And Then Canada Exploded

FRIENDS WITH BOYS goes ONLINE!!!! Please spread the word!

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:16:53 GMT

I have some pretty amazing news: My next graphic novel, Friends With Boys, due out from First Second Books in February 2012, will be going ONLINE from now until its publication date! How awesome is that?

Here is the information: The comic now has its own website (design by my talented friend Lissa Pattillo, you should hire her), and will be updating five times a week (every weekday) with a page of Faith comic goodness. I will be blogging along with (most of) the updates, giving you lovely readers the inside scoop of what my process was during the making of this graphic novel, so I hope you will comment and give me your thoughts on the comic. I am ABSOLUTELY THRILLED that First Second is letting me do this. There has been a lot of talk lately about the evolution of print, and what the future of comics will be, and I'm really happy that I'm getting the chance to reach out to possibly a wider audience through the internet.

I truly believe I would not be drawing comics if it wasn't for the internet. It's unlikely I would have developed the technical drawing skills without being encouraged by my online comic readers, and unlikely I would be in my current position as a full time freelance cartoonist (after all, the internet is where First Second found me, and my relationship with them allowed me to graduate to full time cartoonist).

There has been much discussion lately (and always!) about the role of the internet in people's ability to make a living wage through their art and whether or not work is being devalued by so much of it being free. While I agree there are people out there who will consume and would never give anything back to those whose work they enjoy, I believe there are enough people who value art and comics and the work artists put into their comics and who are willing to pay for something tangible in order that those artists can pay their rent. I believe that if Friends With Boys goes online (for free! in all of its entirety!) it will reach a wider audience, who I hope will enjoy it enough that when the book is published, they will buy it in support of me and my publisher. Not every online reader will buy the book, but I'm sure enough will.

When I first started reading comics, really reading comics, comics that I felt were made for me (a school-age girl), they were online comics. I didn't have a comic book store to go to, nor did I have friends who were into comics. I had no connection to the comic book industry. But I had a computer, and I could access the internet, and there were comics on the internet. These comics were made by a diverse group of cartoonists, and (at the time) most were done "for fun." Reading online comics gave me new perspective on comics, and showed me what was possible for the medium, beyond the superhero genre. Later, as my tastes evolved and I gained disposable income, I became a comic consumer. I do not think I would be the hearty purchaser of comics if it wasn't for the online comics I read while in school.

Not everyone is blessed with a good comic book store down the road from where they live. Not everyone has an awesome library system or a decent bookstore with more than Watchmen and Maus for sale. But pretty much everyone has the internet, and I believe Friends With Boys will reach a wider audience if it goes online before it's published. I hope. I really really hope so (this is the part where I get nervous, as there is a little more at stake here than when I decided to put Superhero Girl online)!

So please, help the comic reach that audience. Please pass the link on to your friends, please retweet it on twitter, like it on Facebook, do whatever it is you're supposed to do on Tumblr. I really wanted this comic to go online because I enjoy the internet, the immediacy of the interaction with readers, something that you don't necessarily have with print. I still meet people at conventions who ask if Demonology 101 will ever see print (you are adorable and I love you, but never), bug me about Ice being updated (sorry sorry sorry sorry) and say how much they enjoyed my Wolverine Goes Grocery Shopping comic. And then they buy books from me. It's pretty wonderful.

So please, readers, help me do this. Here's the link. Send it to whoever you know loves comics. I hope you enjoy it.

Animaritime

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:10:18 GMT

Oh my, it has been a while since my last blog, hasn't it? I kind of figured this would happen: work has descended on me in earnest, and I haven't had much motivation to post. My newspaper/webcomic The Adventures of Superhero Girl is still ongoing weekly, so by all means check that out. I should probably try and do some weekly sketchposts here or get a tumblr, because I have lots of unscanned artwork just sitting around ... and I feel like I should be showing it to people or something. But work is so ... there is so much of it and when I do have free time I want to use it to stare vacantly into spaaaaaace. Anyway.

But I did just have a very nice weekend in Moncton, New Brunswick as a guest at Animaritime, and wanted to write about it. It was my very first anime convention, although not my first time as a guest (the very first comic book convention I ever went to, back in 2007, I was a guest at as well), and I had a lot of fun. I hope they have me back next year.

One thing that was really nice about this small convention is the more laid back atmosphere (and the fact that I'd had my travel costs covered by the convention) meant I got to experience it a little more, actually attend a couple panels and do some shopping, rather than constantly be glued to my table trying to sell my stuff. I really enjoyed the 'State of the Manga Industry' (I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember what the panel was actually called) panel and Manga Licensing panel they had on Saturday, where I got to hear about the industry from Vertical Inc's Ed Chavez. I'm a recent reader of manga, and while I enjoy consuming it, I'm not familiar with the innerworkings of the industry, so it was very nice to get to talk to someone who knew what the industry's like. And I would like to say DEAR GOD I think I work hard? I have nothing on manga artists. Anyway. Have some pictures:

My very own fruit plate! How nice was it to have this when I checked into the hotel? Very nice! I took a picture then ate it all (for reals).

The convention ran from Friday (July 1st) to Sunday (July 3rd), and since Friday was Canada Day and a holiday, it was packed. Pretty much everyone was elbow to elbow.

Cutest Pokemon trainer ever! Addison is the daughter of Cal, who runs my amazing local comic store, Strange Adventures.

I was pretty excited to see this girl. I took a picture of her with her helmet up too.

And she found Ed! How nice. Oh, during the opening ceremonies for the convention I was asked to say a few words about my panels (I was running a How to Become a Profession Comic Book Person panel as well as one about Zombies Calling), and after rambling a bit, I spluttered "you all look adorable!" at the watching crowd, which was about 90% cosplay. But they all were pretty cute. If occasionally very loud and ... well, enthusiastic. :D

All the FMA cosplay I saw was for the male characters. I guess nobody had the rack to pull off Oliver Armstrong (seriously I would love to see that).

This guy looked like he'd come directly from Afghanistan. SNAAAAAKE!

Hella impressive. How would you even make that? I dunno.

This girl was also a really good artist to boot. I bought a little Princess Peach drawing from her. Here's her tumblr.

COMMISSIONS:
So sometimes people paid me money and I drawed them things.

