If you’re queer and have been on X at some point over these past few years, you’ve likely come across a little amorphous character with a wiley, no-balls dick protruding from their groin.
The character has become a kind of avatar for Haus of Decline—a comic artist who’s gone viral several times over for their absurdist, darkly funny humour and style that breaks through a crowded internet.
With nearly 270,000 followers on X alone, Haus of Decline’s comics regularly crack hundreds of thousands of impressions—with some posts reaching millions. They’ve even achieved the coveted title of “meme creator,” with their original strip—depicting characters of Steven Universe in a faceoff against Adolf Hitler—parodied again and again with different characters.
Typically with comics, the artist takes a back seat to the panelled jokes and gags. But when it comes to Haus of Decline, that artist—Toronto-based Alex Hood—is far too compelling to overlook.
Hood may have been in your life before Haus of Decline was ever conceived. As a child, she worked as an actor, serving as the voice of popular cartoon characters like Kenny from Beyblade and the Brain from Arthur. She was also on screen, perhaps most notably as the nerdy know-it-all Ron Yuma in Family Channel’s Naturally, Sadie.
It’s been a while since Hood has taken the spotlight herself—living an isolationist life that’s partly the fate of every comic artist. But in launching an accompanying podcast with her Haus of Decline comics, she’s shared more of life over the years—first as a gay man, and then coming out as a trans woman to fans and followers in April 2024.
Though not uncommon to come out on social media, Hood’s artistic and comedic style sits at an intriguing intersection of online culture. Her comics are part vulgar dick humour enjoyed by dude bros who would vilify her as a trans woman, part queer surrealism that—in retrospect—could be read as bread crumbs to her womanhood.
Xtra spoke with Hood about sitting at these crossroads, her inspirations as an artist and where she sees herself in the comic strip tradition.
I was surprised to learn about your earlier acting and artistic pursuits. When did you first put pen to paper and develop your style as a comics artist?
I had been drawing my entire life. My dad was a professional muralist, my mom was a drama teacher—so they were artsy people. They hooked me up with weird cartoon books. The one that sticks out most in my mind is Gahan Wilson. I had a book of his stuff when I was five years old and I pored over it. Also, Shel Silverstein was a big influence because I read Shel, as many kids do, and they’re these hilarious, funny poems. The illustrations are fantastic. Years later, as a teenager, I discovered Shel wrote a book of adult cartoons called Different Dances and they’re great. That was extremely influential on what I’m doing.
So where did this current run of highly viral comics emerge from?
I had quit my job in 2021 and I was just super unemployed and depressed. I couldn’t muster the energy to do anything for more than 15 minutes a day. So I figured, “what can I produce in 15 minutes that was at least proof I was here?” If you see the initial comics, they’re very crude because I was just drawing them with no pencils, only inks. I kept trying to work in office jobs, but I was always distracted by the stupid little jokes that I was coming up with in my head.
Around 2022 I started doing these very heavy-handed political comics, which are bad. First, all political comics are bad, but in order to even approach halfway goodness you need to be informed and have unique takes, which I did not. I was just repeating what I heard on podcasts. So I stopped doing the political comics because they weren’t hitting and they weren’t honest to what I actually found funny.
How did the “Haus of Decline” persona develop?
I was compulsively watching every season of Drag Race and so like many I thought, why not do my own drag house? I had my whole drag name planned. I was Naomi Decline, based on Naomi Klein. “You’ve heard of the Shock Doctrine, let’s talk about the Shlock Doctrine.” Shit like that.
It was bad—I hated drag. Especially if you’re doing it for the first time and you are not dealing with your trans emotions, because there is nothing more dysphoria-producing than doing bad drag. So I just had the handle. But the persona I put online is not really a persona. I think it’s been very sanity-preserving to not really bifurcate myself between a personal version of me and a performance version of me. Most of what you see is what you get.
Listening to the episode of your podcast where you come out as trans, you mention knowing for a while. Talk about that journey.
It had been stewing for a while. I started taking hormones August 2024, and that was basically a year to when I had fully, psychologically accepted I’m a girl. What really spurred it is that I started doing these spaces on Twitter. Because I was a large account that wasn’t hostile to trans people, other trans women would come into my Twitter spaces and just talk about their lives.
I just couldn’t help but notice similar experiences. I had understood that I was a gay man since the age of eight. I liked Sailor Moon and mermaids and was attracted to men. And that was okay for a while, but still something was missing. I was able to have romantic relationships, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with the intimacy. It turns out I didn’t like being perceived as a man. I didn’t like the fact that they were attracted to me because of my masculine aspects.
