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By Matthew Jent

The Rise of Aurora West

Written by JT Petty and Paul Pope

Art by David Rubin

Published by First Second

“You don’t have to attack what’s attacking you.”

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Paul Pope appeared on a panel called “Middle Grade Extravaganza,” which discussed comics for a younger audience. Younger than the grown-ups who are currently buying superhero comics, at least. A young fan approached the mic during the Q&A and he asked how Pope got the idea for Battling Boy, the long-awaited original graphic novel released by First Second last year.

Pope responded immediately that he wanted to serve an audience that modern comics have left behind. “I have nephews who were your age,” he said, “and they thought it was cool I was making comics, but they can’t see most of it. It’s geared toward adults. I wanted to write the best superhero for people your age, so they don’t have to keep going back to Batman, who is 75 years old, and Spider-Man, who is middle-aged.”

The Rise of Aurora West, a prequel/spinoff to Battling Boy, expands the world of Arcopolis and the monster fighters who try to keep that megalopolis safe. Arcopolis as a nightly curfew that attempts to keep kids safe from the monsters (quite literally, they are goblin-faced, spaghetti-armed creatures with razor-sharp teeth) who prowl the dark alleys. Aurora West is a teenage monster hunter trained by her father, Batman-stand-in Haggard West, a super-rich adventurer with a face-fitting mask, high tech gadgets, and a Westmobile. In Battling Boy, Haggard is dead and Aurora is left to battle monsters on her own. In Rise, Aurora is still being trained by her father to, in his words, “make her strong enough to survive when I’m gone.”

Though set in the same world, Aurora West has a tone than the action heavy, magic-t-shirt story of Battling Boy. Aurora is not the strongest fighter or the surest of foot, but she’s got an investigative mind. She notices details others miss, even her father, who is “Arcopolis’ Wiliest Detective.” She plays squab at school (a game that seems to involve mallets and baseball bats, but not necessarily a ball?), practices “anti-mandible kenpo” with Ms. Grately (the Wests’ version of Alfred Pennyworth), and ignores (or doesn’t notices) flirtatious asides from Hoke, a boy from school she brings along on illicit investigations. As Aurora and Hoke look for clues in a library, his whispered “you’re so pretty” is a welcome reminder — right before the story kicks into creepy/action/conclusion mode — that this is still a story about kids, intended for an audience about that the same age or younger.

Aurora West can be read and enjoying without any foreknowledge of Battling Boy. It’s clearly established from the start that Arcopolis is a city with a monster problem, and that Haggard West is a Batman-figure with doom in his future. In Haggard’s case, the event from his past that’s made him the grim avenger he is today is the death of his wife — and Aurora’s mother. But Aurora is clearly our main character. She’s learning how to fight monsters, but more importantly, she’s learning when to listen to her mentors and when to trust her instincts. She’s learning to ask why there are monsters in Arcopolis, and discovering there might be more to their motivations besides madness and appetite.

Written by Pope with JT Petty, Aurora West is illustrated in black-and-white by David Rubin. Rubin’s work resembles a wonderful hybrid of Pope, Jeff Smith, Ren & Stimpy’s John Kricfalusi (those scrunched faces, that sweat!), and a pinch of Charles Burns. He employs great visual effects — the glare of light that obscures the face of Aurora’s mother the first time we see her, the thought balloon turning gears when Aurora puts something together in her head — and every page really works as a page. They are clearly constructed moments of story. Whether that comes from a tight script from Petty & Pope or from Rubin’s storytelling sensibilities — or both — it makes for an engagingly page-turning read, and it makes me think of Pope’s own masterwork (in my own opinion, at least), THB. Like THB, the art of Aurora West balances sci-fi action with adolescent drama, and while it gets spooky, it never stops being fun. Rubin’s monsters go from silly to strange to scary without losing any of their power, and when, late in the book, a strange creature steps from the shadows that is itself unsure whether it is a monster, a ghost, or something else altogether, I found myself looking around my apartment nervously. That’s a testament to Rubin’s work with mood and shadow just as much — if not more — as Petty & Pope’s words.

Zachary Clemente spoke to Paul Pope about Aurora West at NYCC, and Pope said that Aurora’s influences are H.P. Lovecraft and Boris Karloff Universal Monster movies, providing the flip side to Battling Boy’s wellspring of Jack Kirby, Moebius, and Miyazaki. Aurora West also speaks to something else Pope mentioned in that SDCC panel: that he’s writing to himself as a younger person.

The Rise of Aurora West is about a girl being propelled out of adolescence and into young adulthood, discovering that maybe her father doesn’t have all the answers, and that the imaginary friend she half-remembers from her youth might not have been so imaginary after all. It deepens a world of new mythologies introduced in Battling Boy and proves that there is a way to create new superhero comics, for a younger audience, without having to use the same old corporate characters of decades past.

Haggard West might be doomed, but Aurora is on the rise.

by Zachary Clemente

As the first day of New York Comic-Con came to close and exhibitors began shutting down their booths, I conducted my third interview with acclaimed cartoonist Paul Pope. This time we discussed his new entry in his Battling Boy series with First Second: The Rise of Aurora West, co-written by J.T. Petty and illustrated by David Rubín. Pope is an accomplished cartoonist, his published works including 100%, The One-Trick Ripoff, Escapo, Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid and is the recipient of multiple Eisner awards. It was a pleasure to speak with Pope again; you can find the first two interviews here and here.

Comics Beat: Paul, have you had a chance to wander the floor or are you only here for the bits you need to be here for?

Paul Pope: That’s the unfortunate thing about working on this side of things, you don’t go as a far anymore. But whatever, it’s not I’m Samuel L. Jackson, I don’t need to sneak in wearing a costume or anything.

CB: So The Rise of Aurora West just came out, how’s the reception been for that so far?

PP: I don’t want to say surprisingly, but I’m very happy to say it’s been very positive. When it came out last Wednesday [9/30] I went out to the west coast and promptly got sick because the tour schedule can be punishing, especially when you’re in airports and schools and you’re not sleeping – it all caught up to me eventually. I was out there for APE but I just couldn’t finished the tour unfortunately, they sent me back and when I got home I slept for 2 days straight. I’ve been rescheduling with all the places I couldn’t get to, figuring out the best to time to get back soon. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a loss.

CB: With Aurora West, you’re choosing to let this world [of Battling Boy] into other creators’ hands. How is the process of – I don’t want to say “sacrifice” – collaboration within this world that you’ve been working on alone for so long?

PP: I talked to Mike Mignola about this not too long ago. [...] You know what he’s done with Hellboy has been great because he’s been able to invite other creators. It was pretty early on that it was looking like Battling Boy was going to be a hit, or at least it would warrant a second series. Since I’m still working on the second book and now promoting it, they asked if I had any ideas and I said we should do a series on Haggard West and Aurora – fill in all the gaps that are implied in the first book as I finish the second book, periodically leave town and come back again.

CB: So not only is it wise for world-building but also strategically a good thing for you.

PP: Yeah, also there is a larger backdrop to the characters and to the world; like, the monsters come from somewhere. In the Aurora series, we getting more of a sense of the mystery of where the monsters come from. It’s more of a pulp adventure.

CB: I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt very rooted in manga with the printing format and art style.

PP: Well, J.T. understands horror and he gets pulp. David Rubín, like myself, comes from a sort of internationalist style and he likes manga a lot. He was able to keep it within a spectrum of style and approach that’s similar to mine and yet still be his own.

CB: It’s rare to see a very successful treatment of somebody else’s work by another artist who can inhabit both styles at once.

PP: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. He’s really fast too, which is great – he’s kicking my ass at the moment, I have to admit. I’m really happy with the results.

CB: Getting into the themes of the book, something I liked was taking the tropes of the “science” [super] hero idea and the consequence and responsibility of power. Haggard provided for this city for so long, when he turned inward, the city couldn’t handle itself. I found that best discussed in the scene with man on the bridge. How did this theme of power and consequence form?

PP: Well, it was one of the things J.T. and I talked about. I went in with my core idea based on the big, super-bible we wrote – we meaning me – for Battling Boy. We started talking about what the reality would be like, having your children stolen and we decided to try to do something where Haggard gets shaken out of his state of depression by having to help another father. I thought it was a good emotional bit – and it’s something we don’t typically see. [...] In Battling Boy, it’s a little more breezy and focused on the main five or six characters. You see more in the second book about other citizens, but for the most part it’s just Battling Boy, Aurora, and the city planners.

The Rise of Aurora West

CB: So now we’re getting a larger scope of what’s going on in Acropolis and how it’s dealing with its problems?

PP: Yeah, and obviously Battling Boy, as the name implies, is designed to have lots of explosions and fights and all kinds of stuff like that. Whereas Aurora was more psychological.

CB: It almost felt like the two different sides of Batman books. One’s very detective-based and the other is very action-based.

PP: That was plan going into it, actually. It’s frustrating though. Same with the character Dad in Battling Boy - there were a couple of scenes that I had to write out of Battling Boy that had to do with Dad just kicking ass because for one, that could be its own thing later. I also didn’t want to distract from the core of the story of Battling Boy which was the Boy’s coming of age. In Aurora, it’s the same. Luckily her version of Dad is Haggard; we get to see him without his mask and we get to see him in a family setup.

CB: That leads into my next question which is a big part of both books: would you call Haggard a good father?

PP: That’s a good question, you could ask the same of Dad. I think one of the things that attracted me to writing a story like this was thinking about how being a superhero or war god doesn’t leave you time to raise your kids – you’ll be busy. I’m interested in, fascinated and haunted by that idea of child soldiers. You hear about those types of things in Somalia; to have your child taken away from you. That’s something I find very sympathetic with Aurora and that’s something I wanted to explore with her character – how does she remain innocent?

CB: When we last talked, you said that you had things to say to children with Battling Boy; would you see Aurora as a continuation of that?

PP: One thing people seem to be picking up on with Aurora is that they’re really responding to her as a strong, female lead. She’s a teenage girl; she’s not a sexualized character, she’s not helpless; she’s a sidekick or protégé, but she’s got her own ideas and she does her own things. That’s kind of what her character requires and that’s the kind of personality the daughter of Haggard West would have. It’s been fun. [...] Battling Boy is more about–well, they’re both about abandonment in a sense, even though Battling Boy’s family is intact. I think Aurora’s story is more tragic, even though it’s kind of cloaked in this light, superhero, science-fiction setting. There’s archaeology and mysticism, but there isn’t any mythology in it. It’s the opposite in Battling Boy since he’s from the realm of gods.

The Rise of Aurora West

CB: I feel like the archaeology in Aurora is the other side of the coin for Battling Boy‘s mythology. Aurora has this historical scope that I find interesting.

PP: When we went in with the initial pitch for the series, Haggard’s an archaeologist before he’s a hero, and he discovers evidence of an ancient city under the city we know in Battling Boy, and there might’ve been another Battling Boy. The kid is kind of a feral character – it’s implied that Battling Boy has siblings. Imagine, Dad is like a war-god, so he’s probably prolific in line with a lot of mythology. Like with Hercules and Zeus, they have tons and tons of  kids. This god of war, god of conquest – he’s going to be busy fighting battles in the realm of gods, so he needs to have offspring to be able to send them to the realm of humans to take care of basically training-wheel problems. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the background that’s coming out as the series develops.

CB: You touched on how the book came about, but how was the process of sharing the writing and where did duties lie?

PP: We did a sort of back and forth. It was his script and I gave him the liberty to write the voice of Haggard. [...] Part of my job now as being a story director as well as art director, so I don’t want to tell him how to do his job. He already knows what to do, he already knows how to direct movies and he writes video games and graphic novels – he’s really intelligent. It was more of us spending a few months really hammering out a story based on me saying “here’s what I really want to do.” We’d work on a core plot, knowing where the story begins and ends. At that point, I let him go and do his own thing. There were a few things though; his first draft was too violent because he likes horror. [...] There was some stuff with the characterization that I thought was a little off mark from what I was hoping for. Otherwise, I think the script came in really solid and it hit all the things I wanted. I try to give my collaborators room – I got that from Mignola because he told me that’s how he works with people.

CB: You did something like that with Vertigo anthology, Ghosts where you made the story but didn’t write the script.

PP: Oh you mean with Dave Lapham? Yeah, that was a good experiment. [...] I might be doing something else with another guy where I’m drawing something he’s gonna write. The way we worked on the space opera story was I said “here’s what I see: this mini-opera, there are the images I want.” Then we kicked around some ideas and he came up with some interesting stuff. That was more of a true collaboration in a sense because we wrote it together.

‘Treasure Lost’ in Ghosts #1

CB: How far are you willing to take this collaboration with the Battling Boy world?

PP: Well…it’s easier now after having worked on the film because there’s so many people involved; you can’t be a dictator when it comes to film. With the Battling Boy series that I have been writing and drawing, it’s pretty much my baby; I get minimal editorial input. With the colorist, Hilary Sycamore, she and I have a long conversation before she starts a large stretch of work. I always try to give her the sense of what I’m feeling for a scene. For example, the god realm is always in twilight, the human realm is always Mediterranean with terracotta and aquamarine colors, and the monster realm is like hell so it’s browns and reds.

The place I can be 100% myself is in Battling Boy and as we gradually expand on the series, I want to make sure to pick out people I like and respect and can work with and try to write or direct for their strengths, while being aware of their weaknesses. I think that’s the way to collaborate.

[Spoiler for Aurora West] CB: At the end of Aurora, the monster Coil mentioned that Aurora is his “animus” in the Jungian idea of one half of a whole inside the other and vice versa. Is that a discussion on the origin of monsters and their connection to the children in Battling Boy?

PP: [Laughs] You’re onto something there. Let’s just put it this way: the big boss that we see at the end of Battling Boy who Sadisto is working for is a scribble monster. It’s implied, by the time you hit Aurora, that these monsters might be very old, many of them aren’t even fully formed creatures yet. Yeah, there’s definitely a connection between that and that’ll be coming out as the series develops. Good call on that one.

CB: So, “The Fall of the House of West” – is that the second Battling Boy book itself?

