The Dominion of Dominion: An Interview with Memoh. Comics

ARTS | INTERVIEW | AROHA / LOVE

Interview by Cameron LEIGH McCurdy (she/her) | @leighapparently | Social Media Coordinator

Interview with Memoh. Comics (she/her) | @memoh.comics | Dominion Creator, Writer & Artist

I first came across Dominion in 2023, through a “Season Preview Zine” I bought from Karangahape Road’s late great Parallel Aotearoa. It leapt straight into the action. Fires burning, a horse and cart overturned, a bloodied woman screaming bloody murder. Then abruptly, the story shifts to a mild-mannered guard going about his day. Intrigued, I quickly discovered that Dominion is a sprawling epic series, jam-packed with its lore-rich yet grounded fantasy worldbuilding, enticing murder mysteries and slow-burn romance. It’s easy to get lost in Blackbridge, and with 15 planned volumes, I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.

After digitally publishing chapters 1-6 via Webtoon and Globalcomix, as well as selling chapters 1-4 as high-quality full-colour zines, series creator Memoh is set to publish Vol. 1 of Dominion on the 21st of May, her debut graphic novel. As this issue is all about aroha, I thought who better to ask than the creator of a romance graphic novel that will be released a week before the issue comes out!

Dominion, Vol. 1 is available for purchase from the Wizard in a Can Store, and from physical bookstores around Aotearoa.

LEIGH: With the rise in Romantasy (Romantic Fantasy) as a genre, stories often feel like romance with elf-ear set-dressing. How did you find the balance between the expansive world-building of Dominion, the dramatic stakes of a murder mystery, and the burgeoning romance of Pasha and Desmond?

Memoh: I was reading a lot of Josei at the time that I was writing Dominion. I had this idea: I’m going to write a Josei manga that’s not only about romance, where we have a plot that goes hand in hand. They’re equally important, double-helixing around each other. You can’t get further in the plot without the romance, but the plot isn’t only the romance.

I went into Dominion wanting to write a fantasy romance, but at the same point, I really was reacting to a lot of fantasy romances I’ve read where the female character just kind of exists to be in awe of the male character and to get dragged around by the plot. So there's a lot of feminist conversations I wanted to approach (after all, the whole series is about power), and so I wanted to tackle women's issues through the lens of a fantasy world and how class systems work.

I wanted to break a lot of conventions of how women were treated in the genre. Whose gaze are we existing in, and what does that say about the narrative? So I made Desmond into a ‘Camera Character’. Part of the central mystery of the series is figuring out what's going on with Pasha, and so we’re seeing through Desmond’s eyes. Trying to figure out what she's about and ‘is she gonna look my way, she's really cute.’ 

Personally, I like making the guy the centre of the female gaze too, so there's plenty of fan-service. laughs

LEIGH: Blackbridge, the story’s central location, is a very tightly designed city. What is your process for city building? I was really impressed with Lowtown and the sudden flooding that it experiences. It’s really interesting that you’ve added environmental factors for the physical class separation within the city.

Memoh: Yes!  When you're approaching a fantasy book, some people have an opinion of fantasy that things can kind of be flighty, and you can explain things away with magic. But for me, what makes fantasy feel like fantasy is that it feels really grounded in historical fact. Not necessarily in the sense of, “Indigo should only be an expensive dye”, because you can be like, “Well, actually, there's a similar plant in this world, and so Indigo is inexpensive”. It doesn't have to be restricted to human Earth history, but I think it has to be restricted to human effort history. 

For instance, stone versus timber and the amount of human effort it takes to move and to work with those materials. Because Dominion’s magic system is pretty limited, I really wanted it to feel grounded - that human effort drives industry and the way that people live in this world. 

Blackbridge is built on this big, volcanic, igneous rock outcropping that's in the middle of a river delta. There are these two massive bridges on either side which connect it to The Pale, the surrounding woodland.

It’s a walled city with big black walls, other than these two massive architectural wonder bridges that go out of the city; So, it occurred to me to call it Blackbridge. And geology is a core piece of the plot! Maybe it rubs off from me being a big geography nerd as a kid. 

The city started from the port area because the bridges weren’t built yet. Portside and Lowtown were the first inhabited areas, made of stone. There was extensive mining, and the walls and the bridges were built. Then you have the merchant class and the middle class, all in that area, you start to see a lot more timber buildings, because it’s lighter and easier to haul, and iconic bridges were built to help haul that material. Then, when you look at the upper class in Hightown and the Dukedom, you start to see stone again. Because it’s a massive show of wealth that they could afford to haul the stone from all the way down the bottom of the city all the way up to the top of this massive island/mountain. 

Right now, Blackbridge could more accurately be described as a mercantile city that operates out of its port. The richest people and the dukes who run it live physically above the rest in the merchant district (or higher). The mining that used to happen had to be stopped for reasons I won’t say for now. But part of the reason why Lowtown is so poor now is because all of their industry is gone, and the flooding caused by overmining. 

Building the city informed my approach to costume design too, and what trade the city would have access to and it’s thinking through histories like this that help the genre feel grounded - at least to me.

LEIGH: Desmond says, “I need to stop them here without harming them” before LAUNCHING his polearm at Pasha’s clothing to pin her to the wall. Does Lord Cael’s blessing and Desmond’s healing powers also give him super accurate aim when he aims to “not harm” someone?

Memoh: The way that magic works in Dominion, the core of it is will. Basically ‘Manifesting’.