How has your relationship with your online community evolved since your coming out?
The effect was immediate and noticeable. It’s really reinforced the idea that gender is mostly social performance. I said the word “trans” and instantly the weird sexual assault threats keep coming in—and that didn’t happen before.
It’s very strange too, because when I was ostensibly a gay man, conservatives would feel safe to find my comics funny. And then once I started drawing the same gags but with women with penises, then people started having this visceral reaction and that weird contingent turned against me. The overall effect has been, at least for me, the desired effect of socializing myself more toward femininity. The nice people are nicer and the mean people are meaner.
Now that you understand yourself more, do you look back on earlier work differently?
That’s the classic trope amongst trans people. “There were no signs!” But reviewing some of these comics, there’s quite a bit of anxiety about my body. People often ask me, “Why are your characters casually nude a lot?” And that was a result of something I thought was dysmorphia, which can easily be mistaken for dysphoria. I had felt desperately uncomfortable with my body. Since I had broken up with my last boyfriend, I hadn’t been on a date in eight years. I was just feeling like a gigantic pile of shit. So depicting people in this sort of state of flaccid comfort with their own body was almost this prayer to myself. Like, maybe you can get to a point where you’re just comfortable being you.
Do you have favourite comics of yours that still make you laugh?
Jokes are good when there’s, like, five jokes in them. The first panel starts and it’s already a ridiculous premise, and then it just builds and builds. “Snoopy Rave” is one of my favourite comics. You have this small window into a world that is utterly bizarre and has rules that you can’t possibly comprehend. I like “Snoopy Rave” because it has that same aspect of trying to comprehend the contours of this world.
Another one I like is “Nightmare Before 9/11.” It’s so funny how 9/11 became this flippant joke because obviously the tragedy of the event was sort of de-legitimized by its use to kill millions of people in the Middle East. Especially because of the over-reverence of it for the first 15 years. Everyone is making 9/11 jokes. It’s like a big competition to see who can make the best freaking 9/11 jokes.
You’ve named fellow Torontonian David Cronenberg as an inspiration. A lot of ink has been spilled when it comes to the connection between trans narratives and body horror. How do you reflect on your love of body horror, your art and your trans identity?
I love body horror. Trans girls will use the phrase “meat prison” to describe the fact that they have this insurmountable dysphoria regarding stuff like their skeleton. There’s also a big thread in transness of almost Kurzweil-esque transcendentalism where you want to go into the computer so you can inhabit any body you want.
But I’m very much of the mind that there is no real mind-body distinction. What your mind is, your body is. It’s not about the meat prison, but rather, the meat mansion. In my own attempts at body horror, I usually see it as positive or empowering. In the one big graphic novel that I wrote, the body horror experience is ultimately giving them the power to love each other and destroy their oppressors.
I don’t want to paint body horror as a universal trans experience either, because I think there are a lot of trans people that don’t have that type of intense agony about their body.
But personally, I love that shit. I saw The Fly when I was 11—that shit blew my brain.
Are there queer or trans illustrators and artists whom you’d recommend?
The biggest influence that anyone can see in my art is Keith Haring. He found a way to smuggle queer culture into the mainstream. In the 1990s, you could go to any Walmart in Palookaville and find a person wearing a Keith Haring shirt, just because something about the calming freedom of his designs were so universally appealing. Or someone like Rob Halford in the ’80s, who brought leathers and studs from gay clubs and all the hetero guys were like, “This is the straightest shit I’ve ever seen.”
In terms of trans art, The Pervert was huge for me. The word I would use for it is “gentle.” Gentle is the highest compliment that I can pay to a comic—which I think you see in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat as well—this sort of placid, peaceful fluidity. This great sense of space and atmosphere. I hadn’t seen something like that in a trans idiom before I read The Pervert.
Comics are uniquely well suited for autobio. If cinema is the language of our dreams, comics are the language of our memories. Often when I think of stuff in the past, it will present less like a moving image and more like a series of still images with texts or phrases attached to them.
Are you planning to dive into the autobio space more?
There’s just so much of it, and there are so many trans people with much more interesting lives. I’ve done autobio stuff if I have something to talk about that I feel is emotionally resonant. But the life of a comic artist is sitting inside for 18 hours a day and as a result of my sheltered, incurious existence my autobio comics would just be Homer Simpson sitting on the couch.
The dream of every artist is that they make work that is politically motivated and irreverent enough to snap people into action. I really want to focus on anti-hypernormalization. The art I want to create is how to build yourself up in a world that is fucking against you, but as long as you still have breath, still have life, still have willpower, then you can fucking fight.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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