How to use this Page

For the last several years, writer Amy Chu has been a familiar face at comic conventions around the World – just last year I bumped into her at Thought Bubble! Among other things a contributor to The Beat, Amy is perhaps best known for her self-published anthology comics ‘Girls Night Out’, which have so far been printed into three volumes. Each of these tells six stories or so, loosely themed around an idea, or phrase, and with a starry line-up of artistic collaborators.

And for volume three, ‘Girls Night Out: The Way Love Goes’, she’s successfully headed to Kickstarter! At the time of writing she is well ahead of her target, making this her second successful Kickstarter campaign for the series. A self-publisher, she works with a number of great creators on this latest volume – including Larry Hama, Trish Mulvihill, Janet Lee and Craig Yeung. I couldn’t let this Kickstarter pass without taking the opportunity to ask her about the latest edition of her series – and thankfully she found time after Emerald City Comic-Con to offer some answers! Hurray!

Steve: You’ve studied comics pretty extensively – I know you’re a graduate of Scott Snyder’s writing class, among others. How do you approach writing a story? What’s your focus, or goal?

Amy: I studied architecture in college so I think there are some good analogies between buildings and stories. When I have an idea I want to build into a story, I do tend to focus on structure first, especially for a short, then I work on the layers of the narrative, the obvious and then the subliminal.

I’m very focused on what the reader experiences as he or she moves through the story- and the emotion that they come away with after finishing it. I also figure if someone is spending the money, they should get at least a couple reads out of it.

Steve: There’s a lot of experimentation going on in terms of writing, in these six stories. One is told entirely in tweets, for example. How do you go from an idea to a script? At what point do you hit on an idea and decide that’s the one you want to write into a fully-formed story?

Amy: Like a lot of creators, I have many ideas that float in the ether, at various stages of completion. If I have an interesting idea, I usually start writing it out until I hit a snag. On rare occasions, I’ll actually vomit out a complete story in one setting, but usually it’s a lot of back and forth. But every story has a different backstory in its genesis.

For example, the tweet story “Big City” was actually an improv experiment with artist Sean Von Gorman at Carmine City Comics in front of an audience. We basically came up with the story as people came in and out of the store and Sean sketched it out.

Steve: You also move from genre to genre, and tell stories from a range of different perspectives and viewpoints. Was it always your intention to use the theme of love to play around in different genres and styles?

Amy: I like playing with different genres and styles, but needed something to tie the stories together. I did this with”Tales of New York” and I think it worked creatively for me, and for the readers.

Steve: A six-page story is one of the most difficult things to pull off in comics. Is it daunting to tell a complete story within such a relatively short space? Or do you prefer that feeling of compression?

Amy: I never really thought of it that way. Some stories are suited to shorts, and others to arcs. I try to go with what feels right. You don’t want to squeeze in something that doesn’t fit.

Steve: Do you find that you tend to focus in more on character or story – or do you feel you hit both equally?

Amy: Hmm… I think the character needs to be fully fleshed out for the story to work most of the time, but the story needs to have a structure to go somewhere. I guess I’d ask the reader if they feel I hit both or not.

Art by Larry Hama and Trish Mulvihill

Steve: There’s a whole range of impressive artists here – The Date has Larry Hama and Trish Mulvihill as the artistic team! How did you find collaborators to work with on the stories?

Amy: As a self publisher I can pick and choose who I want to work with, so long as they are interested in working with me.  But every situation is different, sometimes it’s “let’s do something together!” like with Janet Lee over drinks at the Marvel holiday party. Or with Louie Chin I walked by his table at MoCCA Fest and loved his stuff immediately. And with Trish I begged! I just couldn’t see anyone else doing the colors on Larry’s story.

Steve: Did you come to your collaborators with a completed script; or pitch a story to them and then write with their artistic style in mind?

Amy: It works both ways. If I don’t have a completed script that I think they would be interested in or matches their style, I’ll definitely write one for them.

