Editing Firebugs (graphic novel) (section)

== Creation ==
''Firebugs'' was first developed for part of a 2022 [[Kassel]] art exhibition, [[Documenta fifteen]], under the name ''abfackeln.''<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |last=Pereira |first=Lindsay |date=20 February 2024 |title=Firebugs - Nino Bulling’s Unflinching yet Meditative Look at How Individual Identity and the Politics of Gender Collide |url=https://www.brokenfrontier.com/firebugs-nino-bulling/ |access-date=2026-03-12 |website=[[Broken Frontier]] |language=en-US}}</ref> [[Nino Bulling]], the graphic novel's creator, described their goals for the work:<ref>{{Cite web |date=6 July 2022 |title=Nino Bulling is publishing the comic narrative »abfackeln« (»firebugs«) |url=https://www.akademie-solitude.de/en/news/nino-bulling-veroeffentlicht-die-comicerzaehlung-abfackeln/ |access-date=2026-03-12 |website=[[Akademie Schloss Solitude]] |language=en-US}}</ref> {{Blockquote|text=I wanted to write a book with no resolution in which the expectation of a transition story is left unfulfilled. In my experience, the question of gender is never entirely decided or resolved. It presents itself again and again, every day in fact, in many forms, of which a body and its materiality is merely one.}}

Bulling credited [[Seiichi Hayashi]]'s ''[[Red Colored Elegy]]'' as their primary influence for the development of ''Firebugs''. They said they wanted to use the same sparse dialogue-based narrative style to explore a [[t4t]] (trans for trans) relationship. Hayashi evolved this style from the [[French New Wave]] film movement. Bulling's portrayal of gender dysphoria and gender dissonance were informed by [[Andrea Long Chu]]'s ''[[Females (Chu book)|Females]]''.<ref name=":1" />