PP: No, that’ll just be called Battling Boy 2. Ultimately, they’ll both be collected – I’m imagining Aurora as a two-parter: Rise of Aurora West and Fall of House West. It’s designed more around this kabuki stage set: tragedy and family. So act one is the rise and act two is the fall; that was definitely very conscious on our part. David wasn’t happy with the title at first; he thought, having come from film and a lover of westerns, he’s seen this type of thing a lot. Like with Battling Boy implies; it’s about a boy who’s fighting. Rise of Aurora West–first of all, it sounds alliterative and The Fall of the House of West has kind of a Shakespearean feel.

CB: I find that both Battling Boy and Aurora are well-described by their titles. As the stories utilize these touchstones in storytelling that people have come to expect, but works with them in such a unique way. The titles end up being evocative for their stories.

PP: Yeah, what’s really fun about it is meeting all these young readers. A lot of them are 10 or 12 years old and they’ve really never read comic books before. They might’ve read Adventure Time or Tintin, but this is the first time a lot of these kids, especially girls, are getting the sense of Kirby Krackle or Moebius. Certainly they know Ghibli’s movies like Spirited Away going into it, but for the first time they’re getting opened up to what we think of as Silver Age comics or awesome French comics from the 70’s.

The Rise of Aurora West

CB: We might be seeing a lot more of those Nausicaä boxed sets flying off the shelves soon.

PP: I love that film, though Laputa is my favorite, but it’s hard to say as there are so many good ones.

CB: I ultimately fall on Porco Rosso as my favorite.

PP: He [Hayao Miyazaki] said he made it for guys our age. Porco Rosso is a big influence on the coloring in Battling Boy.

CB: I totally see that. It’s all coastal, Mediterranean cities.

PP: I was Italy when I was writing Battling Boy, I just really fell in love with the south of Italy; the lighting and the colors, the way the sea looked on the Adriatic coast. At nighttime with the volcanoes in the distance, it’s so romantic and old. It fits with the ideas I had for Arcopolis; it isn’t like Berlin, 1945- dark and scummy. It’s this old and vibrant city that’s fallen on bad times.

CB: That makes sense with your work and European influences, I think. The recorded history there is just so much older.

PP: Even more so for Africa and Asia. That’s why, in Aurora, the analog for the oldest city is Egypt. I was thinking about all this stuff, but I wasn’t really able to put it across. Where Haggard lives in the city, his decor is very Pacific Northwest – it’s a lot of fun to draw.

CB: It’s got a very collector vibe to it, too.

PP: Yeah, something I noticed with some of the heroes from occult fiction, whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or Lamont Cranston – they collect a bunch of ancient artifacts and stuff. Indiana Jones is like that too, but he’s a thief.

CB: It has those classic Campbellian story elements; out of travel a hero is born.

PP: Actually, Haggard belongs to an explorers club like National Geographic and we’ll see more of those characters later. I’m going to do an annual portrait of Haggard with his compatriots, so in that sense, he’s a little like Doc Savage. Like in Buckaroo Bonzai, he’s got his gang if he needs a specialist in this or that.

CB: Wrapping up, other than Mignola’s “Hellboy-verse”, are there any other series with larger built-up worlds that have this kind of multi-thread publication structure that you’re inspired by?

PP: One big influence is definitely the RKO [Pictures] and Universal [Pictures] movie series from the 30’s and 40’s like Flash Gordon. [...] There’s always the classic Universal monster movies, German expressionism and early Soviet-era cinema; whether it’s Eisenstein or Fritz Lang – those are big influences. That’s the fun thing, in the same way that Battling Boy is full of my love of Kirby, Moebius, and Miyazaki, the same of true for Aurora. It’s like a flipped coin – the dark side like Boris Karloff, H.P. Lovecraft – these kind of things, it’s more of a vintage feel.

That works with J.T. because he directs horror movies; he’s writing The Walking Dead video game, I don’t know if you know that. He has a wicked sense of humor and a wicked sense of the wicked, and he also has two children. We got lunch a couple days ago after a signing and we had a long conversation; we got into some dark stuff. [In Aurora] monsters are kidnapping children and we started talking about some really gruesome stuff and it’s like “this is where it’s coming from.”

CB: Thank you very much Paul.

PP: Sure, thank you.

Paul Pope is an Eisner-winning cartoonist currently in Brooklyn, New York. He is actively working on his Battling Boy series with publisher First Second. You can find more of his work on his website.

By Kyle Pinion

IN REAL LIFE, a graphic novel collaboration between journalist/author Cory Doctorow and comics creator Jen Wang, centers on a young gamer named Anda who becomes enraptured by an massively multiplayer online game (MMO) called “Coarsegold Online”. While logged-in, she makes new friends, including a gregarious fellow gamer named “Sarge” and a “gold-farmer” from China named Raymond. It’s the latter whose activities, which center on illegally collecting valuable objects in the game and selling them to other players from developed countries, begin to open up Anda’s perspectives on the concepts of right and wrong, and the power of action towards civil rights.

The book was a true eye-opener for me, as I’m not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination beyond the occasional dalliance on my console system at home. I was delighted when I received an opportunity to chat with Jen Wang about the origins of this project, its underlying themes, and how much of her own gaming experience played into the development of the narrative.

How did IN REAL LIFE (IRL) find its genesis? Did you know Cory Doctorow prior to working on this project?

Prior to IN REAL LIFE I was familiar with Cory Doctorow as a blogger and activist but I hadn’t read his fiction. ANDA’s GAME, the short story IRL is based on was actually the first piece I read. My publisher First Second sent me a link to the short and asked if I’d be interested. After reading that, it was hard to say no!

What is it about the subject matter that drew you in initially?

I like that it takes gaming, which many people see as frivolous entertainment, and gives it a real life context. The internet is inherently a social platform and it makes sense that it reflects our darker tendencies, such as exploiting people. I also like that it touches on the tension between China and the West. There’s just so much interesting material to explore and at the end of the day it’s still a simple story about two teenage gamers from different countries who become friends.

Your previous work, KOKO BE GOOD, also published through First Second, was solely written and illustrated by yourself. Do you find that there are inherent advantages in the collaborative process, and is there a method you prefer over the other? 

It’s definitely a lot easier to illustrate your own work, that’s for sure. The collaborative process is more challenging, but you also get a second point a view and a direction to work towards. Sometimes in your personal work it takes a lot of soul searching to figure out what you’re trying to say but a collaborate project allows you to bounce off other people’s ideas and that’s really refreshing.

On the day to day work on the graphic novel, what was the working relationship between Cory and yourself? Were you in constant contact? 


During the scripting phase of the book we were sending a lot of emails. I would write a draft, send it to Cory, and he would send some notes and bounce some ideas back. We went through maybe 8 or so drafts so it took a little while to nail down the final. I was pretty much left alone at the drawing stage, however.

How much of a specific vision did Cory have in the initial “Anda’s Game” script, and how much input did you have on character design before the development of IRL? Do you feel like Anda specifically has your “stamp” on her?



I had pretty much free reign as far as design went, so that part was fairly easy. When First Second approached me to do the project they wanted me to feel comfortable writing my own take, so mostly it was me pitching ideas to Cory and him giving me notes. I do feel like I have my stamp on Anda but then again I don’t know how it wouldn’t have happened naturally. She’s a nerdy teenage shut in and having been one myself I can relate to that a lot.

The gaming details throughout are very specific, do you have a significant gaming/MMO background as a user? If not, is that an area where Cory contributed significantly?

I don’t really have a background in MMOs but I played World of Warcraft for a couple weeks prior to starting the project. That plus a combination of sandbox games I’ve played were the inspiration for Coarsegold online. I mostly tried to create a game that felt familiar and yet tailored it to things I like in games. I’m very much into customization and resource management so it was fun to add things like to the book.

How do you sense that communication has changed for Generation Y and The Millennials? Do you find that you side more with Anda or her mother in what technology brings to social interaction? 

I’m definitely on the Millennials side. I can’t imagine what my life would be like now if I didn’t have access to the internet as a teenager. I met so many other young artists online and they really motivated me to create and challenge myself. Without it, I would’ve had to seek these people out in college in person and I would’ve been a lot more lonely and isolated. There are risks to putting yourself online but there are risks to be alive in the real world as well.  The best you can do is exercise caution and be smart about your privacy in the same way you would anywhere.

Is there anything from your own experience pulled into Anda’s story, at least from a characterization standpoint?

 Do you see Anda as a role model? Was that the intention all along?

I was a lot like Anda in high school. I was a teenage hermit who spent a lot of time connecting to peers online within my community of choice. Like Anda, I found my identity online because I was able to meet other people like myself. I see Anda less as a traditional role model and more as someone readers could relate to. Like Anda, most young people now are discovering the world through the internet and it can be a difficult place to navigate.

What drove the design of the world of Coarsegold? Any specific influences?

World of Warcraft is the main one, but I also looked at the Final Fantasy games, Skyrim, and more open world games like Animal Crossing, The Sims and Second Life.

What was the thought process on the color-design that differentiates Coarsegold from “the real world”?



I definitely wanted Coarsegold to be more bright and colorful by contrast as a reflection of Anda’s feelings toward both realities. I used different filters and colored textures so that real life was a little more tan and monochromatic while Coarsegold looked lively and exciting.

When Anda somewhat bridges the gap between the two by changing her hair color to match her avatar, what kind of sea-change does that indicate for her personally?

At that point in the story Anda has finally found purpose and confidence in her role as a Fahrenheit. Not only has she befriended Raymond and discovered this world of goldfarming, but she’s taken on the task of helping him. It’s a decision she’s been able to make for herself separate from what her peers have led her to believe, and changing her hair color is a symbol of this newfound confidence.

IN REAL LIFE defies expectations a bit in that it shifts a bit touching briefly on females in gaming (with the very succinct hand-raising scene in the classroom and some of the concerns of “Sarge”) and then moves into an area centering on economics and specifically civil rights. Do you sense a strong correlation between the two themes?

Oh, for sure. As in real life, the conflict within Coarsegold comes from who is considered an “other.” As a young girl in gaming, Anda is a minority, yet she’s in a position of power compared to Raymond who is not only a foreigner who doesn’t speak English, but also a goldfarmer. They’re able to connect as outsiders of this gaming establishment and both are fighting for the right to be themselves and be seen as equals.

I have to admit that the term “gold farming” is fairly new to me (as a non-gamer), and IRL paints a very morally grey picture around that activity, what do you feel as though readers should take from the book’s portrayal of that subject?



Gold farming was new to me too until I started researching for this book. There is a lot of grey area and it’s still evolving. What I do hope the readers takes away from IRL is the ability to keep an open mind about the people on the other side of the tracks and be empathetic to their struggles. On the surface the gold farming community appears to be taking advantage of game-makers and the “purity” of the game. On the other hand the gold farmers themselves are actually big fans who can only participate by being taken advantage of.

What inspired the creation of Raymond? Both in the look of his avatar and the character’s plight in China?

I wanted the goldfarmers to look small and vulnerable compared to everyone else.  They haven’t been able to level up their characters and they’re not customized so Raymond doesn’t look any different from his peers. I also wanted them to not look human so as to “otherize” the goldfarmers in the eyes of Anda and Lucy at the beginning of the story. For Raymond’s human backstory I took a lot of inspiration from a book I read called FACTORY GIRLS: FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN A CHANGING CHINA by Leslie T. Chang. It paints these very compassionate portraits of young female migrant workers and the everyday victories and struggles they face.  Raymond comes from a very disadvantaged background but he’s also clever and ambitious enough to get what he wants (to play Coarsegold) with the means that he has.

Do you feel a sense of responsibility to educate as a creator publishing a book within the Young Adult literary genre? Does that affect the kinds of stories you hope to tell?



I don’t make it a point to be an educator, but I hope my stories reflect the world I’d like to see and the problems I’d like us to overcome.

If there was one-key take away or message from IN REAL LIFE that should highlighted, what would that be?

Be compassionate to others and be aware of how your role in the community may be inadvertently hurting others less privileged than you.

What’s next on the horizon for you post the release of IRL next month? Any new projects that you can share?

I have a couple new projects I can’t really talk about yet, but I’m excited to share I’m co-organizing a new comics festival in Los Angeles called Comics Arts LA. It’s a one day event that will take place on December 6th. We’ve got really great exhibitors lined up so it’s going to be fun. If any readers out there are in Southern California that weekend, I encourage you to come check it out! http://comicartsla.com

IN REAL LIFE will be available in a bookstore near you on October 14th through First Second

By Kyle Pinion and Harper Harris

In one week, First Second will be producing the prequel to Paul Pope’s critically lauded and Eisner Award winning Battling Boy entitled The Rise of Aurora West. This new tale, co-written by Pope and J.T. Petty, features art by David Rubín and centers on the journey of Aurora West, daughter of Arcopolis’ pulp inspired hero: Haggard West, who seeks to uncover the mystery behind her mother’s death and to do so without her famous father discovering her mission. It’s a fascinating expansion on the mythos Pope laid out in the initial Battling Boy graphic novel, and we were fortunate enough to chat with Rubín regarding his work on this new title and what we can expect next from this rising talent.

Where did you get your start in the comics industry and was it based upon American comics or more of the European variety? Both?

I started to publish my work in 2001, first in some Spanish fanzines and magazines, and then with my first graphic novels, published in Spain by Astiberri editions. Astiberri works hard to sell my titles to other publishers in other countries, and now you can find my books in French, Italian, Czech, and soon in English too.

I like to mix the different traditions in my own work; American comics, European BD and Japanese manga. I like to read both, and both are reflected in my style.

What are your key influences as an artist?

From American comics: Jack Kirby (he’s my favorite author), Frank Miller, Alex Toth, Mike Sekowsky, John Romita Sr. & Jr., and Bob Oksner.

From European BD: JC Forest, Moebius, Peellaert, Blutch, and Hugo Pratt.

From Japanese Manga: Osamu Tezuka, Go Nagai, Shigero Mizuki, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Suehiro Maruo.

And some Spanish artists like Javier Olivares, Santiago Sequeiros, and Miguel A. Robledo.

But influences in my work aren’t provided only by comics; the music, the cinema, the painting, and other kinds of pop culture also influence my work.