An original character. Nice artist, too.

Hah, okay, a girl commissioned a drawing of "Envy and Wrath" from FMA. Of course I was happy to oblige. What she didn't specify was that she wanted Wrath from the original anime, not the manga/reboot anime. D'oh. Anyway, I like this picture and got a photocopy of it, so hopefully I'll colour it, eventually.

More original characters.

WHAT I GOT:
So I bought stuff!

My favourite thing was a gift from one of the Animaritime staff. There was pretty much NO FMA merchandise at the show, which disappointed me greatly. I really wanted to buy a toy! I found a keychain, which is okay, but ... it's not a toy. Anyway, I was thrilled with these. Aren't they cute? I love 'em.

Yeah, can you believe I didn't actually have FMA volume 1? Picked it up for cheap (also the FMA, original anime movie, which I enjoyed despite having no idea what was going on. The fight scenes were nice, even if the story was kind of insane). The rest was used manga I also got for cheap, and am happy to have (I kind of love Swan, it is the ultimate badass girly manga) because manga is pretty awesome and I love it.

So thanks again to Animaritime for having me out!

TCAF 2011

Wed, 11 May 2011 15:33:40 GMT

For me the most amazing part of TCAF came afterwards, when I listened to my mom talk about attending Usamaru Furuya's panel on Sunday. She had no idea who he was, had never read his work (and frankly, I wouldn't give it to her as she has even less of a stomach for horror as I do), but she came away from the panel fascinated by him as a person. I feel like that is the true importance of an event like TCAF, which can provide access to interesting comic folk to people who are not part of the comic world. This is the third year Mom's attended the Festival (to support me, of course), and every time she's come away interested in those who make comics. We tried to find her a copy of Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell to buy (she tries to buy a book per Festival; last year she bought Smile), but it was all sold out. She got a chance to talk to Nate Powell himself, though, and his background in work with the Developmentally Delayed (both Mom and I have done support work in the past, and Mom's nephew is autistic) interested her enough that I'm sure she'll look up the book on her own.

TCAF: Reaching Out To My Mom Since 2009.

Which I feel is just so important. I always get a sense of New People when I'm at TCAF. That it's attended by people who find comics interesting or are attracted to arty things, but maybe don't read them much. It's a cool feeling.

Unfortunately I was not feeling well throughout the entire Festival. I spent most of TCAF struggling to clear the fog in my brain and croaking out conversation to people. I'd come down with a cold the week before and hadn't had any time to rest, so by the weekend I was exhausted, Nyquill my only friend. I'm really sad I was so sick, because I didn't really enjoy what was an AMAZING convention for me. It was my first time as a self-publisher with a webcomic collection and I was blown away by the response to my little book. I completely sold out, over 50 copies, and sold out early. Every copy of my Superhero Girl collection was gone by lunchtime on Sunday. I've never had a book sell that quickly, and to people who seemed to know it, too. It was really amazing, and thank you to everyone who made the show such a success for me. I really appreciate you stopping by, buying a book, and making my day. XD

Highlights:
-Going for supper with my First Second editor Calista and FS book designer (and awesome comic maker in her own right) Colleen AF Venable, two of my most favourite comic related people. Really wish I could see them more than once a year...
-Talking with Ross Campbell and a few other TCAFers in a hotel lobby and having an employee approach us and ask about the show. Are we that obviously nerdy? XD Survey says: Yeah, Kinda.
-Being a nerd in front of Becky Cloonan. And she'd kinda heard of me! I gave her a copy of Superhero Girl, which I nervously hope she likes.
-Seeing the huge pile of Superhero Girl books disappear rapidly. WTF people I love you so much.
- Meeting J. Torres and going to lunch with our new editor, Karen.
-Seeing the UGLIEST BABY IN ALL OF THE WORLD on the streets of Toronto. It had a receding hairline and an old man face. I am a big fan of ugly babies.

Disappointments:
-The sheer size of the show and my illness basically meant I missed out seeing a bunch of people I really like, both as human beings and as cartoonists. BAH. Curse you, body.
-Didn't get to meet Jillian Tamaki, whose work I ADORE. I wanted to give her a copy of the Superhero Girl book (she does these funny Magical Mutant Academy comics, so I thought she might like SHG), but by the time I got to visit downstairs, I'd sold out. BAH AGAIN. Next time, I guess.
-Saturday was so busy I opted to stay at my table rather than attend the Natsumi Ono panel, which I had tickets for. Oh well.

What I bought:
Not much, actually! My big purchase was a French comic called Pierrot Lunaire by Antonie Dode, who I'd never heard of before, but he has the most gorgeous style. Wish I could read French... I also swapped for Hereville by Barry Deutsch (haven't read it yet), who was very nice, and Galaxion vols 1 & 2 by Tara Tallan, which I read last night and really enjoyed. I also dug up a copy of 7 Billion Needles vol 2 at BMV Books after the show and LOVED it. It's like ... heartwarming, character-driven horror? I don't know how else to describe it, but it's amazing. It's only 4 volumes, so I think I'll have to grab the rest of that series. I also enjoyed the School of World minicomic by Megan Brennan and Rel. Really funny stuff. Also bought the Wolves minicomic from Becky Cloonan, which once again made me wish she wrote more of her own stuff... I like her self-written comics best.

Where to find me at TCAF

Fri, 06 May 2011 20:42:04 GMT

Hey guys, here's a handy map that shows where you can find me at TCAF:

I'll be up there in the clouds with such luminaries as Raina Telegemeier, Dave Roman, Svetlana Chmakova, Becky Cloonan, Kate Beaton ... um, other people who are famous and better at comics than me, and I hope in your attempts to find them, you'll come and see me too. :) As I mentione before I will have copies of my self-published Superhero Girl comic collection, Zombies Calling, The War at Ellsmere, Brain Camp and fun extra stuff like prints and buttons. One note: I'm happy to do commissions if someone would like, but I have no paper on me, so you'll have to either get me paper or let me know if you want something drawn on Saturday so I can get paper myself Saturday night. I will also be away from my table for about an hour on Sunday at 1pm.

Also, apologies ahead of time for looking like this:

I've been sick with a nasty cold all week, and while I'm now getting better, I'm still very sniffly and snotty and have a bright red nose from blowing it and sound like I've been smoking for the past 30 years. I don't think I'm contagious, but still: very sorry.