Steve: This Kickstarter also brings a wholly new story to print as well – one written by Marta Tanrikulu and illustrated by Paulina Ganucheau. How did that story come about?

Amy: I have been thinking about including other writers in the Girls Night Out anthologies, and since the crowdfunding campaign started off strong, I figured this would be a good issue to add someone else’s story as a bonus. I had met Marta in the Comics Experience forums. She sent me the script for “Enduring Love” awhile back – the theme was right, but it needed an artist. When I saw Paulina Ganucheau’s work I thought it was a perfect matchup.

Art by Paulina Ganucheau

Steve: As mentioned at the start, this isn’t your first Kickstarter, as you also successfully crowdfunded the original comics which make up this collection. How has your experience been with crowdfunding?

Amy: I love it for various reasons, and not just the ability to fund the project. It really does help build a fanbase and a level of awareness about the stories I do. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but if you’re somewhat organized and have some decent project management capabilities you should do just fine.

Steve: Have you changed the way you approached running this second Kickstarter, having already gone through the whole experience before? What advice would you give for anyone looking to run their own campaign?

Amy: Yes, not in huge ways, more like fine tuning. I have a better sense this time of what people like and don’t like.  Set reasonable goals and develop your reward tiers carefully – do your research and look at other successful (and not successful) campaigns.  You’ll see many campaigns meet their goals because of original art and commissions and not the actual book! Also, treat your backers as stakeholders in your project, not just sources of cash.

Steve: Once this Kickstarter wraps up, are there any plans for future Girls Night Out stories? Is there anything you can tease us about?

Amy: As long as the stories aren’t played out and people want them, I’ll write them. I’m actually working on the lineup for the fourth volume – the working theme is “Lost and Found.”

Steve: What else do you have coming up? Where can people find you online?

Amy: End of this month I have a bunch of stuff coming out- a short in the Vertigo/DC Comics anthology “CMYK” that hits the stores April 30. I also have two stories – one with CP Wilson III, and the other with Brian Shearer in ComixTribe’s SCAMthology I think also out around the same time. I’m also working on something with Wendy Xu and Larry Hama that will be available this fall.

I’ve been asked to pitch on a bunch of different titles- there’s definitely stuff in the works but I don’t want to jinx anything by talking about it until it happens.  I try to post updates on my work on my site, I’m on twitter here and on Facebook here!

-

Many thanks to Amy for her time! To find out more about Girls Night Out: The Way Love Goes, you can find her Kickstarter here!

Tweet

On March 30^th, WonderCon attendees got treated to a bonus feature in a Spotlight panel with Ann Nocenti, Jim Lee acting as her interviewer. The two had so much shared history that they reminisced about the “good old days” at Marvel as well as plunging into the current artwork that most impresses them on their work for DC. The panel opened with a tone-setting description from Nocenti of her time as a Marvel writer and editor, “back in the day when Marvel Comics was so much fun”, when you could “smoke and drink and have guns in the office”. Lee confirmed that the gun in the office was an observable phenomenon, and Nocenti added by way of explanation that guns were needed for “reference”.

Lee started off by introducing Nocenti as the “self proclaimed female token writer at DC” and asked her how her current state came to be, considering that in her Marvel days there were several women on staff. Nocenti commented that though there were women at Marvel, she recalled that there were never any women at comic cons back then, unlike the demographic at WonderCon. “It must have been rough on you guys”, she teased Lee. Some of her workmates at Marvel, she explained, were Mark Gruenwald, “the soul of Marvel Comics”, Larry Hama, who was known for “pounding, crazy music” in his office, and Peter Sanderson, a “living archive” of all things Marvel.