What were some of your earlier projects during the beginning phases of your career?

“Dónde nadie puede llegar” was my first long project.  It was a story of love, loss, and unhappy superheroes.  It’s included in my first graphic novel with Astiberri: “El Circo del Desaliento”. It was published in France and in Italy, too.

“La tetería del oso malayo” was my second graphic novel with Astiberri.  It’s a compendium of different short stories with a common link, the tearoom where those stories happen.  It’s a very emotional and sad book.

And the third graphic novel of my early work was called “Cuaderno de Tormentas” and was published in Spain by Planeta DeAgostini. It’s a bizarre book about the search for inspiration, about the torturous way of creativity – much more darker and experimental than my previous books. 

How did you end up getting your first works published, and who were you working with at the time?

In my early years as a cartoonist, I started the Polaqia collective with other artists.

At that time, none of us had published professionally, and the unique option for us was self publishing  our work.

Polaqia collective existed from 2001 to 2011, and we published a lot of great stuff by ourselves and other artists like Dylan Horrocks, Miguel B. Nuñez, Juan Berrio, and  a lot of artists from all over the world.

Several members of Polaqia are professional artists now, like the recently Eisner Awards nominated Emma Ríos (“Pretty Deadly,” Image) or José Domingo (“Adventures of a Japanese Businessman,” Nowbrow) and myself.  Polaqia was the beginning for us.

At what point did you become a part of The Rise of Aurora West team? Were you a fan of Paul Pope’s work?

Yeah, I like Paul’s work so much!  He’s one of the artists who influenced my work.

I remember that in the middle of 2013 – before Battling Boy came out — I’d received an e-mail from Paul in which he asked me if I’d want to collaborate with him and First Second in a spin-off of Battling Boy.

At that moment I was very busy working on my graphic novel Beowulf with Santiago García, but…Oh, Boy!…that kind of thing only happens once in a lifetime! And, of course, I said YES.

What was the working relationship like between yourself, Paul Pope and JT Petty? With whom were you in most constant contact during the development of the graphic novel?

We did some short but intense pre-production work at the beginning of the project. I made a lot of sketches of the characters, and they sent to me a lot of reference stuff like photos, old films and tv serials, etc…everything I needed for playing well with the new universe created by Paul.

But when I was starting to working on the pages, they gave me a lot of freedom. When I have a batch of pages, 20 or 30, in pencils, I sent it to JT, Paul and the staff of First Second.  Everything that was said to me is “Oh, GREAT!” “WOW!!”…so I think that I’m a lucky guy!

JT always shows those pencil pages to his little daughter.  She’s the real beta-tester of Aurora West’s books! And until this moment, everything I’ve sent works fine for her, haha!

With Paul Pope obviously being an artist himself, did the scripts already have pre-figured design concepts or did Pope and Petty give room for your own ideas?

It’s a team effort; I use some of Paul’s previous ideas in Aurora West and Paul used some of my ideas in Battling Boy 2.

Paul and JT’s script is very detailed, but they haven’t any problems with me including a lot of new ideas in it when I do the storytelling. They make my work easier!

Was this story always intended to be two volumes? Are you working on the second half already or will there be a significant break between the work on the two books?

Yes, Aurora West’s story was two volumes since the beginning.

And I’m already hard at work on the second volume. I’ve already finished more than 80 pages of penciled art.

I’ll be finished with book two for the end of January 2015…I think.

Will The Fall of the House of West dovetail with the plot of Battling Boy or will be it wholly separate?

“The Fall…” ends when Battling Boy begins, the four books –BB1&2 and AW1&2 – will make a single story, I think.

It’s not necessary for you to have already read Battling Boy to enjoy and understand the story of Aurora West, but if you already read Battling Boy, your experience like reader with The Rise of Aurora West is going to be more powerful.

What is your favorite aspect of being able to flesh out the world of Battling Boy? Do you have a particular addition of your own that you’re especially proud of? Is there a wrinkle or element that is very specifically “David Rubín”?

The Battling Boy universe is young and very unexplored as yet.

It’s a world that’s 100% Pope, yeah.  But at the same time, that world only has the two hundred pages of Battling Boy, and that gives me a lot of leeway to play in it — and to provide it some of my ideas.

Arcopolis, the city where the action happens in Battling Boy and The Rise of Aurora West, are darker in Aurora West than in Battling Boy.  It’s the same city, the same architecture, but it’s different.  There are also plenty of new characters that I designed for the Battling Boy universe, like Medula and her gang of catfishmidgers, Croward, and a number of new monsters and humans, who all appear for the first time in The Rise of Aurora West.

Anyone who has read some of my own books could find a lot of references and similarities, and this the case because the world created by Paul is very rich and full of possibilities.

How would you compare Aurora and Battling Boy as heroes? What makes Aurora stand apart?

They’re some similarities between Battling Boy and Aurora; both are learning to be heroes, and both have a lot of doubts about themselves and their own fate.

But Battling Boy came from a fantastic world full of gods and heroes, a world where everything is possible, while Aurora grew up in a world with only one hero; her father, in a city under siege, full of monsters and menace.

And that makes a big difference in the personality of both.

All of the sound effects are drawn into the art rather than photoshopped in, was that a conscious choice for stylistic purposes?

I like to draw all these elements — the sound effects, the balloons — by myself. I think it gives a more organic look to the pages, and helps to make the timing more fluid than if you put this elements in a page with a computer in a post-production process, or if someone else puts them in.

I try to make them by myself in every one of my books. I think that is the best way.

Why black and white instead of fully colored pages? Was that an economic choice or a storytelling one?

That was an editorial decision.  When I was asked to do this project, First Second had already decided that Aurora West’s book would have B&W final art.

But that editorial choice was good for my work, I think, because I had to go in different ways for my storytelling than if the book had been published in full color.

B&W requires much more of the artists. You must generate feelings in the reader with only one color ink, the same feelings that people feel in seeing full color art. To make that possible, you need to express more using storytelling.

What sort of challenges did you find in differentiating the various members of Sadisto’s gang?

Good question!! With color that is so easy; one blue, one red, one green…but in B&W, with these capes, everybody looks the same!

There are some tricks to make them distinguishable; if you look, each of them has different elements in their costumes.  In addition, the acting not is the same for them all; Sadisto is more theatrical, more broad than the others, Coil is more strong and purposeful, etc…

What are your primary artistic techniques when working on a book like this? What kind of materials do you use?

I drew the storyboard for the book on little pieces of paper, then I scan the story and print a blue version in A4 paper size of the story pages.  Then I make the final and draw over it, with a pencil.

When the pencil pages are done, I scan the result and print in blue in B4 size papers (a size between A4 and A3) and do my inks there, with a brushpen.

Inks done, I scan – again — the pages and includes the grey tones in Photoshop.  I add some other additional details of the inks digitally, like the splatter of ink in some panels, etc…

There are other ways to draw a comic page, better, for sure, but this one works well for me.  And you have two original pages of each page! One in pencils and one in inks!

You can see a graphic explication of my work process in Aurora West in my blog:

http://detripas.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/historia-de-una-pagina.html

The Rise of Aurora West has a very 1930’s Serial look, particularly in its Egyptian segments, but more or less throughout. Where does that come from? (as it signals a somewhat sharper turn from the Kirby-esque Battling Boy graphic novel)

Paul and JT wanted a 1930’s tv serial look for these sequences, a graphic atmosphere like Doc Savage or other pulp stories.

Paul sent me some chapters of 1930’s Flash Gordon serial, which is amazing, and I tried to get the tone of this type of work, old but fashionable, in the panel of these segments.

Those Egyptian sequences are flashbacks, which helps to that old fashioned-phantasmagoric atmosphere work just fine.

What was the most difficult segment of the script to illustrate? Additionally, what was the most fun part?

Both are the same part!! The long final sequence with the confrontation of Haggard and Aurora with Medula and Sadisto’s gang was my favorite.

It’s a long sequence, with a lot of action, a number of points of view, and mini sequences as well.

It has everything; tons of action and adventure, shootings, explosions, melee, hue-and-cry….and a lot of drama, surprises and emotional moments.

There were harder segments to illustrate, but, undoubtedly,  this was the most fun!

As for other upcoming work, you have an adaptation of Beowulf coming. What is about Beowulf that attracts you as an artist, particularly for such an oft-told story? And with the English language release of The Hero (a re-telling of Hercules) coming through Dark Horse, do you have a particular affinity for mythological heroes and why?

I’ve liked mythology since I was a child; the gods were the first superheroes ever!

When I created The Hero, I had wanted to recover the emotions that I lived when I first read SH comics as a child — this pure emotion, these “bigger-than-life” stories.

That book is my love letter to the genre of superheroes, especially to Jack Kirby’s work.

But if I didn’t make a graphic novel about the nostalgia for the old superhero comics and pop culture; I’d make a book about myths, heroes, monsters, but with everything packed in the sad, visceral and very emotional drama of a human being.

My approach to Beowulf was more a coincidence than something I sought out.

I was reading in Santiago Garcia’s blog that his project of a Beowulf graphic novel with Javier Olivares was cancelled.

I was really angry when I saw that notice – I really WANTED TO READ that graphic novel! – and I immediately called Santiago and said to him: “Hey man, Beowulf can’t fall in oblivion! I’m going to draw it and make it a reality!!!”

Santiago accepted my offering and the rebirth of Beowulf project began!

When can we expect to see Beowulf in stores and do you have any other projects that you’d like to share any news about?

The English version of our Beowulf arrives at stores in 2015, published by Image Comics.

And as for future projects…by the moment I’m making a new graphic novel with high concept Sci-Fi and a scathing critique of the current political and economic system, with the spanish writer Marcos Prior. I think that will be finished by the end of 2015.

And in the meantime, I’m drawing a four issues mini-series for Boom! Studios, a completely new and original series.

You can purchase Battling Boy: The Rise of Aurora West in stores on September 30th.

Twin brothers Asaf and Tomer Hanuka have been making vividly arresting comics for quite a while. Together they produced the award-nominated Bipolar. Separately, Tomer is known his covers for Vertigo and illustration for The New Yorker, the NY Times and many other places. Asaf illustrated Pizzeria Kamikaze, written by Etger Keret (and the basis of the film Wristcutters) and the ongoing webcomic The Realist.

And they have a new graphic novel coming out from First Second next July: The Divine, written by Israeli writer/filmmaker Boaz Lavie (“The Lake”). It’s a story dragged from today’s headlines. Former military man Mike is leading a boring civilian existence when his army buddy Jason invites him to take on what seems like easy money: a covert but lucrative contract  job in an obscure South-Asian country called Quanlom, which is being torn apart by civil war.

What seems like a simple job turns into a nightmare, as Quanlom’s civil war turns out to be led by 1o-year-old twins with seemingly supernatural powers. Throw in an army of godlike soldiers and a dragon and you have one weird war tale. According to the blurb, it’s ” a fast-paced, brutal, and breathlessly beautiful portrait of a world where ancient powers vie with modern warfare and nobody escapes unscathed.”

I’m a long time fan of the Hanukas striking imagery and morbid imaginations. This sound like a perfect outlet for their vision.

By Harper Harris

Farel Dalrymple, best known for his work on the alternative comics series, Pop Gun War at Dark Horse and his contributions to Brandon Graham and Simon Roy’s Prophet for Image (drawing the “John Prophet with a tail” chapters) has recently received critical raves for his latest original graphic novel: The Wrenchies for First Second.

The Wrenchies centers on ruthless gang of young children in a Post Apocalyptic wasteland who fight against the oppression of “the Shadowmen”. This conflict is somewhat thrown on its head when a young boy from our world named Orson; dressed in superhero regalia, with a ghost pal and a love of comics, finds a way to enter into the future and joins this team of misfits.  From there, an epic quest commences and the lines between reality and fiction blur in one of the most stunning pieces of sequential art I’ve laid eyes on this year.

I sat down this past weekend to chat with Dalrymple about the origins of this new effort, his career path thus far, and just what influences drive him creatively.

Harper: Farel, were you a big comics reader as a kid or when did you come into it and how did that turn into a career at some point?

Farel:  Yeah, I read a lot of comics growing up. I guess it was like the biggest thing that my time was most consumed with. I thought a lot about being a cartoonist like kind of when I was ending high school – I remember actually sending away for information for the Joe Kubert Cartooning School which I didn’t end up going to, but yeah, I had this idea for years.  I was like, “Oh, I’m going to be a cartoonist.”  But I think by the time I started going to junior college, I was in my 20s and that’s when I eventually went to art school.  And even then, I was still making comics the whole time but I wasn’t necessarily thinking like, “Oh, I’m going to do this as a career.”  And then by the time I got out of art school, I knew that’s kind of what I wanted to do.  I just wasn’t extremely sure how to break in or anything like that.  It was just kind of like “oh, I want to make a comic book”, so I just kind of started making my own comic books.  And then I started getting some commercial work, doing that and I don’t know, [illustration] just seems to be the only thing that I’ve kind of been halfway decent at.

Harper:  When you were starting out and now, who and what are kind of your biggest influences when you write and when you draw?

Farel:  Well, I think drawing comics, like the act of like storytelling, that kind of thing, I think that mostly just comes from – like when I went to art school, I didn’t study cartooning, I was studying illustration and painting and stuff like that…but I feel like most of that stuff is just from reading Marvel Comics growing up.  So it’s like not story-wise necessarily but like how I tell a story, I feel like it’s very much out of that school, the 70s and 80s Marvel Comics, John Buscema and guys like that.  Also Heavy Metal type stuff, like Moebius, guys like that.  There’s some European influence and a little bit of manga. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Miyazaki is one of my favorite mangas and Akira. I really like those books a lot.

Harper: Let’s get into The Wrenchies a little bit.  Reading the book, it seems to draw from this like massive array of ideas and philosophies and movies and comics and all sorts of different areas.  What were kind of your sources of inspirations for the story?

Farel:  The Wrenchies is such an amalgam of things for me.  I was kind of trying to include all these things from popular culture that I really liked.  One of the big inspirations for The Wrenchies was – especially the way the kids interacted with each other – was this 1979 film Over the Edge.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that.