I hope to see everyone there! Please come say hi. I love meeting readers, and it's great to talk about comics with real live people. As opposed to talking about comics on the internets. XD

Unfortunately TCAF conflicted with this year's Free Comic Book Day, so I will not be at Strange Adventures' annual hoopla. I hope everyone in Halifax goes, tho! Strange Adventures always puts on a great show.

I self published a book! Buy it from me!

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:44:16 GMT

Hey everybodies, look what I made:

OMG I MADE MY VERY OWN COMICS!!!!1 So exciting! Yes, I have now ventured tentively into self-publishing, and put together a little book of Superhero Girl comics. The book contains the first 55 comics, plus an author's note, sketches and the original Superhero Girl comic. For the moment I'm only going to be offering the book for sale at conventions (the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, of course, and I will also be at Animaritime in Moncton and Hal-Con in Halifax later this year), and Strange Adventures has also offered to stock the book (yay!). So if you're coming to TCAF, come by my table and buy my very first self published book ever! Seriously, I've never even done a mini-comic...

Here's what it looks like inside:

Ooh, ahhh. The books about 8.5 by 6, with nice shiny black ink. I got it printed locally at Etc Press, and they were great to deal with.

One of two pictures where SHG enjoys a sammich...

Sketches n' stuff.

I'll also have other stuff I've never done before for sale at TCAF (and the other two conventions), like buttons! Here are the button designs I've done:

Yes, you too can be skeptical and have a button that proves it. Also, zombies making out. I dunno, they're cute.

I'm not much of a print person, but I've made three prints for the show. You can see them on my DA account here, here and here.

And of course I will have copies of my three graphic novels for sale! Zombies Calling, The War at Ellsmere and Brain Camp. If you're looking to get a copy of one of them, come buy it from me and I can draw you a nice sketch in the book as a thank you.

Hope to see everyone at TCAF (and everywhere else)!

Working hard

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:14:34 GMT

So work has started up in earnest, and I'm no longer slacking and pecking away at spec stuff and internets/personal stuff. Thus I have been sucked into a black hole from whence only rambling twitter posts emerge .... anyway, have some pictures of my workspace where I'm working hard on comics:

This is my drawing desk. I've had it since I was a first year at animation school and it came with me when I moved from Ontario to Nova Scotia. Between Tim and I we have four desks (two drawing desks, two computer desks) and they take up most of the master bedroom in our 2 bed apartment (we sleep in the smaller bedroom. Hey, when you don't have a lot of space and you have a lot of desks, you make do). My kitty likes to sit behind my drawing desk on the windowsill, especially in the morning when the sun's coming directly through the window.

This is my messy reference board/space for art supplies, to the right of my desk. I keep character designs pinned to the ref board, so I can look at them while I'm drawing the characters in the actual comic. It keeps me on model (mostly). I collect bottles of ink and crappy watercolour brushes that I don't use, too.

Some pages I've been working on this week. I got to draw lots of crazy expressions and characters freaking out. It was fun. My originals are always a huge mess. I bought a lightbox recently and hope to eventually make it a part of my comic drawing process so I can get cleaner pages, and maybe cut out the incessant second guessing of my comic layouts that seems to be dogging me lately.

KITTY DOES NOT APPROVE OF COMICS.

Fanart A Week (kinda): Monster

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:09:49 GMT

Hah, skipped a week or so in there. Sorry. ^^

And here we have Dr. Tenma from the very first manga to ever make an impression on me: Monster, by Naoki Urasawa. Now that I've read Pluto and 20th Century Boys, I don't think Monster is Urasawa's best work anymore, but it's still luridly charming, containing some of the most tense scenes I've ever seen in an illustrated work, and manages to be surprisingly mainstream. I feel that if there's any hope for manga to cross over into some kind of adult, mainstream market, its comics like Monster that would do so.

Monster's also an important comic to me because it was the manga that hooked me on manga. Where I finally saw a creator doing what, honest to god, I was trying to do in my own work (granted, with much less success, but still). Urasawa's grasp of facial expression, his ability to decompress a scene so that every conversational beat was drawn out in front of the reader, his stunning use of panels ... I don't know, it was a real revelation. Finding Monster was like finding manga that was made for me, both as a creator and as a reader. As a friend of mine put it "The way you draw noses really changed after you read Monster." Hah, yes. ^^

As for Tenma himself, I read a lot of online commentary about the comic once I started reading it (my first introduction to the manga blogosphere, too), and while I enjoyed the discussion, I always felt I read Tenma a little darker than everyone else. He comes off as a goody two shoes in the manga, a much-too-good-for-his-own-good doctor ready to drop everything to help people out, even to his own detriment. There's no denying he's a decent human being, but his saintliness in later volumes ... frankly, I think it was an act. Here's a character who's had everything taken from him: his prestigious job, his friend and status, and now he's such a good guy because that's literally all he has left. I also suspect his overly noble tendencies come down to him unconsciously trying to prove Johan (the kid-serial killer he saved in volume 1) wrong, that human beings are too capable of being awesome and good ... it's weird, because he comes off as bullheadly obsessed with being RIGHT (people are GOOD and KIND because I, Tenma, say so) as Johan does (people are CRUEL and BAD because I, Johan, say so), and the series becomes the ultimate oneupmanship contest, Johan and Tenma locked in an eternal battle of wills. Anyway, the point is that I believe he would've (SPOILER) Johan at the end of the series, if given the chance. Because he thought he was right, and if (SPOILER) his enemy was the way to do it, so be it. Tenma's a good guy, but don't screw with him, y'know?

And with this fanart, I'm done with my shelf! On to shelf #2! Here are some pictures:

Any opinions on which books I should start with? I'm probably not going to do fanart for the Ono books. I like her art, but her stories leave me really cold. Probably not Ikigami either. It was an interesting read, but I can't say I want to do fanart of any of the characters. Everything else is fair game. What should I draw a fanart of next?

Fanart A Week: Ooku! ... and some more FMA.