In that instance where he’s throwing the polearm, you see gold flecks around his head. In my mind, there’s a kind of nonverbal communication between Desmond and Lord Cael - I try to communicate that with the sparkles. It’s not literal words until Lord Cael says “Save her” later in the chapter (which is a big deal).

So when you’re a Blessed you can say “Pretty please, Lord Cael, can you do this for me,” and Lord Cael can choose whether to honour your request or not. In this case, Desmond asks to pin her without harming her, and because Lord Cael is a God, he effectively guides the polearm’s path and makes that wish a reality.

LEIGH: The quote “Magic has to come from an external cosmos source”, e.g. paints the world as one of divine magic, a world of paladins and clerics, which leads to the character’s assumptions that all magic is divine in nature, and limited to the access of the Blesseds. Even the Desolates, who “sell their soul” to the Devils, draw their magic from essentially the same cosmos source as the Blesseds. A wizard-type magic user, or as they are in Dominion, a “Conjurer” like Pasha must seem completely alien. How rare are Conjurers within the world, and what was your process for the design of the magic system and creation myth of the world?

Memoh: You’re definitely on the money. Conjuring is considered rare. 

At its core, technically, Desmond and the Desolates aren’t wrong. Power in this world comes from the Cosmos Eye. But every piece of creation has their own Cosmos Eye. Through this Eye, that’s how Desmond can nonverbally communicate with Lord Cael. So, as much as the Blessed are special, they’re also not special. Everyone with a Cosmos  Eye can do magic. It’s a matter of if they can figure out how.

In the world of Dominion, most people do assume it’s either one or the other [Lords vs Devils]. Conjuring is closer to… have you ever heard of a woman, when her baby is trapped under a car, she has the ability to somehow develop superhuman strength? 

Again, all magic ability is based on will - so if you want something bad enough, and you know exactly how to manifest what you want…You, as a sentient creature, are not without power.

And that piece of Cosmos Eye… there’s a reason that the Devils want it. It’s not without its own power. And that’s all I can say for now.

As for my creation myth process, I started with the core idea of “if divine beings were irrefutably real, would that change human behaviour?” I then did a lot of research into religious tradition. I definitely channelled some JRR Tolkien with how you can take a traditional idea and reshape it into something that’s new but still has a strong element of truth to it. It’s something I try to tackle both visually and textually: for example, the depiction of Death in chapter 8 mimics a lithograph of Lucifer being cast out from a scene in Pilgrim’s Progress. 

Tying it to the magic system, I really was fascinated by the biblical idea of “willing” into being - and it had always interested me how “willpower” was a magic stat in DND and video games, but was never really explained. I wanted to really set that idea in stone for my world, so I tied magic directly to the creation myth.

LEIGH: You’ve said Dominion is a series primarily about power, literal magic power, but also the dominion of others. John, as the oldest Oakenhart son, seems to be the patriarch of the family. His dynamic with Desmond seems to be that of a controlling abuser. John takes Desmond to a deathmatch, and it seems like a thinly veiled punishment. He sees Desmond’s agency as purely stubbornness and “fighting for sport”. 

Memoh: You hit the nail on the head. But when you write for a villain character, you don’t want to make them cartoonishly evil. I often find that in writing, sibling relationships are typically depicted as idyllic. “Oh, they all loved each other and got along forever”. From my personal observation, it’s never been like that. Often, you have a sibling who feels like they have to preserve the success of the family. 

Laz’lo [Desmond & John’s father] has never been the most effective businessman. The family is upper-middle class, old farm owners. They have a large family that takes a lot to provide for. 

As a result, John is a parentified child. If you notice how the youngest sister Catherine is dressed, the different fashion suggests she’s wearing hand-me-downs. The family is not so well off that they don’t feel stressed. Desmond just doesn’t think about the cost of their lives, but John does. He’s far more cognizant of what it takes to run the family. Some of it is self-adopted expectation, but he feels that the success of the family relies on him and his ability to keep his “idiot”  family intact. 

That’s his motivation when he’s trying to control Desmond. The Oakenharts are trying to present themselves as upper class, and Desmond is working. It’s very unfashionable. He doesn’t want people to even see Desmond as a Guard out and about. 

LEIGH: Pasha is fire: Burning, a force of nature. And Desmond is healing: Peaceful, pacifistic. Their powers suit their characters and their dynamic. It’s interesting that Desmond’s Blessing reveals the power of lightning only when the two of them meet, that there is literally this “spark” between them. Did you intend for the magic system to reflect their relationship?

Memoh: Yeah! Yeah! It definitely is very intentional. Romantically speaking, Desmond’s probably in the demi[sexual] camp. You could probably read in and reveal some sexual symbolism and say that Pasha is Desmond’s ‘awakening.’  

With Pasha, Desmond is finally doing what he wants to do. He loosens up. A lot of his stiffer scenes are when he’s around his family. I intentionally designed the family dining room to look like a birdcage: that he’s being confined by his family, that he can’t be himself. With Pasha, who is, in theory, a criminal that he should be looking after, he still can’t help but relax. During the repartee in chapter seven he tries to police what he says, but he wants to talk to Pasha.

A little secret: Watch Desmond’s hair. With his family, it’s all slicked back. When he’s on duty he’s half himself, so it’s half down, but when he’s with Pasha it’s all down!

A deep theme of the series I want to explore with their relationship is the tension between the things you need to do for yourself to be independent versus the things you need to ask for help with. Desmond and Pasha are struggling with the balance of that, and they both have something to learn from each other.

Dominion, Vol. 1 is available for purchase from the Wizard in a Can Store, and from physical bookstores around Aotearoa.