Harper:  Oh, I haven’t.

Farel:  It’s Matt Dillon’s first movie.

Harper:  Ah.

Farel:  It’s about these kids in Colorado or California or something like that, there’s basically nothing in this town for them to do, they’re just sort of bored, and so they party all the time, like drink and do drugs and they end up like rioting at the school and shooting cops and things like that. I just really like the way these kids interacted with each other.  It just seemed realistic.  And so even though my story’s total fantasy, like weird kind of silly stuff, I tried to not just have all these sort of different things that I liked putting them in there but it was – the kind of underlying thing was really personal to me, particularly philosophy.  I’m not a big student of philosophy necessarily but for example, the book The Brothers Karamazov, I really like the way that book made me feel like when I read it, I kept having to put it down and think about it and I guess that’s kind of what I was trying to do with The Wrenchies. I don’t know if I succeeded in that. I might have just ended up confusing a lot of people but it all makes sense to me when I read it and look at it.  But yeah, there is this kind of really personal nature to it that I tried to sort of make fun for people to read. But I don’t know, hopefully it won’t be like too frustrating for anyone like trying to decipher it or figure out what it’s supposed to mean, because it’s ultimately just a fantasy story that hopefully is fun.

Harper:  With so many different characters and all the timelines, where did the story start for you?  Was it with Sherwood and Orson that start the book, the Wrenchies gang that the title comes from, or Hollis?

Farel:  That’s kind of interesting – the story of The Wrenchies actually was inspired from the – the short story that I have in the back of The Wrenchies, “Photogalactica” which was originally in an anthology called Meathaus, it was the last Meathaus anthology we did, Meathaus S.O.S.  It was just a group of people from New York and other places that I was involved with, we put out this anthology and I couldn’t remember exactly why I wrote that particular story, but that was definitely like the springboard for The Wrenchies, and the character Hollis actually, though I used in some other stuff from way before that for an anthology for Chris Pitzer’s book Project: Superior and then a follow up Superior Showcase.  I just wrote a couple stories about this goofy kid and when I was plotting out the whole story of The Wrenchies, I got kind of wrapped up, because I wanted him in the story. I didn’t exactly know where but I kind of got wrapped up in him as a character, I’m really drawn to him. And so he became, I guess, kind of the heart of the story, kind of. The main character, to me, is Sherwood, but Hollis is kind of the hero of the story, so he kind of took on a bigger role as I was writing it and stuff.

Harper: I know The Wrenchies has been something you’ve been working on for a pretty long time. How has the idea changed from when you started on it until the point when it was finished?  Was it totally different by the time you reached completion or is it something that you had a pretty clear vision of when you started?

Farel:  When I was first writing it, I was working on a book, an older book that I did called Pop Gun War.  I was working on a sequel and this was about seven years ago.  When I moved to Portland, I met an agent and I was having trouble working on that story because I wasn’t really getting paid for it, it was just kind of something I wanted to do.  So when I met this agent, she suggested I pitch an original story to First Second and I had this “Photogalactica” thing and I was thinking about down the road, developing it into something else. I put together this pitch and the agent wanted me to come up with some art. I wrote three pages of plot and I did 15 or so different drawings. I feel like the plot, the bare bones nature of it, is pretty close to what ended up being the final book, definitely the ending is the same. I’ve added a lot of stuff over the years, filling it out.  But, it’s pretty much the same, like I knew those chapters were going to be divided in such a way and which characters were going to be prominent and which story was going to be told in what style. There were definitely a lot of things that changed, but the basic premise of the story was the same.

Harper: What was your process on the writing side, since this was something that you’re writing and drawing?  Were you always writing a script or were you creating any sort of thumbnails?

Farel:  Yeah, I was kind of doing thumbnails as I worked on it.  Maybe 30 pages at a time or something like that I would try to thumbnail.  Basically a chapter or half a chapter, I would go ahead and thumbnail a bunch of pages and then I switched up my process a little bit from chapter to chapter. I had some lulls when I wasn’t as productive as I would have liked to have been. Just problem solving mainly, like storytelling challenges and kind of making certain things line up with other things.  Kind of brought me to a standstill a couple of times.

Harper:  I can imagine with something this complicated…

Farel:  And plus too there was the not realizing when I started how ambitious that I was being.  It took me a lot longer than I thought it was going to take, so I was also having to work on other stuff in the between time to like pay rent and things like that. But, the last chunk of the book, I had a pretty good system down where I would just use a wall of my studio to have all the pages up that I had left to do and I would just thumbnail right on that, on the wall. I put up a big piece of paper anyway, I didn’t do it actually on the physical wall. I’d just try to wake up every day, work on a spread and try to finish the spread in a day and then check that off the little list on the wall so I had kind of a visual thing to look at.  I didn’t quite do one every day but I definitely picked up my pace there at the end which was kind of nice to prove to myself.  Like okay, I can do that, I can work a little fast if I really, really need to!  But most of the time, I was taking my time with it.

Harper:  I can just kind of imagine this like giant thing on the wall with yarn, strings and different colors and all these timelines connected like a – you know, some crazy thing….

Farel:  Oh yeah, it did look a little serial killer-ish.

Harper:  Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

Farel:  I kept adding notes – that was a thing too, the last chapter,  that was kind of the hardest to sort of figure out, was to make everything kind of sync up because all the years that I was working on it, I kept like adding and getting ideas for things.  “Oh, I want to do this and this” and “this will develop the Sherwood character more” and “I’ll put this in”. I had to edit a bunch of stuff out just to get it done because it would have been like twice the size as it is now if I just kept going.

Harper:  How much fun did you have drawing the cross-sections of the secret headquarters?  Those are definitely some of my favorite pages in the book.

Farel:  Oh yeah, that was a blast.  I love doing stuff like that.  It would be fun to do more –sadly, it doesn’t lend itself I guess to the best storytelling, you know? It’s a fun visual thing.

Harper:  Yeah, that’s for the companion book with all the maps to the hideouts.  So of all the characters in The Wrenchies, which character do you feel like you kind of most identify with or maybe when you were a kid, which one of these characters would you have identified with?

Farel:  Well, I guess that’s why I like that Hollis guy so much.  I remember hearing someone talk about that character, they sounded like irritated by him and I didn’t take it personally or anything but it was just kind of funny to me that this person had almost like a negative emotional response to him ’cause I love him.  I know he’s kind of supposed to be dorky or nerdy or whatever, you know, like I guess kind of sweetly pathetic or something.  There’s just, I guess, a lot of me in there, from when I was that age or around that age or I guess even now, sometimes. I’d say him probably the most.  But there’s also Sherwood, there’s a lot of autobiographical elements in that character, kind of obvious ones. Not obviously the fantastic stuff, but my anxieties and neurosis and all that was kind of cathartic for me working on him.  It was kind of like including myself as a character in the book.  From a more relatable level though, its Hollis for sure.

Harper:  Yeah, that makes sense.  And you use Sherwood to literally slay your demons, right?

Farel:  Yeah, exactly.

Harper:  What drew you to putting the plot together in such a kind of non-linear fashion?  Was there an inspiration or an influence that kind of led to that format for the book?

Farel:  I can’t really think of anything book wise to compare it to. I tend to think a lot of movies do that and can kind of get away with it.  I don’t know why that is, but Pulp Fiction and Fight Club and stuff like that,  I feel like that’s more common in that medium.  To me, writing this book, it didn’t seem like it was a big deal to me to do that.  I wasn’t necessarily trying to make a comic book that’s going to be a movie–I was kind of trying to do the opposite–it was just the most easy way to organize everything for me. The Wrenchies is like five different like comic books that are all telling the same story.  It’s akin to the old Fantastic Four, even within the issue they would have different chapters and stuff and I just really like that sort of thing. Pop Gun War was kind of similar too, though I did release that in issues first. I guess with The Wrenchies, it was more – I could make each chapter as many or as little pages as I wanted to, so I just tried to kind of keep them all sort of similar in length wise.  I felt like the quest chapter I could have made three times as long as it was, but I also started working on a web comic at the same time. I had to decide if I would incorporate some of this admittedly fun material here or there. I decided to hold some of it back for this webcomic.

Harper:  Was there ever a thought to do The Wrenchies in single issue serialized form or was it always an idea as a graphic novel?

Farel:  I thought about it, but I guess I wasn’t on my mind when I first met the agent and went to First Second with the pitch.  It was after I actually started working on it and was like, “Oh man, this would be so much easier if I could just do it issue by issue” –particularly in getting feedback from people after they see it in print. I had never really worked on anything like that long in isolation before, but First Second doesn’t really do that kind of single issue thing typically beyond the promotional Battling Boy comic. They’re all just graphic novels. That was kind of the deal going into it, so it was too late at that point to serialize it.  I thought about doing it online or something, but I was so focused on just trying to get the thing done that I was just, “Okay, I’ve just got to like keep my head down and power through this”.

Harper:  So I saw the other day the Remainder short story that’s on Tor.com. How did that come about?  Where did that come in the process?

Farel:  That was Gina Gagliano at First Second, she’s their publicist and I’ve been working with her a lot, going over some different promotional ideas and things like that. Because First Second is owned by McMillan ultimately, and they’re also owned by Tor, I think they have like a good relationship and she suggested it to me.  She was like, “Hey, do you want to do a 10 page story on Tor.com that’ll come out around the same time the book’s coming out, this promotional thing?”  It sounded like a good idea to me, so I just started working out ideas in my sketchbook. I did all The Wrenchies pages on bristle board or watercolor paper, but “Remainder” I just started drawing in my sketchbook. I kind of did a little bit of a different process, where there was a mix of some Photoshop in there, which in The Wrenchies there’s hardly any Photoshop at all.  It’s mostly just scanned straight in with some cleanup around the edges. The actual art is like pretty much what you see is what you get with the pages: the original pages. The “Remainder” story I kind of did a little more piecemeal where I would do a spread and then kind of try to clean up the seam, hopefully it looks pretty seamless. I guess people that have a little savvier of an eye can spot the differences in the art style, I guess.

Harper:  It was just neat to see, for one, more of Bug Gun Guy, which is also the greatest character name of all time, I have to say.

Farel:  Yeah, that just came out of Hollis, I wrote a scene in The Wrenchies where Hollis referred to him as that. So, while I was writing this story, I just started calling him that and it was like okay, that’s just going to be his name.  But all that stuff in there is like the title of that, “Remainder”, and those two characters that feature kind of more prominently in that story are characters that kind of disappear in the book, so it’s like a little follow up to them.  I guess that – that part was kind of fun, you know, like getting to do a little like “Hey, what happened to these guys” kind of thing.

Harper:  Do you plan on doing any other kind of stories within The Wrenchies universe or anything else like “Remainder”?

Farel:  Oh yeah.  All the stuff that I write, the comics that I do myself, are all in the same universe and I can do whatever I want with them. I have some like crossover characters between like the Pop Gun War stuff that I do, like Hollis is going to be in the next Pop Gun War story.

Harper:  Awesome.

Farel:  And yeah, the web comic that I mentioned earlier, I just think of that as being in the same post-apocalyptic whatever fantasy world that The Wrenchies live in. There might be some crossover going on in there in the future, I don’t know.  I want to do a Wrenchies sequel, just like a straight up part two. Particularly to follow more of Sherwood’s life on board this space station that I talk about in The Wrenchies.  As I was working on it, I was kind of throwing things in a file for the next book, which I haven’t really started even really thinking too much about how I’m going to organize it all.  But I definitely want to do a Wrenchies follow up and possibly like a third one too.

Harper:  I’ll be watching for the expanding “Farel-verse”, I guess, right?

Farel:  I like that.

Harper: I wanted to briefly talk about the title that led me to find your work, which is Prophet. You did a lot of work on that in the very beginning of when they relaunched it. How did you find yourself on that project?

Farel:  Well, that was pretty much through Brandon Graham who’s an amazing cartoonist in his own right, with King City and Multiple Warheads. I don’t even know exactly how it came about but, Rob Liefeld was relaunching his line from the 90s and I don’t know if he suggested doing it or Eric Stephenson asked him to do it personally, I’m not sure. Somehow, down the road, he told me he was writing this science fiction comic: “It’s Conan in space.” I never really read the old Prophet but I loved that description.  I said: “Oh, I love Conan and Conan in space, that sounds amazing!  I want to do that!”  That was really fun to do and I kind of couldn’t really afford to do it because I was supposed to be working on The Wrenchies, but it was such a cool opportunity getting to work with Brandon who’s one of my favorite cartoonists. I guess the weird factor of that book too, I don’t really see a lot of American comics that look anything like that or seem anything like that, so it just seemed like just kind of an amazing opportunity that I couldn’t turn down.  I only did two issues really, so that should have just been a quick thing for me, but I spent way too long on that, especially that second issue I spent way too long working on.  But, I’m glad I did it and yeah, it’s awesome getting to work with all those guys on that series and hang out with them too.  I did a little on some of the later issues, a couple pages here and there and some covers. I would have loved to have drawn more of that because that is a really cool series. It’s one of my favorites.

Harper:  With Earth War coming up, are you going to be involved in that at all?

Farel:  No, I’ve got too much stuff on my plate.  I’d love too. I think Simon (Roy) is writing that too, right?

Harper: Yeah, they’ve started heavily co-writing.

Farel:  Yeah, that would have been really cool.  I think they kind of have their whole like art team locked in. And…they’re doing that Strike File stuff which I wanted to do some stuff for that too, but I just…

Harper:  Oh, the Farel-verse calls!

Farel: Yeah, I know, that’s what I’m saying.  I’m 42 now, I’ve got to get on the Farel-verse train.

Harper:  The material that you’re working on now, what can your fans look forward to coming out in the next couple months or years?

Farel:  Well, the two things, I just did like three pages for a Captain Victory kind of reboot thing.  I think Dynamite is putting it out, so I’m just finishing that up. I’m also working on a science fiction love story with a writer, Chris Stevens, that’s going to be in Dark Horse Presents once I get enough pages done on it.  I only have eight done at the moment but that’s going to be around 90 pages or something like that when it’s finished. I’m also working on that Pop Gun War sequel again.  I started working on that again.

