I temporarily overcame my fear of snakes to interview cartoonist, printmaker and ceramicist Chloe Perkis. Over the course of our talk we faced down ghosts, bullies and mansplainers, and celebrated heroes like resourceful single moms, DIY music festival organizers and the tormented former scientist Alex Olsen, whose chemically bathed body reacted with the vegetation of the nearby swamplands, transforming him into the shambling, muck-encrusted creature known popularly as Swamp Thing