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:31:10 GMT

Hey, whaddya know, fanart from a non-Fullmetal Alchemist series! A few people mentioned that they are enjoying the FMA fanart, so I'm going to continue to post what doodles I draw, in addition to continuing with my 'draw fanart from all my books' project. As I mentioned before, the point of this project is to draw characters different from the ones I normally draw, and also to bring attention to comics I enjoy. So let's continue on with that!

Iemitsu and Arikoto from vols 2 and 3 of Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga, SADDEST COUPLE IN ALL OF MANGA. They kill me with their devastatingly sad relationship OMG why can you two kids just be happy? D: Ooku is a really interesting series, an alternate history of Japan's Edo period where a disease has wiped out about 3/4ths of the male population. Since there are so few males, women must step into positions of power, something which goes against the tradition of the country. Ooku's a pretty fascinating read. Yoshinaga writes brainy, damaged characters very well, and does a great job portraying a country in the midst of a potentially world-ending crisis. I'm always very impressed when an author can portray smart, desperate characters without, well, TELLING the reader that these characters are smart and desperate. I hate it when authors spend a lot of time telling me how smart some character is, and then the character goes off and does something dumb. Argh. Show don't tell, people. It's that simple.

And on the Fullmetal Alchemist front, here's Scar and Mai.

I'm a bit of a fan of the "giant muscley violent guy and tiny badass girl team up!" thing. And also, frankly, Scar was really dumb before he met up with Mai. I kind of hated him. I can't stand characters who yammer on about how they're on a mission from God and then murder their way through a bunch of people. UGH. If I wanna read about that shit, I'll read Hellsing. Scar even looked really stupid the first time he showed up, wearing some ugly jacket that got pulverized in the next volume (thanks, Gluttony! That thing was hideous), and as Arakawa's artwork refined as she drew later vols of FMA, Scar's character design was the only one that radically changed. He doesn't even look like the same guy from volume 3 or wherever he first showed up. So, y'know, I'm assuming Arakawa noticed how dumb he looked and adjusted accordingly. Yay!

On another "Fullmetal Alchemist is freaking great" note, I've never felt so conflicted about a character than I do about Scar. He's a pretty serious asshole. The jerkface killed adorable Winry's parents, bringing about the SADDEST PANEL IN ALL OF MANGA, and, like Winry, I find myself pretty unwilling to forgive him for that, even as he continues an impressive redemptive arc over the course of the later FMA volumes. I like that a lot about FMA: its got good people who've been corrupted into bad people by the horrors of war, bad people who discover the good person inside of themselves, and good people who complicity take part in horrible things. With the possible exception of Ed and Al (and Mai), everyone's ruined in some way. It's pretty amazing to read that level of complexity in a comic book made for teenage boys. I really hope someday I'll be able to confuse the shit out of the emotions of a reader, as I've been confused over the course of reading Fullmetal Alchemist.

In conclusion, here's a random drawing of Roy, who broke my damn heart in volume 15 of FMA. ;_;

Fanart A Week okay this is probably getting old...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 01:55:17 GMT

Okay, let's do one last Fullmetal Alchemist fanart before moving on to something new. I still have a bunch of FMA sketches in my sketchbook that I'd like to finish, but I'll do them in addition to some new fanart. Because, after all, this exercise is about learning, and one must push forward with the learnings and not get stuck in a learning rut or something.

Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye AAAAGH I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH. Please don't die at the end of FMA? Please? D: (I also did a schmoopy OTP picture over at Deviantart if you are into that sort of thing.) Anyway, let's pretend that fire actually looks like fire, okay? I don't like drawing fire. And I didn't feel like doing a polished colouring job, but I think this works with the sketchy inking, so we'll just call it "artistic."

I was looking at reference pictures for Roy, and my boyfriend had some comments:
Tim: People always draw him snapping. It's like it's the only thing he can do.
Me: ... I drew him snapping ...
Tim: ...
Me: ... he looks so cool when he does it.

Anyway. Next week: Fanart from some other comic!

Character designs + art dump

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:48:23 GMT

Arts! I'm getting all this blogging and posting out of my system before I get swallowed up by the impending wave of work awaiting me in 2011. Hm, alliterative.
Here's some character designs for my next graphic novel, which hopefully I'll be able to tell you about soon...

There's a whole subplot in Friends With Boys about characters who are twins, and how they're trying to establish separate identities ... but in this new book (which is an adaptation of someone else's work) we're just going with the Evil Psychic Twins stereotype. XD

I really like the character on the right, but I have a feeling people aren't going to like her in the actual comic ... she's not someone you particularly want as a friend, but I dig her in the book. I like ruthless teenage girls.
Originally she looked like this:

but I got notes she looked too old (fair enough. I was a little wrapped up in making her severe, to contrast with another female character), and I decided to change her hair on my own, so it wouldn't conflict with the black of her uniform. The uniform's staying the same. It's based on a real varsity cheerleading uniform, and I really like the cross above her chest.

And here is something I drew last summer that's not related to anything at the moment (but maybe will be someday? I hope so!). I've always wanted to do a character introduction where one character is upside down. Maybe a latent desire to draw Spider-man? Unlikely!

And a Zombies Calling commission:

Sonnet's just really sick of all the zombies. I don't blame her.

Hourly Comics continued

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:35:23 GMT

And here are the rest of my Hourly Comics! I actually kind of had a busy day, so it was good for this exercise. Of late most of my days have been slogging away on the laptop, but since I made a deadline yesterday morning, I decided to venture outdoors and stuff...

It was senior citizens day at the Sears Outlet, so the place was overrun with chatty little old ladies.

And then I made a crack about being in The Matrix and rolled out the door in a hail of gunfire and rotating 3D cameras.

Yes I seriously have a favourite graveyard. You'll see it a lot in Friends with Boys.

I don't know if it was the walk, but wow, I was useless in that class.

I'm kind of a negative head talker sometimes. It's hard getting your brain to shut up.

Well, looks like we've got another mystery, gang!

oh my god I love Fullmetal Alchemist so much... O_O
I noticed I had kind of a wibbly eyes day. Weird. I'm not usually like that. I'll chalk it up to being tired and I usually get a little spazzy after a deadline.

Anyway, that was fun! I've been enjoying other people's hourly comics as well. Hopefully I'll get to do this another time.