Harper:  Do you know which issue of Dark Hose Presents that story’s going to start in?

Farel:  I don’t know actually.  I was supposed to have enough stuff done to have it be in the first issue but that was months and months ago.  But, with all The Wrenchies promotional stuff, I haven’t had time to work on it.  At this point there’s not really a date set.  I think it’s just once I get enough pages to where it’s a safe bet that I won’t make the book late or anything, I think they’re going to start scheduling it.  I’m kind of driving the writer a little crazy I think with how slow I’m being on it.

Harper:  Where can your fans find more of your work and find all your stuff online and follow you on all the social media and all that good stuff?

Farel:  Well, I have a website, it’s just FarelDalrymple.com.  Or that’s also PopGunWar.com. I have links there to Facebook and all that stuff.  My web comic which I have been taking a break from the past couple months, but I’m going to get back on it is called It Will All Hurt and it’s on the Study Group Comics website which has a bunch of other web comics by a bunch of brilliant cartoonists.

By Kyle Pinion

Gene Luen Yang is the writer/artist of critically acclaimed graphic novels like American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints, as well as the writer of Level Up, The Eternal Smile, and adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yang’s work has been awarded with multiple Eisners including “Best New Graphic Album” for American Born Chinese (which was also the first ever graphic novel finalist for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature) and for “Best Short Story” for The Eternal Smile. This year, Yang was nominated for another Eisner, this time under “Best Publication for Teens (aged 13-17)” for the historical epic Boxers & Saints.

Additionally, 2014 saw the debut of his latest graphic novel, The Shadow Hero, a collaboration with artist Sonny Liew on a resurrection of the sadly forgotten Golden Age super-hero: The Green Turtle; a character who comics fans consider the first Asian American superhero.

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time with Yang to discuss the origins of this new work, his collaborative process with Liew, as well as delving into some of the intricacies of Boxers & Saints and some of the connective tissue between his two most recent projects.

You’ve spent your career working on affairs of an educational nature, or towards a young adult audience, what was the impetus to delve into Superhero comics now?

I love superheroes. I grew up reading superhero comics, and starting collecting superhero comics in the fifth grade. I was a Marvel guy all the way through my childhood. I’m not totally sure why it took me so long to get to superheroes. There were a couple of opportunities that showed up maybe a few years ago, but the timing was just never right. This felt like a door opening. All of this pent up superhero energy that I had as a kid was finally released.

These other opportunities, were they mainstream superheroes?

Yeah, there were a couple of mainstream superhero opportunities where the timing was just never right, and in some ways, the Dark Horse book that I do: Avatar: The Last Airbender is about super powered young people, so there’s a lot of overlap between Avatar and traditional superheroes. But as for The Shadow Hero, this is really solidly in the genre and something that I just really wanted to do for a long time. I’m not totally sure why it took so long.

When did you first discover the work of Chu Hing?

It was online. Like how most of discover a lot of stuff on the internet and several years ago a good friend of mine, Derek Kirk Kim pointed me to this blog post on a site called “Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine”. It was a feature about this obscure character from the 1940’s called “The Green Turtle”. The Green Turtle was created by Chu Hing and the rumor was that Chu wanted him to be a Chinese American superhero but his publishers wouldn’t let him do it. So, he draws this comic in this really funky looking way, where he’s constantly hiding his face from us. The rumor was he did this so that he and his audience could imagine The Green Turtle as a Chinese American. When I read that blog post, I was just fascinated. I was fascinated by the character himself, and I thought his character design was so “Golden Age” with his bare chest and the cape and everything. There’s something endearingly goofy about it. And the rumor surrounding his creation I found fascinating as well.

What were some of the challenges you found in crafting an origin story for a character that had none, as I think Chu Hing crafted only a few stories at most?

Yeah, he did five, but they were only 8 pages long each. And each issue, he has this sidekick named “Burma Boy” and every time Burma Boy asks the Green Turtle for his origin story something interrupts him. So yet, there’s another thing that’s being hidden from you. It felt like it was very rich, the original material that is. There are all these weird little pieces that I wanted to try and puzzle together. There’s this other bit, he has this turtle shaped shadow that follows him around. In the original comic, there’s no explanation given for this thing at all, it was almost like a design artifact. I thought there was something there that I wanted to explore.

What were some of the influences that helped form this tale? You mentioned that you were a superhero fan growing up…

I think a lifetime of reading superhero comics was really the influence and in The Shadow Hero we wanted to play with a lot of the tropes and a lot of the conventions of the genre but aiming to present them in a new way.

Hank’s (the Green Turtle) family was one of the highlights of the book for me, and they were so well fleshed-out. I know you sometimes pull from your own life experiences, for example in American Born Chinese. Is that the case with Hank’s supporting cast?

Yeah, absolutely, I don’t know how to write outside of my own life. Even if the story is very fantastical or set in a fantasy world, I still feel like the origin of it has to start from my own life. For Hank’s family, his mom is this very opinionated person who comes from a really good place. But she has all these ideas about how he should live his life. She’s actually based on these women that I knew in a church that I grew up in, these Chinese and Chinese American women. Who were all very well intentioned, but had very strong opinions about your life.

Were they equally as hilarious as Hank’s mother?

As a kid, I found them simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. (laughter)

Where did Sonny Liew come into the picture?

Sonny and I had collaborated together. We did a short story for an anthology called Secret Identities. It was a collection of stories about Asian American superheroes by Asian American creators and I enjoyed that process of working with him so much that I wanted to do it again here. After I started writing the outline for The Shadow Hero, after I started talking to First Second about it, they asked who I wanted to collaborate with. Sonny was at the top of my list. I just thought he had the perfect combination of the comedic and dramatic, and I thought he would be perfect for the story.

Was there ever any consideration for you taking on art duties yourself?

I thought about it for like two seconds, but I just don’t think I could pull of what Sonny can pull off. He’s amazing!

Between the two roles, when you are the writer/artist on a piece of work vs. when you’re writing the story with someone else taking on the other half of the duties, does it differ your approach at all? Was it a matter of giving up some control so Sonny could craft his own vision of your words?

Absolutely, when you work with someone else, you expect the final voice that comes out to be a mixture of the two people that are working together. And then, for something like Boxers & Saints, where I did all of the writing and the drawing, I had a really personal vision that I wanted to throw out. I did work with someone on that as well, as even Boxers & Saints was a collaboration with a colorist named Lark Pien, who is amazingly talented. The Shadow Hero, we’re hoping, is more of an expression of our friendship, of something that’s between the two of us.

Do you have an approach that you prefer?

No, I think it depends on the story. Like with The Shadow Hero, I just don’t think I could have pulled that off on my own. I really think having both Sonny and I together was the right way to go?

Do you work from a script when you collaborate with another artist like Sonny?

I gave it to him as thumb-nails, but the thumb-nail sketches that I sent to him were pretty basic. Everything was laid out on a six-panel grid and he was the one that sort of innovated on top of that.

Will there be more of The Shadow Hero in the future? A possible sequel?

I’m not sure yet, I hope so. I really love working in that world and that character, but a lot of that depends on Sonny and his schedule. He has a lot of deadlines that he’s trying to make right now. It also depends on how this first book does and what First Second thinks.

Sonny teased me on Twitter about it and got my hopes up for a Part Two or an on-going series of some kind.

I would love to keep working with him.

Just to circle to the other half of the reason you’re here is because of your Eisner Nomination for Boxers & Saints, which I’m a massive fan of as well, and from a personal side of things it was an area of history I didn’t know much about…

Well, thank you, I didn’t know much about the Boxer Rebellion either when I started that project. I vaguely remember hearing about it from high school history. The reason I got interested is, I grew up in a Chinese Catholic community and in the year 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized a group of Chinese Catholic Saints. It was the very first time that Chinese citizens had become canonized, which my home church kind of freaked out about. When I then looked into the lives of these Saints, I discovered that a lot of them had been martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. They were specifically martyred because they were Easterners that had embraced Western faith. I felt like that whole incident kind of embodied this clash of Eastern/Western thinking that I personally have struggled with as an Asian American, for someone that has a foot in each culture.

It’s also a beautifully even-handed approach though between both sides. You display the heroism of those “Boxers” in the Boxers book, but in the Saints volume you see the aftermath of their actions and the people they are slaughtering. Was it your aim to display both sides in this fashion?

That came out of my own ambivalence. When I was reading about the history of it, I was so ambivalent, I was trying to find a hero and I couldn’t figure out who that hero was or what side that hero was on. That ultimately caused me to decide that I had to do two books.

The second book, Saints, is a little more monochromatic looking in its coloring, was that all Lark or a decision you made together?

That was a decision we made together. I really wanted the first book to feel almost like a comics version of a Chinese War Epic. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one, but they’re always really long, really colorful and really sad at the end. That’s how I wanted that first book to be. The second book I wanted to be much more personal. I wanted it to be humble in every sense of the word; smaller, lessened scope than the first book, and I really wanted it to feel like an American Independent Comic. I feel like a lot of that type of comic has a limited use of color that establishes a sense of intimacy between the reader and the creator, that’s what we were going for.

The books also take a similar approach to faith and religion, I was particularly struck by the panel of Jesus Christ with the eyes on his hands, which hearkens back to the fable that was brought up in the Boxers book. How much of your own religious belief was brought into this work?

Faith is an important part of my life, its one of the major pieces on which I build my own identity. When I was in college, I really struggled with this, with how to write about faith in an authentic way. Anytime I would try to do it, it would come out really stale and preachy. I had a writing professor who was a Buddhist, she basically gave me the advice: “You should live your faith, and you should write your life”, and that’s what I’ve tried to do ever since. For the piece that you’re referring to, that was inspired by an actual piece of artwork I saw at an Asian art museum years and years ago. Guanyin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy was surrounded by this halo of hands with eyes in the palm. When I saw that I thought that looked so much like a crucified hand, that looks so much like the imagery I was surrounded with in a Western church. I wanted to explore that connection. That image with a hand with some kind of hole or an eye, it’s independent of faith. It’s found in all sorts of world faith traditions and it’s a very interesting thing.

As a sort of common denominator between the two works (Boxers & Saints and The Shadow Hero), you delve into magical realism a bit. When I read the first chapter of The Shadow Hero, I found some point of comparison between yourself and Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar stories.

Oh, I love Gilbert Hernandez, love him!

Me too! Is the choice to aim towards magical realism in these tales a conscious choice or is it a natural off-spring from what might start off as a more grounded idea?

It has to come out naturally. I think it comes about growing up having read superhero comics and being really big into fables and stories that I inherited from my parents. I think it just kind of comes out and it feels natural to me to aim for Magical Realism in the comics.

Are there other influences that you draw from other than Los Bros Hernandez?

I could give you a list of cartoonists as long as my arm: Osamu Tezuka, Jeff Smith, and a bunch of my own friends like Jason Sheehan, they all have influenced me in some way. Scott McCloud is a big influence too. As for stuff outside of comics, for that project in particular (Boxers & Saints), I kept thinking back to this novel by a Japanese Catholic Author named Shusaku Endo who wrote a novel called Silence. He deals with a lot of these same issues, including tension between East and West, what faith is, and what role it should play in an individual’s life and society. It’s a beautiful book.

Since we brought up the Gilbert Hernandez comparison, their work is often praised for its look into Latin American culture, and a lot of your work is focused on the Asian American experience be it the immigrant’s tale seen in The Shadow Hero, the historical background of Boxers & Saints, and the personal nature of American Born Chinese. Do you feel a sense of responsibility as a sort of vanguard of Chinese American focused writing in comics?

I think with all my books, I just really want to tell a story that will carry my reader from the first page to the last. And the way I know how to do that is to sort of write the things that are important to me. Culture and the intersection between culture is something that has always fascinated me and I think that’s where its always come out.

You’ve had a long relationship with First Second, why that particular publisher?

They’re amazing, you know we talk about this intersection between cultures, I really feel like First Second is like that in so many different ways. But one way is that they’ve published Asian comics, European comics and American comics. Their aesthetic is sort of a combination of all three of those different cultures. I feel like I fit here.

Any future projects you’re working on beyond The Shadow Hero?

I’m working on a middle grade comic book, it’s a series, and we’ve signed on for three books so far. I’m doing it with another cartoonist named Mike Holmes and it’s all about coding and programming.

That’s a whole area of your background we didn’t even get a chance to talk about, your Computer Science background. I hope that’ll be something we can circle back to next year!

That’ll be great!

I've found that the best of these books spoke to my kids when they were pre-readers, but still continue to draw them back again and again, as they uncover more in the multilayered stories. So without further ado, here are the Fitzgerald family's Top 5 Wordless Books.

COMICS! remember that? First Second has announced its Winter ’15 slate, which includes not only the LONG AWAITED new book by Scott McCloud, but new books by Jay Hosler, James Sturm, Andi Watson and the English language debut of Bastian Vives’ very popular (on the continent) Last Man series. And the next volume in George O’Conner’s Olympians series.

Hosler, in articular, is a scientist/cartoonist whose Clan Apis of years ago was one of the first modern “practical” comics, and his work crosses over between education and entertainment without slighting either. Andi Watson is also a very prolific and charming cartoonist whose work we haven’t seen from a major publisher in a while.

Here’s some capsule loglines and covers:

The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud – we can’t wait to share this wonderful graphic novel full of magical realism with you!  We recommend you check out what the New York Times had to say about it.  Or USA Today.

The Last of the Sandwalkers, by Jay Hosler – this world full of beetles is about to discover that other new, dangerous, and exciting life forms exist.

Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula, by Andi Watson – when Princess Decomposia begins to run the underworld, she’s going to need some help . . . and who better than a vampire chef?

Sleepless Knight, by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost – the first Adventures in Cartooning picture book comic is adorable, and full of knights and marshmallows and adventure!

Ares: Bringer of War, by George O’Connor – it’s the Trojan War, from the perspective of the pantheon of Greek gods instead of the mortals.

The Stranger, by Bastien Vivès, Michaël Sanlaville, and Balak – the first volume of the Last Man series, these books are filled with magical-medieval combat possibly in another dimension.

