being asked to draw another less explicit but arguably no less horny comic about a blonde, a brunette, and a somewhat awkward dude: Archie.

She adds that in some ways Gary, the male lead of Ménage à 3, is kind of the anti-Archie. Archie, she says, has a sex appeal that is a bit mystifying.

"In Archie, everyone just wants Archie, and you don't understand why they go for Archie," she says. "Reggie is more fun, he has more personality, and Jughead is even more fun. Archie is kind of bland in a way."

Gary, on the other hand, has a rich inner life, a dream of being a comic artist, and a supportive friend group, but absolutely no rizz.

"In Ménage à 3, Gary's still a virgin at the start of the series," she says. "He's not doing well with women, and the other people try to help him get better at that."

She adds that getting that signature Archie look wasn't hard for her: her stuff already looked a bit like Archie, although that was something she never noticed until people pointed it out to her.

"I didn't even know my style was Archie until someone told me," she says. "Which is very bizarre. But people would say, 'You draw like [early Archie artists] Dan DeCarlo and Stan Goldberg,' and I was like, 'Really?' So then I went and looked, and I was like, 'It's true.' So I think what happened is that when I was young, I was reading these comics and it got into my system."

Another thing that influenced her stylistically, she says, was anime.

"In the '70s and '80s… there was a lot of anime coming to Quebec and being dubbed in French," she says. "I loved that stuff. I think it kind of all merged together."

Lagacé says that a decade-plus of webcomics work has influenced the way she writes traditional comic books, and has given her a style that's different from other writers and artists. She tries to make every page have its own payoff.

"When you're reading a comic book, if you just read two or three pages, it doesn't really stand [on its own]," she says. "With webcomics, each update needs to stand. It's either going to be funny, or really suspenseful… so we're always trying to land that gag."

She adds that, in a way, her early career in music has helped her as a comic artist, since a disproportionate number of her comics are about music in one way or another.

"Everybody [at Archie] noticed that I like to draw guitars and stuff, so then they figured I would probably be good to do anything music-related," she says. "That's how I did the Archie Meets the Ramones, and then I ended up doing a Jem and the Holograms [series] because again, all-girl band? For me, that was kind of easy."

For Lagacé, her love of comics and her love of music have always been linked, ever since she discovered Kiss as a child. Kiss, she says, is probably as much of an influence on her as Archie and '70s anime.

"I could see the way that Kiss are almost like superheroes, if you think about it," she says. "I've always been fascinated by bands that cover their faces with masks or makeup, like Slipknot or Ghost or whatever. I always thought it was kind of neat. I almost regret that I didn't do that myself… [Barbarella] probably should have done that. It would have been fun."