Hourly Comics

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:28:34 GMT

Apparently today is Hourly Comic Day, and since I made a deadline this morning and have nothing else to do, here are a couple of my hours in comic form:

I am especially glad I work at home during winter.

There's a missing half hour in there somewhere... anyway, I have more, but I have to head out the door now. Maybe I'll post the rest of 'em later.

How I Became a Comic Book Consumer

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:14:30 GMT

I've been wanting to write this blog post for a while, about how I became someone who reads and buys comics. I see a lot of analysis out there about the habits of the comic buying public, how the comic book industry can get more people to buy comics, and especially how they can get those who are readers (consumers of novels/non-fiction, what my boyfriend helpfully calls "Word Books") to cross over into reading and buying comics. Maybe my experience can be a little bit helpful, because although I now work in comics, I'm not a native comic book reader. I came to them late in life, and only in the past five years have become an enthusiastic consumer of comics. And there are pictures of my bookshelves! I love my books.

In the beginning, I was someone who was always very attracted to comics as a medium. I did read comics as a kid, but they were extremely limited: the only comics I had access to were the Tintin and Asterix series (both widely available at my local library) and Bible comics. My most favourite book when I was a kid was a comic book version of the Bible, which detailed the many adventures of White Jesus and his disciples. I read that thing until it fell apart.

Although I had brothers, and one of those brothers read Spider-Man, I didn't particularly like Spider-Man. It was a scary book, with lots of screaming and violence. I remember being particularly disturbed by pictures of a demonic looking Harry Osborne screeching at Spider-Man for something, I dunno. Spider-Man was scary.

I was a very committed reader (still am). Reading was my entertainment, as I grew up without a TV or any video game console. There were many books out there that I liked (Lloyd Alexander and Diana Wynne Jones were two particular favourites) and that seemed to be written with me in mind: stories about girls going on adventures, girls being awesome, science fiction, fantasy... there was a lot of diversity in books, something I didn't see in comics when I was growing up. I only saw superheroes, and I didn't particularly like the way the girl superheroes were drawn.

But I really wanted to read comics. Occasionally when I was a teenager I would sneak down to a local comic book shop, a dark forbidding place so unfriendly to a teen girl that I would walk past the doorway five times to get my courage up before entering. I bought some X-Men comics, because I liked the cartoon on TV.

In college I discovered a tattered copy of volume 3 of Bone at a local Chapters, and read the crap out of it. I had no real idea what was going on in the book, but I loved the artwork and female characters, and the idea of a comic with one solid vision propelling it forward. It was very different from the scattered X-Men storylines I'd assumed were a staple of comic books.

But even though I read the crap out of Bone, bought everything associated with Bone and loved it deeply, I was frozen in place with that one comic book, reading and re-reading it and never venturing beyond to read other comics. I completely missed the manga boom of the early 2000s, having no friends who were into manga, and being intimidated by the shelves of it at the big box bookstores. So I read Bone, and occasionally picked up books by Andi Watson, whose Skeleton Key series clicked with me (magicial girls and their friendships, what's not to like).

Things changed when I moved to Halifax, and this is where I became a comic consumer. Here's how it happened.

1) The library. Libraries had gotten into stocking graphic novels (and trades and floppies) years ago, and while I had read a few at my local library back when I lived in Ontario, I hadn't yet lived in a city with a good library system, and especially one that was very concerned with graphic novels, and invested in them. The Halifax libraries had thousands of graphic novels and manga, allowing me, a timid consumer, to try before I bought. I read their collection by the bucket-full, dragging home stack after stack of graphic novels. I tried thousands of pages of manga, something which became very important, because frankly, the entry point to manga is expensive. It's hard to judge a manga by a single volume, and I wasn't prepared to fork over $50+ for multiple volumes of something I hadn't read.

This has always been a big issue for me: I'm a very conservative consumer. I'm reluctant to buy unless I know a work is to my liking, and the library allows me to try new things. I'm very committed to creators though; if there is a creator I like, I tend to buy everything by them.

2) A good local comics store. I cannot stress how important it was for me to find, in Halifax, a comic book store I was comfortable in, that I enjoyed going to, and that did a lot of outreach, putting comics in front of me even as I was a reluctant consumer. Bravo, Lovely Local Comic Shop, Strange Adventures. I feel like this is an issue that all of the comic industry knows is an important one, but it bears repeating: an easily accessible, female friendly comic book store with a knowledgable staff is so, so important for reaching out to those who are interested in comics, but unsure of their particular entry point into the medium. A good local comic store also builds shopper loyalty. I like bargins. I liked Amazon's deep discounts, but since moving to Halifax and becoming so attached to Strange Adventures, I shop only there, no matter what another store is offering.

When I moved to Halifax in 2005, I brought with me one small box of graphic novels. It contained the Bone trades, a few books by Andi Watson and the occasion other book (I enjoyed Powers for a time). I moved apartments in August, and had over 15 boxes of graphic novels. In the past five years, I have bought literally hundreds of books.

3) Manga. I read about 10-15 graphic novels a month. Probably two thirds of that is manga. I came to manga very late, only really getting into it in 2008, when an employee at Strange Adventures recommended Naoki Urasawa's Monster to me. I picked up the first six volumes from the library and was hooked, realizing that I had been unfairly dismissing manga (yes, I was one of those "it looks the same and it looks dumb" idiots for a while) and there was manga out there for me, if I wanted to read it.

Funny how getting into manga required the co-ordinated effort of both Strange Adventures (the recommendation) and the library (providing the initial hook). Almost as though they were working together to trap me in their web of reading! Later I would buy everything Naoki Urasawa published.

Since 2008 I would estimate about two thirds of my reading and buying material has been manga, because unfortunately the comic book industry, even though it has made great strides, has not caught up with Japan in providing the depth of diversity required to get someone like me reading. There is still a lot of amazing stuff by North American creators: I greedily consume BPRD, the works of Raina Telgemeier, Jaime Hernandez, Hope Larson, much of what First Second publishes, and Aaron Alexovich, but there is simply not as much published by North American creators. Manga compensates for that, by providing just a ton of shit to read. I love that about it. Granted, the bodies of many Japanese cartoonists are broken to pieces on the manga machine, but ... oh, the books you produce are so wonderful to consume. MOAR PLEASE.