Reminder: Other :01 Upcoming 2014 Titles

(there’s still some of this year left to publish books in, it turns out)

The Shadow Hero, by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew; How the World Was, by Emmanuel Guibert; The Zoo Box, by Ariel Cohn and Aron Steinke; Julia’s House for Lost Creatures, by Ben Hatke; The Wrenchies, by Farel Dalrymple; Above the Dreamless Dead: World War I in Poetry and Comics; The Rise of Aurora West, by Paul Pope, JT Petty, and David Rubin; Olympians Boxed Set, by George O’Connor; In Real Life, by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang.

Every year seems to bring an eagerly awaited, long brewing graphic novel by an industry master — and in 2015 that book looks to be Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor, which has been in the works for years and years. It’s currently slated to be released in February, and USA Today has the first look at the cover as well as some chat from McCloud on the subject matter:

Arriving in February, The Sculptor (First Second Books) stars a once-promising artist named David, who’s already washed up at 25. He makes a deal with Death to be remembered, and David’s given 200 days of being able to sculpt anything with his bare hands.

However, he then tumbles headlong into a romance forcing him to question what he wants from his life as well as his art.

“It’s big, loud and operatic at times, but also grounded in a lot of small, funny, human moments,” McCloud says. “Most of all, I just want it to be an engrossing read — a page-turner from beginning to end.”

I’ve been remiss in announcing localish events but there’s a good one tonight at Bergen Street Comics where Box Brown will read from Andre The Giant: Life and Legend. Deets:

Friday, May 16th 8:00PM
Comics Reading, Signing and Book Release with Box Brown!

This Friday will see Box Brown–one of our favorite alternative cartoonists–rocking his major label debut,Andre The Giant: Life and Legend. A surprisingly moving biography about one of the world’s most beloved wrestling icons? We couldn’t be more excited to host this event! Box will be in the house to talk about the book, and you’re welcome to bring wrestling questions–he’s the guy who will have the answers. The presentation part of the event will begin roughly around 8:30, and afterwards Box will sign copies of the book while regaling you with what it’s like to make books for First Second. The first people to grab a copy are welcome to the extra posters–just make sure you ask nicely! (And yes: there will be drinks!)

Standing at seven and a half feet tall, pro-wrestler Andre The Giant more than earned his title over a three-decade career which saw him wrestle in America and Japan and memorably then turn his attention to the silver screen. And this month sees the first substantive biography of André René Roussimoff published by First Second. Written and pencilled by Box Brown, ‘Andre the Giant: Life and Legend’ is a sweeping look at the life of a man who towered over wrestling for years.

The book explores the aspects of his life which fans were never able to see – when he wrestled, it was during a time where all wrestlers were bound to keep the secret of wrestling from their fanbase. Wrestling was meant to be real, not a staged entertainment, and all the wrestlers had to keep up appearances at all times. As a result, Brown’s book is an absolutely fascinating look at a secretive period for ‘sports entertainment’.

First Second offered me the chance to speak to Brown about what inspired him to start the project, as well as how he views Andre himself, the difficulties of researching a story which was deliberately hidden from the public, and how he approached the daunting task of chronicling a prolific and fascinating career.

Steve: What made you want to try your hand at a biographical comic? You’ve made autobiographical work before – but what interested you in tackling Andre the Giant’s story?

Box: I’m a life long wrestling fan and I think of Andre as the perfect window into this world.  But, like most of my projects it started with a mini-comic.  I had been reading about Andre and saw that he’d gotten a ride to school from Samuel Beckett.  I thought: “Hey that would make a cool mini-comic.” And things progressed from there.

Steve: I believe that the project springs from a series of short stories you told in The Atomic Elbow fanzine. When did you think that you’d like to take these short stories and put them into a longer-form work?

Box: Actually, the mini-comics existed before the Atomic Elbow piece.  I just really wanted to contribute to the Atomic Elbow.  I had made about 40 pages worth of mini-comics and just had endless material to work with.  It just kept growing and growing, like the man himself.

Steve: When writing this book, were you looking to tell as completely a true account as possible? Do you view this as a work of comics journalism, first and foremost?

Box: The truth in comics like this is extremely important to me.  It was extremely difficult in this particular case to find what the actual truth was because of the nature of Professional Wrestling and the circumstances of Andre’s life.  All of Andre’s stories sound far fetched.  Further most pro-wrestling stories, even those told as “truth” are suspect.   In this case, I used my best judgment in depicting the stories as truthfully as possible.  I definitely see the work as a piece of comics journalism.  It’s also informed a lot by my love of documentary film.

Steve: What kind of approach will you be taking with the narrative of the book? Are you looking to tell the chronological story of his career, or will this be more snapshots of various key or interesting moments from his life?

Box: Well, it’s a little of both.  I was working mostly with stories that were already out there and already existed in some form.   So, at times it might feel like a snapshot of Andre’s life.  But, it’s also chronological and contains a lot of stories that happened in his personal life.

Steve: Were there any stories you were unable to include in this book, in that case? Were there any moments which you considered including, but then cut?

Box: There were a handful of moments that were cut.  There was a story regarding how Andre used the bathroom in Japan, or I guess I should say, didn’t use the bathroom.  It was kind of too gross, even for me.  If you can imagine that a person couldn’t fit in a small bathroom; he’d have to, well, figure something out.

Steve: Andre was visually a dominating presence, and you highlight this in your work – he stands out of each panel, especially when he shares the page with other characters. How did you design him for this story? Did his personal physical appearance change the way you approached sequencing each page?

Box: I was mostly concerned with portraying Andre as almost indescribably large.  It wasn’t super concerned with keeping realistic scale as much as I was making sure Andre was always enormous.  Andre was almost unimaginably huge.  Christopher Guest talks about shaking his hand every day just to feel how small he felt in Andre’s huge mitt.  So portraying Andre as huge and almost uncomfortably large was important to me.  Later on in his life he was in a lot of pain and hunchd over and still growing.  So, portraying him that way was important to me as well.

Steve: What kind of a man do you think he was? Do you think the book highlights any particular aspects of his personality?

Box: When people describe Andre they describe his a kind man with a warm heart, which ultimately I  think is the case.  That being said there are definitely parts of this story that don’t portray him that way.  We’re all rounded individuals though.  As much as we try, we are not always kind or friendly.  We’re angry, we’re self-centered, we’re inconsiderate.  I wanted to portray Andre as an human being with all of our distinct intricacies.

Steve: How extensively did you research the project? Did you get in contact with people who knew him, hear first-hand accounts on him?

Box: I spoke to a few guys and reached out to everyone I could think of.  I heard a few first hand accounts.  Most notable conversation I had was with Blackjack Mulligan.  He told me a little more about his drunken fight with Andre via facebook, which was a fun conversation.  I spoke also with Bill Eadie (Ax of Demolition), who is now a special education teacher and a really sweet guy.  He gave me a lot of background on Andre’s character.

Steve: This hits on an interesting period of time for wrestling, in that the performers were still paid to keep ‘the secret’. Was it difficult to research his life, especially in terms of the backstage aspects of the wrestling business?

Box: Oh yeah, this was an extremely difficult issue to deal with.  The era of “kayfabe” really was most of pro-wrestling’s history.  It was only very very recently that they’ve been out of the closet.  Really a book like this couldn’t have existed 20 years ago.  Thankfully, in the last 15 years things have changed a lot (thank you internet).  Ex-wrestlers now are pretty open about their experiences and there are a wealth of what are known as “shoot interviews” (real truth not kayfabe).

I have the interest in watching these interviews anyway so I watched hours and hours of them to find if anyone had even mentioned Andre.  I watched a 13 hour Ric Flair interview and gained no information from it, but it was fun anyway.   So those were extremely helpful.  But even in the case of a shoot interview, wrestlers at times will still work the audience.  Some of the guys are still booking indie dates and still have something to gain from developing their character.

I think the fact that things are more open now have made wrestlers more wily in how the work people.  So the idea of truth in pro-wrestling is wishy-washy AT BEST.  I had to use my best judgment as to what was truthful.

Steve: Would you say that perhaps this earlier, more secreted period of time for wrestling is one of the things which drew you to telling this story, in particular?

Box: Oh yes definitely.  I think the true stories of the people involved in this subculture are infinitely more interesting than what’s going on, on television.  But, that part is obviously necessary.

Steve: Were you a fan of wrestling – are you currently a fan – before you started on this project?

Box: I would say I am a lifelong fan.  I had a long gap in the 2000s were I wasn’t paying attention at all to the current product, but working on this book has certainly drawn me back into the current storylines.

Steve: Did working on the story end up changing the way you feel about wrestling as an entertainment?

Box: I’m not sure it changed how I feel about it, but I definitely have a deeper understanding of what’s going on during a wrestling performance than I did before I started.  I thought I knew a lot about pro-wrestling before doing all this research and I realized I knew very little.  As studied as I am now, there’s still an infinite wealth of stuff to learn about the business.  I may never know it as well as a practitioner.  I think it gave me an even deeper appreciation for the people involved.

Steve: Now you’ve finished on this project, what do you have coming up in future? Would you consider future biographical works?

Box: I definitely have a lot of interest in non-fiction works and will continue to pursue making comics that allow me to learn things.  I’m also doing a new series of shorter fiction comics called Number with Retrofit Comics.  Issue 1 is currently available and issue 2 will be along later this year.  Obviously, I’m busy editing and publishing Retrofit Comics as well.

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Many thanks to Box Brown for his time! You can find more from him at his website www.boxbrown.com, as well as on Twitter. Thanks also to Gina Gagliano, for arranging the interview.

As Summer 2014 starts to break onto the horizon, one of the first big launches of the year sees Mariko and Jillian Tamaki working together for a new graphic novel, This One Summer, published this week through First Second.

A story of two girls, Rose and Windy, This One Summer is a tale of growing maturity, of dealing with the oncoming threat (or pride) of adulthood. It’s also a gorgeous, lush piece of work, with the creative team completely in-sync as they go about creating a memorable, surprising holiday experience for the two characters.

To find out more about the book – which I’m purposely not explaining to you in too much detail because I don’t want to spoil anything – I spoke to Mariko, who writes, and Jillian, who pencils; about the book what it’s like to work together, and how This One Summer came about.

Steve: What made you want to tell this specific story? What was it about the idea, or characters, which really struck you as something you wanted to explore?

Mariko: I’ve always wanted to do a summer story. Plus the cottage is such an interesting space. It’s not home, but you’re with your family. It’s your vacation spot but it’s someone else’s every day. The rules are totally different because you’re not at school. Even the landscape, you know? With the trees and the lake and the stars and everything. It’s a little magic.

Steve: This marks, I believe your first work published through First Second. How did they come to be involved with the project?

Jillian: I’ve actually been in informal contact with Mark since around 2004. Before First Second even had a name or before we had published Skim or I’d moved to New York. He had seen some of the illustrations that I had done for the New York Times Op-Ed––some of my first jobs ever after graduating art college––and thought my work seemed suited for comics. I was only making minis during that time.
During one of my trips to New York to visit my boyfriend (who was attending SVA), we met for lunch and had been in touch on-and-off since that time.

Steve: When you first start work on a new project, do you find that you start off focusing on the story, or focusing on characters, or both?

Mariko: For me it starts with character. I do a lot of writing (random stuff) to figure out who the characters are before I get started on a script. I write a lot of letters and just stream of conscious poems and whatnot to figure out what the characters think of each other, what they’re afraid of, stuff like that. I think it’s essential to understand who you’re writing. If you understand your character, you understand what they will do when your plot happens.

Steve: The story follows two girls, Rose and Windy, two childhood friends whose families go on holiday together every summer. It would be tempting to assume that elements of the story draw off some of your own experiences growing up…. would that be fair, though? Does the story draw on any elements of autobiography for either of you?

Mariko: I went to a cottage a lot like this one, but the characters in this book are very different than the people that populated my summers as a kid. I really tried to pull in a diversity of kids and adults and situations to tell this story, a lot of which were more inspired by people I’ve met as an adult than the people I knew when I was a kid. It’s a lot easier to observe kids as an adult than it was as a kid.

Jillian: I didn’t grow up going to the cottage. My family didn’t live near Mariko’s; we were on the other side of Canada where we don’t really have that type of thing. What I was more pulling from was the emotional landscape. We took a fact-finding/reference-gathering trip to Muskoka, the area depicted in the book, before we started and that was the most influential thing, because I wanted the book to be very sensory.

Steve: The two girls feel like fully-realized teenagers of the moment, and their dialogue feels contemporary and authentic. How do you get into the minds of the characters, and put words in their mouths? Can it be difficult sometimes to write younger characters?

Mariko: I do a lot of teaching in high schools and I check in (aka eavesdrop) on kids all the time. I think the thing is less to try and write/talk like a young person, and more to try and remember where that character is in his/her life. In a way the adults can be harder to write, especially in this case, because their words are so much more thought out and calculated.

Jillian: My job is to support the dialogue, and add depth to what is being said. There’s actually quite a bit of latitude there because obviously a word or sentence can have infinite meanings depending on the timing, body language, expression, etc. Thankfully, Mariko is not too precious about the words; I can skew them different ways and she’s cool with it. She is an excellent collaborator.

Steve: Tonally, how did you approach the story, both in the writing and pencilling? Despite the young lead characters, you address a number of more adult issues and concerns with a real streak of honesty.

Jillian: Well, thanks. That’s a real compliment and something we hope to achieve. Neither of us, for better or worse, approaches a story with a particular demographic in mind. Mariko has a knack for pinpointing social zeitgeists, I think.

There are three distinct groups of people in the story: the two little kids, the townie teens, and the adult parents. To return to your question, I didn’t try to worry so much about “will a kid get some of this adult stuff?” I think a reader will interpret the three groups differently depending on his or her age– hopefully it creates a textured experience.

Steve: This One Summer feels like an exploration on adulthood or coming of age – with one girl pushing away from adulthood and the other moving towards it, and both looking at their parents from new perspectives. Would you say that the nature of “adulthood” is perhaps one of the core themes and interests of this story?