Nocenti obviously had fond memories of the bullpen days at Marvel, stating, “The physical bullpen made the place creative”. She had a steep learning curve upon arriving at Marvel with a fine arts background, and had a lot to learn under her first editor Jim Shooter, someone who she described as “having a beautiful sense of story” and who ingrained in her the need for a “can’t/must” moment of conflict for a hero. The maxim still holds true for Nocenti, she confirmed. “He’s right”, Lee said, “Conflict is one of the key things in drama”. “Louise Simonson also had a huge influence on me”, Nocenti added, a woman who had the “power to cloud men’s minds” according to legend, by infusing even her most severe criticisms with a “cheerful attitude”.

Nocenti shared some of the lessons she learned from editing at Marvel with the audience, including the need for the editor present a fan’s perspective to the writer or artist: “A good editor has to understand that a writer is working so hard, and is so over worked, that they need ideas thrown at them from a fan’s perspective”. But from the editor’s perspective, she observed, it often leads to bizarre conversations and often caused her to ask herself “Did I just say that?” when generating “wacky” ideas with writers. Nocenti particularly enjoyed crossover development in the bullpen, and feels that she wasn’t alone in that enthusiasm, sharing “really exciting creative meetings” where “everyone would want to play at the same party”. Her advice to editors is to “learn everything”, like a “captain knows how to run a ship”, and she feels that this approach was encouraged at Marvel, but is less common today. This enables an editor to “know what everyone’s going through”.

Lee presented Nocenti with a copy of a comic they had once collaborated on together, though she confessed she didn’t recall the book, X-Men #39. After flipping through it and chatting together, Nocenti declared, “This looks like a great story. I want to buy this and read this!”, to the audience’s amusement. Lee’s questions, however, led Nocenti into darker recollections, about the “mini implosion” period at Marvel that led to her departure. Ron Perlman, she narrated, came into her office one day, wanting to meet her, and was fairly charming, but the “next thing we knew, he had gutted Marvel” financially. It was a “very traumatic” experience for “old timers”, she commented, and brought to her attention a famous quote from Dorothy Parker: “Don’t put all your eggs in one bastard”. After leaving Marvel, Nocenti worked in journalism, teaching, and filmmaking, gaining a wealth of experience that she now finds useful for life back in comics.

Writing a story about Catwoman in Arkham Asylum, for instance, she said, is drawn from a combination of her experiences working “at a place like Arkam” in her youth, and also from later editing Prison Life Magazine, which contained the work of prisoners. She observed a psychological feature that she’s incorporated into comics, the fact that it’s often “one small thing” that drives people crazy, not necessarily the bigger issues in life. Her experiences as a journalist and activist also led Nocenti to visit China, and some of her observations there led directly to her recent writing on GREEN ARROW, particularly noticing the pervasive “firewalls” on internet access in China and the sense of surveillance. Though she enjoyed working on GREEN ARROW, Nocenti explained that she “just couldn’t find her connection” to the character and was happy to move on to writing CATWOMAN, a character who she felt immediately in sync with. Her work on KATANA, too, keeps her imagination on its toes, drawing on the “idea of ancient clans, where the rich hire Samurais and ninjas are like spies”.

Lee and Nocenti spent the remainder of the panel showing and discussing process artwork and completed panels from upcoming CATWOMAN and KATANA stories, and enthusing over their finer features. The images included the set up for what Nocenti described as a “big gang war” for Catwoman and scenes in Arkham with “old torture devices”. Nocenti’s work on KATANA is based on her own obsession with martial arts and Kurasawa and martial arts films. “All comic book writers are doing really is unloading their personal obsessions on the page”, she confessed. This leads the writer to worry that readers might not find it interesting, she said, but in the case of Katana, Nocenti’s obsessions have translated to plenty of interest from fans. Nocenti regularly practises karate and judo around the house to see how Katana would move and act, and makes things even more “realistic” through watching martial arts films. It’s clear that her adaptable nature, shown throughout her varied career paths, is still going strong, and that her personal enthusiasm for her projects is still one of Nocenti’s most defining features.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.