And now I am a very happy comic book consumer. I am thrilled every time a book by a creator I like comes out, and I rush out to buy it. I check out dozens of graphic novels from the library a month. I read everything that seems remotely interesting, buying work that I enjoy the most. I don't spend a ton, due to not making a lot of money, but books are what I buy first, before anything else, when I have extra money to spend.

So that is how I became A Comic Book Consumer. How did you become one?

Fanart a Week: Winry - Fullmetal Alchemist (and a rant about character)

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:35:22 GMT

Trucking on through the Fullmetal Alchemist characters... XD If people get really sick of these, I guess I could switch to a different series, but I do like drawing these folks a lot.

WINRY! Adorable mechanic of Ed and Al, brave and smart and a great "normal" character in a manga primarily concerned with superpowered individuals.

Okay, and this brings me to a point: I like Winry a lot. I think Arakawa does great things with her character. She's sweet and tough and Al and Ed treat her with respect, and more importantly Arakawa treats her with respect. There is a character trope typical of stories that revolve around superpowered characters, and that trope is that those characters in the story who are not superpowerer are lesser beings. They exist in the story only to be kidnapped, or killed, or to act as emotional fodder for whatever SuperDuperCharacter is doing, and it drives me freaking crazy, because to me it reveals a storytelling distain for ordinary humans.

I feel like if you are going to write a story about superpowered beings (be they superheroes, wizards or alchemists), you have to make the non-superpowered characters worth fighting for. Maybe they aren't as powerful as the superpowered characters, but they have to be worth those characters' time, because otherwise what is the point of the story? Why are these superheroes or wizards or alchemists fighting for the lives of these ordinary men and women if they're so weak and helpless that they come across as completely useless? They have to be able to stand on their own two feet as (non-superpowered, but still strong) characters.

Winry is the great emotional centre of Fullmetal Alchemist. She's "ordinary," but she's never useless, although sometimes she feels so in the face of Al and Ed's power. There's a great scene in volume 12 where Winry faces down the man who killed her parents, only to fail to kill him and then is saved by (superpowered) Ed. He dashes off after the baddie, and Winry sits in the street staring after him, and says: "Why is there never anything for me to do but wait?"

AHHHH. AWESOME WRITING. FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST HAS IT. It's such a sympathetic moment, the lament of the ordinary character in a story with superpowered ones. She knows she will never be as strong as Roy or Ed or Izumi, but she manages to be awesome just the same. Just sometimes it's hard to see it, when you're surrounded by people so much more powerful than you are.

Fanart of the Week

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 14:37:37 GMT

Continuing with the Fullmetal Alchemist characters ...

Lin! (or Ling, whichever.) Aw, I love Lin. I really enjoy a character who introduces themselves as a happy go lucky fool, lulls you into a sense of security ("oh, this guy's just comic relief"), and then reveals he's a smartypants badass underneath. Actually, I've noticed that about FMA. Everyone is a badass. Even tiny little girls and their tiny pet pandas. WTF. So anyway, I like Lin a lot, and then he gets (spoiler) and turns super sexy and for some reason they don't make his age clear in the manga (or if they did I missed it), so I was assuming he was at least in his 20s, but then I watched the anime and NOPE, he's FIFTEEN.

... so I feel dirty. XD

If you didn't read it already, volume 24 of FMA came out last Wednesday, and I swallowed it whole in one sitting. It was pretty magnificent; the whole thing was three fight scenes, and the fact that Arakawa managed to spend 200 pages on three fight scenes without making them boring or repetitive ... well, damn. I would like to be like her when I grow up.

Fanart A Week: Back from break, honest!

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:45:36 GMT

Let's try and get back on track with this 'Drawing a Fanart a Week' thing. The entire point of it was to force me to draw characters I wouldn't normally draw, and also to observe other artist's styles and see why their art works so well, and I think that's something worth continuing. So, Christmas Break over, back to work! Here you go:

IZUMI! Badass lady alchemist/housewife/teacher of our heroes Ed and Al from Fullmetal Alchemist! Over break I got my paws on a bunch of volumes of the manga, and fell madly in love with it. It reminds me a lot of Avater: The Last Airbender in that while it's very much aimed at young boys, it's full of great female characters, and some of the best illustrated fight scenes I've ever seen in a manga. I love it a lot. I don't think there's a single character in it that I don't like, which is pretty amazing. And it's written and drawn by a lady! I was really excited when I found that out. I'm always looking for new lady cartoonists to look up to, and when I find a particularly badass one, well, that's nifty keen.

I'd like to do more FMA fanart, so maybe I'll just continue on with these characters. They're so well designed, it'd be a shame not to do more fanart of them.

Superhero Girl website

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 15:25:52 GMT

Hey guys, I did some mangling of blogger and came up with a design for the Superhero Girl site that I feel is a little more comic browsing friendly. Mind taking a look? Unfortunately all the older comics aren't full size the way the current one is, mostly because I'd have to go back and edit those posts by hand to fix them, and I kinda don't wanna do that. Maybe if I get ambitious I will, but right now ... ehhh, it's Saturday morning.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions, give a shout and I'll try and implement them. This design seems pretty decent, so I'm happy about it.

Two Thousand and Ten

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:03:24 GMT

I had guests for New Year's (one of these guests I've spent the past eight years or so of New Years with, so it's a bit of a tradition), but now they're packed off home to Toronto, and I can finally write up a quick 2010 report, because everyone's doing it.

I had a really amazing year. I spent the first 8 months working on my very own graphic novel and actually not starving (thanks, First Second, and also the Nova Scotia Tourism and Culture people for that awesome grant!), which is kind of a dream come true. It's weird when you land in your dream job: it's harder than you ever expect it to be (so many long hours, so much backbreaking labour, so many days where if I have to ink another pencil line I will scream), but also so much more wonderful. I made a comic! I mean, I've been making comics for over ten years (OVER TEN YEARS WTF), but it was the first time where I was getting paid a living wage to make my own. It was pretty wow.

It was also kind of a crazy year in that things I never thought would happen to me, uh, kinda did. Like getting a short story published by Marvel. I mean, look, I know how I draw and write, and it's not typical Marvel stuff, and it was really a great experience being allowed into that very different world to play around. It was really fun, and I loved all the responses I got to my work.