Mariko: I think this book is about adulthood but from the perspective of kids. I’ve started describing the book as anthropological research of adulthood conducted by kids. Which makes sense, because adults have such a huge impact on kids. You’re basically at the mercy of the adults around you when you’re young. Also you’re fully aware you’re supposed to BE an adult at some point, which makes them worthy of study.

Jillian: Adolescence is the time when you stop taking everything at face value, including your own parents.

Steve: How do you plan out the structure of a long-form work like this? Do you work on specific scenes you want to hit at certain points in the story, and then work backwards and forwards from them, or do you write in a relatively chronological style?

Mariko: Typically I start with the characters and I have a sense of the main turning points going into it, then I just try to work it day by day.

Jillian: Mariko and I edited a lot during the sketch phase. Much more than Skim.

Steve: Jillian, I believe you’ve said in prior interviews that you chose to have your art reflect the style of vintage manga. What motivated that decision? What do you think the style brings to this story?

Jillian: No, the art style does not reflect manga. Just the purple-y tone of the ink, which seemed to be prevalent in manga from the 60s – but I chose it because I thought it’d feel warm and unusual (and cool). I don’t consider manga a huge influence on my work (but there is some Miyazaki in there). The drawing in This One Summer is pretty workhorse-y in that I can capture a degree of realism, which was important to the story, but it’s also fast. I would not want to do a 360 page book in a put-on style!

Steve: At what point do you start storyboarding or pencilling the story? Does it tend to happen as the story is being written – allowing for moments where you decide to space out a scene or beat, and so on – or do you finish the script and only then start pencilling?

Jillian: Mariko scripts, then I sketch the thing out, and we went back and forth a lot. The story changed a bit after the sketches. But I don’t add a ton more than what’s in there. The constraint is fun.

Steve: How do you both find the creative process with one another, in general? Do you think being family makes it easier to work together and compromise when you disagree – or can it actually, at times, make it harder to create?

Mariko: I’m not sure if we have a familial connection to these kinds of stories. We do seem to have a similar sensibility around character and story. Maybe it comes from having similar dads.

Jillian: Mariko is a great collaborator, like I said. Not sure it has anything to do with being family.

What else do you have coming up, following the release of This One Summer? Do you have any future plans to work together again?

Mariko: At the moment I’m editing my next YA book (fiction, not a comic) and prepping a few new projects.

Jillian: Probably a collection of my webcomic, SuperMutant Magic Academy. Another not-announced mini-project. My Adventure Time episodes will come out! Illustration stuff.

As for working together: maybe!

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Many thanks to Mariko and Jillian for their time. Thanks also to Gina Gagliano for arranging the interview. You can find Mariko on twitter here, and Jillian here. This One Summer was published yesterday, and should be available at bookstores and comic stores near you.

The Olympians is a series based on Greek mythology that is captivating, and, more importantly for mythology fans, historically accurate. O’Connor tackles each god in succession in his series, which starts with, of course, Zeus, Athena, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. The newest addition to O’Connor’s Olympians series is Aphrodite: Goddess of Love.

The NY Times has the first official look (aside from iPad sightings over the years) of Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor, his first sustained fiction in quite some time. First Second, the publisher, also sent along some into including the pub date, February 3, 2015.

The story concerns an sculptor in his 20s named David Smith who makes a deal with the devil, or Death in this case, to be able to sculpt anything with his hands. Unfortunately, Death gives David only 200 days to do something with this power, and there in lies a tale of romance and discovery.

“I’ve wanted to tell the story of The Sculptor since before writing Understanding Comics, and the book’s creation has turned into an incredible learning experience for me and, I hope, an exciting READING experience for comics-lovers. It took me five years to write and draw, and I promise I used every single minute to make it the best book I can,” said McCloud. in a statement.

I know Scott has been working very very hard on this books for years—and it’s also why he’s been in virtual internet silence for at least the last year. I wasn’t kidding about the iPad sightings either. And I know he worked very closely with First Second’s Mark Siegel, who wrote of the project “To work with Scott McCloud on any project of his choosing was a long held hope of mine. But to join him as he sheds the theorist and embraces ambitious, adult fiction—that’s a dream come true. Scott is one of the hardest working authors I know, and he has tasked himself with a very tall order on The Sculptor. The result soars beyond my shamelessly high expectations.”

Guess that’s the first book of 2015 to look forward to, eh.

The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza
By James Kochalka
First Second (an imprint of Roaring Brook)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-1626721036
Ages 7-11
On shelves now

James Kochalka has always had a penchant for the outright silly. If nothing else his Johnny Boo series of books have said as much. He’s not afraid to go for the obvious gag, but at the same time his sheer willingness to get ridiculous sort of becomes his strength. I picked up The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza uncertain if it would be honestly funny or just trying too hard, and you know what? There was more than one time I thought this book was actually, honestly really funny. It’s the kind of funny best appreciated by younger kids too. Your Captain Underpants / Junie B. Jones crowd. Humor is, admittedly, so completely subjective that adults have a hard time remembering what it’s like to be a kid and to find just the most ridiculous thing in a story freakin’ hilarious. But reading about The Glorkian Warrior I couldn’t help but feel like this was one book where Kochalka really put his finger down firmly on the pulse of kid-humor. Nothing against Johnny Boo or any of his other funny books over the years but with The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza I feel like the man has finally hit his stride. His funniest and most ambitious bit of space-based lunacy to date.

It’s a slow day for The Glorkian Warrior. No amazing adventures on the horizon. Nothing much going on. And though his Super Backpack is bugging him to go out and do something heroic, until the Emergency Space Phone rings our hero is out of ideas. Turns out the phone call is from someone ordering a pepperoni pizza and, not one to back down from a challenge, our Warrior sets off to complete this mission. Granted, the only pizza he has in his possession is the partially eaten peanut butter and clam concoction in his fridge. And granted, nothing seems to go according to plan. But between busting up his Supercar, blowing up a little bully (don’t worry, he’s not hurt), acquiring a baby space cat head sucker thing, and encountering a Magic Robot capable of mucking up time itself, it’s all in a day’s work for The Glorkian Warrior and his newfound pals.

I’m not one of those children’s librarians that claims to have the sense of humor of a 9-year-old kid. There are folks out there that can say this in perfect seriousness and though I do understand where they’re coming from, it’s not really my thing. After all, there are some works of children’s literature that just baffle me with their popularity. That said, I found myself grudgingly really liking what Kochalka was doing here. It’s no mean feat to create an honest-to-goodness quest novel that fills itself from tip to toe full of silliness. The tone in this book is also consistent throughout. It has a clear vision, even if the reader does not, and even manages at the last minute to pull a little surprise coup on the reader. So while it will not be to every adult’s taste, I have absolutely zippo problem with the kiddos picking it up. Heck, I’ll be recommending it to them myself. This is for the kid who wants something along the lines of Adventure Time but without the existential philosophy.

Not that there wasn’t at least one element that struck me as particularly fascinating. Put a little time travel into a book and you’ll find folks like myself examining it from every angle, no matter how silly it is, for inconsistencies. I’ll repeat that. I, a 35-year-old woman, read a children’s graphic novel called The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza and when I hit on the time travel aspect I looked for mistakes. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while. For me, the only possible problem I could come up with was the fact that if The Glorkian Warrior called himself to order the pizza, why did he call his own number thinking it was a pizza delivery place? So, yeah. Continuity-wise it’s a bit shaky, but honestly if that’s what you take away from the book you’re probably looking at it from the wrong angle anyway. Besides, I love the philosophical quandary of how The Glorkian Warrior learned about the existence of pepperoni pizza from himself rather than some outside source.

You can’t help but love a book where the Don Quixote of space is accompanied by a Sancho Panza-like talking backpack. And yes, it’ll get its own fair share of objections from various quarters. Not every parent will get it, but it’s awfully hard to find anything to object to here. It hasn’t the scatological warning signs of a Captain Underpants or the “bad” language / “bad” attitude of a Junie B. Jones. Instead it’s just a good-natured tale of a dumbo making a date with destiny. It’s not going to blow you away with its insights into the nature of humanity itself, nor would it want to. It’s just here to make kids laugh. And honestly, we could do with a couple more books along those lines these days.

Delivers.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Meanwhile by Jason Shiga – Not to give anything away, but Shiga does some pretty similar things with time travel in his book with similarly goofy results. The tone of the two books is also quite similar.

• Fangbone! Third Grade Barbarian by Michael Rex – I’m sort of seeking out the silliest/goofiest of graphic novels, all operating under their own internal logic, to pair with Kochalka’s latest. Fangbone is a much smarter character, but that doesn’t prevent him from running headlong into danger ala our pizza delivery boy here.

• Amazing Greek Myths of Wonders and Blunders by Michael Townsend – Matches this book in terms of goof-tastic humor.

• Astronaut Academy by Dave Roman – Because if we’re talking peculiar space-based graphic novels with their perfect little ridiculous worlds, you can’t do any better than this.

Other Blog Reviews:

• Panel Patter
• Good Comics for Kids
• Comics Alternative Podcast
• Graphic Novel Resources
• Sharon the Librarian
• Green Bean Teen Queen
• Mom Read It
• The Book Monsters
• Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Other Reviews: Boing Boing

Interviews:

• Kochalka talks with Comic Book Resources about making the book in the first place.

• And another over at The Huffington Post.

Misc:

• Read the first three chapters of the book here!

• Check out the alternate sketches for the cover of this book over here at Tor.com.  Then you can continue to read the book online here.

Videos:

Oh. And yes. It has its own app.  Makes absolutely perfect sense.  Sort of Centipede-ish (a statement that perfectly solidifies where in history my understanding of video games began and ended).

Out today from First Second is the latest project from writer/artist Danica Novgorodoff, whose previous works included Slow Storm and Late Freeze. A slight departure from her prior stories, The Undertaking of Lily Chen follows two young characters, Deshi Li and Lily Chen, as they head away from their separate families and out into the World.

A sweeping story which retains a keen focus on the two central characters, this is a book filled with ideas of tradition and family, independence and romance. Set in China, the book begins with Deshi, who leaves home when his older brother dies, tasked by his family to find a ‘ghost bride’ for his departed brother to head into the afterlife with. This is based on a long-standing Chinese tradition called a “ghost marriage” – and to find out more, I spoke to Danica about the story, the research that went into it, and her creative process as writer/artist.

Steve: What actually is a ghost marriage? What’s the history behind the tradition, and what is the ceremony itself?

Danica: A ghost marriage is when two dead people are married and then buried together, as partners for the afterlife. The concern is that a lonely ghost might haunt its family. A ghost marriage might also be performed for the normal reasons that arranged marriages are performed—to create bonds between families, or for dowries.

I believe the earliest recorded instance of a ghost marriage is the wedding of Cao Chong, the young son of a powerful warlord in 208AD, whom I mention in my book. Apparently the boy was a prodigy and his father’s favorite son, and so his father arranged for a lavish wedding when the boy fell ill and died at the age of 13.

Steve: How did you first become aware of the custom, and what was it about the concept which inspired you to this story?

Danica: I first learned about ghost marriages when I read an article about the custom in The Economist magazine. The article described a recent resurgence of ghost marriages in rural northern areas of China, where young men often die in mining accidents before they reach a marriageable age. Apparently, a black market for female corpses has emerged in order to provide brides for the weddings.

Two things immediately drew me to the concept as material for a graphic novel—first, I was immediately struck by the imagery of a windswept gravesite in the mountains, where one freshly-dug grave is marked by graverobbers with a white ribbon. Secondly, a man by the name of Song Tiantang was described as having turned from graverobbing to murder in order to sell women’s bodies, and he was caught when he dropped his cell phone in a grave he had dug up. The name Song is a homonym for the phrase “to send someone to heaven,” which I found poetic and terribly disturbing. This man was inspiration for one of the major characters in my book.

Steve: Many of your other books have been set in the US, and this feels like a change of direction for you as well as a change of location. Were you looking to write a different kind of story when the idea of Lily Chen first came to you?

Danica: I’m always looking for a change of pace, a different kind of story. I don’t like to do the same thing over and over—I think the practice of making comics can, at times, become a labor-intensive and even tedious artform to produce, and I always want to keep things fresh and exciting for myself, because I think it comes through in the finished material.

I wasn’t specifically looking for a new setting for my story, but I have always been interested in Chinese brush painting and Chinese customs (my dad was originally from Shanghai), so this project seemed like a good fit for me. It’s really a mash-up of Eastern and Western influences and sensibilities.

Steve: When you start a project like this, where do you tend to start? Do you find characters to serve a narrative, or a narrative which requires characters?

Danica: In this case the narrative and the characters developed simultaneously. Mr. Song, the grave robber, was the first character to come to me, along with the idea of a dead boy who needs a bride. The dead boy’s brother came to me next—a younger sibling who is sent on a mission to find that bride. He became the main character, and Mr. Song his friend and antagonist. The other main character, Lily Chen, came to me more slowly. She and the plot had to work together, and there was a lot of back and forth to make them fit.

Steve: There are two main characters here – Deshi Li, and Lily Chen. Did you develop them in tandem with one another?

Danica: No, Deshi was the more constant of the two. I knew that he would be a shunned younger brother, less-loved by his parents and a bit of a mess. I knew that he would be looking for a corpse bride, but would find instead a beautiful, living girl. But who she was, and what their relationship would be, took a long time to work out. I guess I had to go on quite a journey to find her, just as he did.

Steve: What do you think motivates each as the story first starts? What links them as characters, and what marks them apart?

Danica: They’re very different characters. Deshi is motivated by fear, and guilt, an overwhelming sense of duty to his family, and a longing for their respect and love. Lily is motivated by ambition, frustration at society’s limitations, and the desire to live a fuller life than the one she’s been offered in her backwater village. I think they’re both lonely—that’s a bit of a theme in my books. They both need a friend or ally. They’re both stuck with unreasonable expectations from family and society.

Steve: How do they bounce off one another? As they first meet, what is their relationship like?

Danica: Deshi is under a great burden, struggling to fulfil his promise to his parents. When they first meet, Lily asks—no, insists—that he take her with him on his journey, without understanding what his journey is. She just needs a ride out of town and he’s the only thing to pass through.