People also really loved my Wolverine story, and it got passed around the internet and it turned into this whole thing I really wasn't expecting, and I'm still kind of blown away by it all. I've never had something go viral like that, and it was really amazing. I feel like I fell accidentally into the best of both worlds: I got a story passed around a million times online (but didn't make any money from that), and I got a story published by Marvel. So I got paid for my work and I got internet popular, which is something that doesn't happen very often.

And people seem to be enjoying my little Superhero Girl comic strip as well. I really appreciate all the comments people have been leaving, and it's great to get paid a little bit of money for that comic. Makes me feel that I can buy comics without worrying too much about my budget.

I guess I really found everyone's responses to my work this year kind of incredible. I have a hard time with my artwork. I feel like I was bad at drawing for so long that it became my default stance. Faith Erin Hicks = bad at the drawing part, but maybe okay at other things and when combined with writing her comics are probably okay to read for free online or something. AWFUL. But this year I feel like I got a lot of praise and people who I never expected to even talk to me told me they enjoyed my work, and it made me go all wibbly and embarrassed and it was so cool, you guys. It was a special year.

I also moved in with my boyfriend, and so far we have managed not to starve (I've discovered I kind of like cooking for him) and the scrunched up faces he makes when I put my cold feet on him at night are hilarious. I am a terrible girlfriend and it's been really great so far. Personal and professional success this year? I know, wtf. I'm unrecognizable.

So here's to a great 2011! It's always looking busy and awesome and terrifying and great. I'm working hard on my next script for First Second, and I think it's going to be a blast to draw.

I'm also going to be drawing a comic with J.Torres in the spring, which I'm really looking forward to. Everyone I've spoken to about J. has told me how awesome he is, so he'd better live up to the hype. ;) So yeah, I'll be drawing at least two books at once for most of 2011, which is just nuttiness. AND there'll be a big online thing I'll be doing soon as well, but I can't announce that just yet.

I think 2011's going to be pretty cool.

(Oh yeah, I also bought a very cool tablet laptop! See how pretty:

Yes so pretty! It's my very first brand new computer!)

Merry Christmas + other stuff

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:03:35 GMT

Merry Christmas everyone! Or Merry Early Christmas or something. I'm off to visit my boyfriend's folks in the wilds of Nova Scotia and do Christmassy things with them, and then I'm off to Ontario to visit my family, so my internets will be sporadic for a while. Enjoy the little Superhero Girl Christmas card!

Over Christmas break, Superhero Girl is set to update (love that you can do that) on its regular Tuesday/Friday schedule, so be sure to check it out on those days. Also, I semi-fixed the Demonology 101 issues. I'm not really inclined to html together those old episodes (sooooo time consuming), so I provided links to pdfs of the episodes which people can download and read if they wish. Oh god, looking at those pages was so painful... old art is ooooold and terrible. But I improved, so that's good. Still, it's like someone seeing pictures of the awful, unstylish outfits you wore in high school ... still, enough people asked that the episodes remain online that I felt I should keep them there.

Hm, anything else? I think that's it. Enjoy the Holidays everyone!

Fanart a Week: Saturn Apartments

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:38:03 GMT

This fanart a week thing's being going pretty well, although I always have a hard time drawing something decent for a book/series I really like. Thus this meagre drawing for Saturn Apartments, a fantastic character-based science fiction series by Hiasae Iwaoka. Last week I was invited to do some guest commentating on the comic blog Robot 6, and chose to talk about this series, so go here for some general talkings about it.

Here's Mitsu, a window-washer, and Sachi, another menial labourer, both of whom live with the rest of humanity in giant ring shaped space stations encircling an abandoned Earth. Saturn Apartments is about their (somewhat ordinary but remarkably touching) lives and the lives of those around them. It is genius work, the kind of comics I really want to make myself.

When I was a teenager I was really into science fiction. It was pretty much all I read, but I've basically all but stopped reading it now, the odd post-apocalyptic YA book notwithstanding, mostly because science fiction is kind of a terrible genre if you want to read about great characters. Great worldbuilding, great ideas, astonishing visions of the future, scifi has that in spades, but it always seems to fall down when it comes to character. It's really frustrating. I feel like there should be both, great characters and great science fiction stories, that the two shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but I've had a hard time finding anything like that that isn't, well, manga. If anyone wants to recommend anything, by all means, do so. I mean, I am a geek and I like reading the geeky side of fiction, but sometimes it feels that scifi writers get so swept up in their awesome worldbuilding and concepts, they completely forget about the characters. And at this stage in my reading, I'd rather read something with good characters.

Fanart A Week: All My Darling Daughters

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:29:42 GMT

So I was a bit stuck on this assignment, doing a fanart for All My Darling Daughters, a collection of short comics by Fumi Yoshinaga. Her shorts are always a bit weird, and I think she uses them to experiment or write about people who are just too depressing to merit a full book. I drew a couple of sketches for this fanart, then settled on the following piece, to pay homage to the short form nature of the book:

Top row: Ken and Yukiko from story #1, Kiyotaka and Maiko from story #2 and my favourite, Yuko and Saeki from story #4. I liked story #4 best. It was loosely about a group of childhood girl friends growing up and archiving their dreams, and one of them finding those dreams to be harder than she'd ever expected, and also about how you can be disappointed by who your childhood friends grow up to be. I remember going to school with a lot of very vibrant artsy young women, and we'd all gather around and talk about art and what we wanted to achieve in art (I wasn't quite sure what I wanted; I liked comics and animation but didn't think I was good enough to make a living at either). Much to my surprise, of that group of about 5 or 6 art inclined women I was the only one who went on to pursue a career in art. The rest of my friends, for the most part, are stay at home mothers. I don't mean to judge people's choices; if you are happy, you are happy, but I'm often vaguely disappointed by my school friends. Maybe they'll make art again once their kids are in school, but they never have time now. I find I have a hard time communicating with them when we meet up. I can't talk about anything but my art and my work and comics and they can't talk about anything but their kids, so eventually the conversation just feels weird and out of sync.

Anyway, that's a whole huge discussion unto itself. I'm sure plenty of people find ways to balance art and kids.