Neither understands the other’s quest, but after travelling together for a while, they get to know and like each other. Lily is outgoing and optimistic, whereas Deshi is taciturn and despairing. She helps open him up and come to terms with his suffering.

Steve: As writer/artist, how do you research a story like this? Do you take reference photos, read up on contemporary and traditional Chinese culture, that sort of thing?

Danica: Yes, all of those. I went to China for a month to do visual research for the project. I needed to find the right place to set the story. I watched a lot of films, and read folk tales and articles and academic papers related to my topic. I looked at a lot of ancient Chinese scroll paintings as well as contemporary comics.

Steve: Did you look to change your artistic style to reflect the Chinese setting? I know in prior interviews you’ve said that you explored the idea of using Chinese brush painting for the art?

Danica: Yes, I briefly studied Chinese brush painting. I wanted the backgrounds to recall that style of brush and ink. But I quickly learned that brush painting is incredibly difficult and takes decades to master. I settled for a style that “evokes” the Chinese landscape art, but is done on watercolor paper such that I could also do my own, more graphic style of figure drawing for the characters within each scene. It took a long time just to decide what materials to use to create the artwork—pen or brush, rice paper or watercolor paper, paint or ink.

Steve: This is one of the longest and most ambitious projects you’ve worked on to date. How did you plan out the narrative – do you tend to leave space to allow you to go on artistic tangents, or do you script a story tightly?

Danica: I tried to script the story tightly but it still changed a great deal as I worked on it over the course of several years. It takes so much time to draw a page that I hate to make major changes in the script once I’ve started drawing—it can be a big waste of time to end up throwing away pages of artwork because of a script change.

But I still had to look for ways to keep the process fresh for myself, so I ended up storyboarding (thumbnailing) each chapter right before I created the final art for that chapter, rather than storyboarding the entire book in advance. That’s why I had no idea that my 40-page script would turn into a 430-page book, until I got to the end and counted the pages.

Steve: Were you ever surprised at any point in the creative process by the directions the story went in?

Danica: I was surprised by the ending, because it changed many times, and was the last thing about the script to be finalized. It took me a long time to find the right ending. As I was writing, too, I was sometimes surprised by the people the main characters met along the way—different people would show up on their path and give Deshi and Lily the run-around. It was fun.

Steve: Ultimately, what do you feel is the core of the story? What would you like for people to take from it?

Danica: I think it’s a love story, at its core. Deshi and Lily find each other under strange circumstances and help each other escape from the impossible constraints that tradition and society have placed on them. Also, despite the macabre premise of the story and the dark mission that Deshi embarks upon, I hope people will enjoy and remember the humor in this book.

Steve: What else are you working on currently? Where can people find you online?

Danica: I’m working on many things—children’s books, a poetic-biographical-historical-illustrated book about volcanoes, an installation piece for a park in Brooklyn, and some ideas for a non-fiction graphic novel. My website is www.danicanovgorodoff.com. I’ve recently published my first illustrated poem in Orion Magazine and I did illustrations for this month’s book reviews for Slate Magazine. I’m a contributing editor on Killing the Buddha and I’m on twitter here, though I’m a little better at sending postcards.

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The Undertaking of Lily Chen is out as of today from First Second. Many thanks to Danica for her time – and also to Gina Gagliano, for arranging the interview for us!

First Second just sent out a reminder of its Winter books and here they are, all in one place for your perusal. Everything looks good but our personal favorite is the Doctorow/Wang book, Just because it deals with such a terrific subject: a young woman who becomes a gold farmer for an online game.

The Wrenchies, by Farel Dalrymple – In the post-apocalyptic world of the Wrenchies, you’re safe when you’re a kid – but when you grow up, the zombies will suck out your brains. This book is like The Maze Runner meets Battle Royale.

In Real Life, by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang – Cory Doctorow writes a graphic novel! With girls and gaming! And with amazing art by Jen Wang!

Above the Dreamless Dead – Poetry from soldiers in the trenches of WWI, adapted into comics form by twenty-three fantastic cartoonists for the war’s centennial.

Julia’s House for Lost Creatures, by Ben Hatke – A picture book comic for young readers by the ‘Zita the Spacegirl’ author. If you liked Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’ Blueberry Girl, you’ll love this book, too.

The Zoo Box, by Ariel Cohn and Aron

The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents Macbeth, by Ian Lendler and Zack Giallongo – Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy has never been so funny as when presented by the animals of Stratford Zoo.

Olympians Boxed Set , by George O’Connor. The first six New York Times Best-Selling Olympians graphic novels (Zeus through Aphrodite) now come in a lovely boxed set! With a poster! Best Christmas gift ever!

The Rise of Aurora West, by Paul Pope, JT Petty, and David Rubin – The companion to Battling Boy, but in this B&W manga-sized graphic novel, Aurora West takes center stage for some kick-ass girl science adventures.First Second just sent out a reminder of its Winter books and here they are, all in one place for your perusal. Everything looks good but our personal favorite is the Doctorow/Wang book, Just because it deals with such a terrific subject: a young woman who becomes a gold farmer for an online game.

With the final part of his ‘Zita the Spacegirl’ trilogy hitting stores in May, you might have been wondering what Ben Hatke’s next project would be. Well wonder no more! Because First Second have given The Beat a first look at his new story ‘Little Robot’, which’ll see publication in Autumn (Fal) 2015.

Edited by First Second’s senior editor Calista Brill, Little Robot is a story about friendship – an unusual one perhaps, but a strong one – which develops over one hazy Summer season. Also: turtle! There’s a turtle.

Hatke says of the project:

In 2012 I drew a little comic strip about a robot. It looked like this: http://zitaspacegirl.com/wp-content/uploads/robot1.jpg.  I had intended it to be a one-off, just a little expression of how I felt that day. But for some reason, I kept returning to that Little Robot and he kept on doing interesting things and developing a personality without a whole lot of conscious thought on my part. And now he’s found his way into a book of his own.

Little Robot is my first post-Zita graphic novel, and while it’s still got some of my hallmarks (robots and adventures!) it’s also a more intimate story about one friendship and one summer. And it’s extremely fun to draw.

For the last few years Hatke has been busy working on his Zita the Spacegirl series, which concludes this May with “The Return of Zita the Spacegirl”. Following that in October will be his first ever picture book, called “Julia’s House for Lost Creatures”. It’s going to be a busy few years for him! So if you want to find more – head over to his website at www.benhatke.com

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First Second released some news about their Winter 2013-14 titles, including paperback editions for Sailor Twain and Baby’s in Black, and some new books as well, including a new book by the very Talented Danica Novgorodoff, whom we haven’t heard from in a while. Here’s the line-up:

The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza, by James Kochalka.  Will intergalactic adventurer The Glorkian Warrior be able to successfully deliver a pizza?  Probably not!  Check out the cover reveal for this book over at tor.com! 

The Undertaking of Lily Chen, by Danica Novgorodoff.  The problem with Chinese ghost marriages: what do you do when the only bride you can find for your dead brother is still alive?  “It’s great!” says USA Today. 
Hidden, by Loic Dauvillier and Marc Lizano.  We guarantee tears when you read this story of a very young Jewish girl dealing with the Holocaust. 

 
Aphrodite, by George O’Connor.  The last two Olympians books have both been New York Times Best-Sellers.  Will Aphrodite live up to that high bar?  Also, we’re publishing this in time for Valentine’s Day. 
 

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Over at his blog, Sonny Liew’s been posting some lettered pages from his as yet untitled upcoming book with Gene Yang for First Second, and it looks pretty great, particularly that 50′s inspired pulpy cover. As a fan of Liew’s work, I’ve been keeping up with this project for a while, (although aware of Yang  -as the author of American Born Chinese and Level Up- I’ve yet to get round to reading any of his books), so I knew it was a retro superhero book, but that’ s about it. Here’s an exclusive, and intriguing, little synopsis from Liew:

‘It’s basically a origins story of a character created back in the 40s – his distinction being that he was meant to be Asian American. Gene has been exploring identity issues with his comics, of course, so this is another angle.

One of the interesting things about the comic was that the artist and creator (Chu Hing) has to go out of his way never to show his face in the comic – which apparently was due to his publishers or editors not wanting to reveal too  clearly that he was, in fact, Asian! We did try to incorporate those elements into the book.’

Chu Hing is credited for working on 29 issues in the 40′s and 50′s, 4 of which were on a title called Blazing Comics (the book Liew’s homaged in the cover above). These books featured the character Yang and Liew are reviving: Green Turtle- ‘the first Asian superhero’, a ‘mysterious individual who almost never let anyone see his face (the reader included). Armed only with his wits, combats skills, a remarkable light aircraft (the Turtle Plane,) and a mystic jade dagger, he and Burma Boy, a youngster he saved from the Japanese, flew across Asia battling the Imperial Japanese Army. While having no obvious powers granted by his jade dagger, he did seem to cast a shadow that had a bright pair of eyes and face.’ (via Comic Vine)

No projected release date for this yet, but another title to add to your list of ‘books to keep an eye on.’

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Relish by Lucy Knisley

First Second

A few years ago, if you were told about the rise of the Internet and asked to predict one of the top things that people would blog and post about, can you honestly say food would have been up there as a contender? And by food, I don’t mean cookery, recipes and dedicated food sites, but Facebook statuses, Tweets, Instagram photos, all that jazz. Out of all the little banalities of life, who would’ve thunk that narrating what we eat would be the common denominator of web sharing, and in such a wholly ubiquitous fashion.

Telling strangers on the net what you’re eating isn’t groundbreaking, constructive or thrilling to others in any way- by and large it reflects a personal enjoyment of consumption that has or is about to take place, made more understandable, I think, if you’re of the view that food is one of life’s true pleasures, and not of my sister’s mindset; she who see food as fuel and a necessity to survive, not caring  particularly about taste as long as it’s not detrimental to her health and fulfills her needs (yes, she really is my sister).

Lucy Knisley, it’s safe to say is, is firmly in the former camp. Knisley’s Relish, a book that follows her through various periods and moments in her life framing them in relation to her culinary experiences, has been one of the most anticipated releases of the year for many- not least myself. For Knisley, these ‘taste-memories’ are no tenuous associations: she has been immersed in food culture in some form or manner since she was born- her mother a chef, her father himself a cook and discerning consoeur, her uncle owner of a food-shop selling gourmet comestibles and homemade food-  and has generally been raised in an environment filled with ‘cooks and bakers, eaters and critics.’

Growing up, food remained a strong presence in different ways; working in cheese shops, farmer’s markets, growing and sourcing ingredients, getting involved in the business side of things. So Knisley’s relationship with food is much deeper than your average persons, and despite feeling a little different for being a cartoonist, it’s a theme that turns up  naturally and with happy regularity in her work. They marry well, do food and comics.

The book is divided into chapters, with each one recounting a specific food-related memory and a recipe for that food then given at chapter’s close. Both the experiences and foods are diverse in range, from a trip to Mexico where her friend Drew learns about the penalties for smuggling porn across the border, backpacking through Europe and discovering the world’s best croissants in Venice and feverishly attempting to recreate them to no avail, to navigating horrible lemonade chicken cooked by good friends.

As someone who salivated over Enid Blyton’s terse descriptions of hard-boiled eggs and cold ginger beer, Knisley’s recollections paired with her drawings are almost a sensory overload (her move to the country with its ripe, colourful fruits and freshly plucked produce left me feeling a little light-headed).  That said, what I particularly enjoyed here wasn’t what I expected. And that’s the way in which each memory, each anecdote genuinely tells you a little about the author and her life- it’s not just ‘hey, delicious food art!’, it’s much more thoughtful and reflective than the bright colours and subject matter belie. In between food chopped and dishes cooked, there are insights into her close relationship with her mother, attempts at bonding with her father over dinners, queasy coming of age experiences shared with friends who are still friends, the developing of a cook’s resilience and tenacity.

Having said that (paradoxically) -and this is my sole criticism of the book- there is a strange sense of remove and disconnect of Knisley as a character. The reader is reading about her without any strong emotional investment or relatability on her behalf. Relish arrived in the post the same day I got Christophe Blain’s In The Kitchen with Alain Passard; in that book, a charming and effusive Blain slings an arm around the readers shoulder and guides him around, managing to thoroughly absorb him, as a novice, into the life of a Michelin-starred chef. This may have something to do with the first person narration, planted in the present but talking about the past, making it difficult to get a sense of Knisley as a person today.

I’ve always been a big fan of Knisleys cartooning and it’s as accomplished and attractive as ever here, with line and expression on point. To my mind, she’s the only cartoonist who controls the art so deftly in terms of what it conveys emotionally, perfectly straddling the realms of cartoony while maintaining an aspect of brevity. Make no mistake, Relish is a great achievement, pulling off a truly tricky combination of genres and tones to produce a book that will not only make you want to get into the kitchen and fondling food at the farmer’s market, but one I am confident will be a highlight of the comics year.

Oh, and a top tip for when you’re reading this: surround yourself with tasty snacks because you will be needing them.

by Boaz Yakin illustrated by Joe Infurnari 2012 Some Greek guy runs from one place to another. And for this a race is named after him. Have you ever seen a movie storyboard? At its most basic, it's a collection of images with key dialog or actions described beneath the sketches to help communicate what the final film sequence should look like. It is a way for the director to communicate to

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Is no place safe from comics? Authors David Baldacci (Absolute Power) and Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) appeared on The Today Show to pick 10 holiday books and one of those Flynn picked was the graphic novel Sailor Twain by Mark Siegel. Flynn called it ”Steamboats, romance, and mythology, and a search for love universally – it’s really a haunting book.”

The Sailor Twain reference is at about 2:12 in the above video.

The Year of Graphic Novel Mainstream Promotion is definitely going out with a bang.

by Ben Hatke  First Second 2012  Out titular (and accidental) heroine returns for continuing adventures as her fame sucks her further and further from ever returning to Earth. Bad for her is good for readers...  A robot crawls out of its recalled packaging and imprints on the first being it sees: a poster of Zita advertising her tour of various planets as savior of Scriptorious. Finding a mop