Next week I promise not to be so weird. Next on the bookshelf is Ooku, but I've done Yoshinaga two weeks in a row, so I may skip Ooku for Saturn Apartments and then come back ... because Ooku is brilliant and deserves a fanart. Just maybe not next week.

Thoughts on Mockingjay

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:02:49 GMT

Last night I finished reading Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and wanted to jot my thoughts down, so click the link for SPOILER FILLED ruminations...

The first half of the book is magnificent. Katniss is at her rebellious, strong willed self throughout, refusing to be no one's pawn and as always, trying to find a way for her friends and family to survive. I found myself practially moved to tears during her firefight in District 8, when she commandeers a gun and mows down various Capitol war machines, culminating in a final defiant scream at her enemies: "If we burn, you burn with us!" Oh god, Katniss, I would follow you to the ends of the earth. I would go down in flames for you. Lead me and I will follow.

And I hoped the book would continue this way. Strong, willfull, disparate Katniss scrambling ahead of her pursuers, surely she would prevail in the end! Find some way to change the world and emerge from the conflict whole and beautiful, a survivor to the last.

Sadly ... it's not to be.

Katniss is dead at the end of the book. Not physically, but the character we know dies, and what's left isn't her. Here's an interesting article on the ending, on Katniss's final moments in the book. The author points out something very true: If Katniss chooses Peeta, her life will suck in the end. And it does. However, I do not believe that this was some tacked on happy ending, or that the ending is a betrayal of the Katniss we have all come to know and love, or a betrayal of the Hunger Games trilogy in any way. I think it's an appropriate ending because it's a sad ending pretending to be a happy one. It is a miserable, miserable ending, and it has nothing to do with choosing Peeta or any of the love triangle stuff, it is a miserable ending because the Katniss we fell in love with in the first Hunger Games book is dead. The war has destroyed her, eaten away her strength and goodness, eaten away at her desire to live, to stand up and sacrifice herself for those she loves.

Ultimately, I think that was the point Suzanne Collins was trying to make: that war takes the best and brightest of a generation and rips out the things that made them the best and brightest. The character who I think came off the worst (and yet ended up with potentially the best ending, working a "fancy job" in Sector 2) at the end of the book was Gale, and it's because he seemed to gain an understanding of war throughout the course of Mockingjay. Gale loses his soul to the war. Gale survives the war with his mind and psyche intact because he compromises morally to it, discovering new ways to kill people, discovering the merciless machine behind war and accepting it, and adapting to it.

Katniss, however, is too moral to compromise the way Gale compromises, and ultimately it destroys her. She cannot accept the cost of war, cannot adapt to it, and in the end, she is lost to it. All she can do is drag her broken self home and live with the Baker, the person who does not question her, challenge her, the person who is not her equal in any way, and live out life as a haunted, shattered individual.

It is a horrible, horrible ending. I wept for Katniss. I closed the book after I finished it and felt devastated. The Katniss I loved loved LOVED in the Hunger Games was gone, her inner core wrecked. But ultimately, I think it is a legitimate ending, because it's an ending that's true. War destroys people. It especially destroys those who have a strong sense of morality, and throughout the course of these three books, despite Katniss's claims to the contrary, she has always come across as smart, moral and loving.

The ending I wanted for Katniss was one where she could overcome the demons that eventually swallowed her, and perhaps help her shattered society to move on to a brighter future (with Peeta or Gale, I don't really give a shit), but that would have (in my opinion) been a true happy ending. The ending that Mockingjay presents is to me in no way happy, and has nothing to do with the love triangle (ultimately I don't even feel she chose between the two boys. Peeta literally followed her home). Katniss is dead. Let's hope her shattered soul finds some peace, out there in the fields of District 12.

Website update/overhaul!

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:27:21 GMT

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS LOOK OVER THERE IT'S A BRAND NEW WEBSITE!! ... and it contains a brand new update to Ice, my (hopefully not forgotten) webcomic! Six new pages, and the Ice website has been integrated into my new site, mostly because I don't feel it's updated enough to deserve it's own website.

I know, wtf, updates! When was the last time I updated this thing? February, I think. Erk. Oh well, I was busy getting paid to draw comics, which is awesome.

Anyway, many many thanks to my lovely friend Lissa who designed my new site and my lovely friend nem0 who continues to be a wonderful host and general knower-of-website-stuff. It is good to have tech savvy friend because God knows I'm not. :P

So enjoy the new Ice pages and the new website design! ... and y'know, leave a comment if you can, because I like comments.

Also here is a drawing of Lissa and me enjoying Yoko Ono's wish tree at MOCCA when we went to New York. Aren't we cute?

Fanart A Week: Flower of Life

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:14:10 GMT

Next up on the slow progression through my bookshelves, Fumi Yoshinaga's Flower of Life.

That's Harutaro (blond), Majima (glasses) and Takeda (girl), who really have no reason to hang out together, but I like drawing people sitting on couches. On the other end of the spectrum (its opposite being Naoki Urasawa's comics) of My Favourite things is Flower of Life, a hilarious, sweet and occasionally pessimistic 4 volume series about a bunch of high schoolers. It doesn't have a lot of narrative flow, instead telling a series of interlinked stories about the lives of these characters as they work, play, screw up, and generally act like human beings. It's really really great. Yoshinaga's work initially put me off, as her art can be (kindly put) spare at times. It improves over the course of her various series (Ooku is becoming a striking book), but her artwork doesn't have the appeal to me that Urasawa's does. However, her writing is exquisite. I don't know how else to describe it except that she probably has some kind of giant brain uniquely suited to writing great characters. I don't know, for some reason whenever I re-read Flower of Life, I'm reminded of that old chestnut: "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." Yoshinaga takes things that are very difficult to do (character based comedy! character development without sacrificing comedy! letting characters screw up and stay screwed up without losing sympathy for them!), and make them look very very easy.

Next up: ... hm, I'm not sure. I kinda want to skip All My Darling Daughters since it's a collection of short stories and go straight to Ooku. We'll see.

I also have a bunch of sketches I did yesterday while out with friends.

Bahahah! Isn't she hilarious? Why is this drawing so funny to me? I dunno.

Fanart A Week

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:22:53 GMT

So book 2 (or rather, series 2) on my shelf is Pluto, again by Naoki Urasawa (don't worry, next week we have a different cartoonist). I chose to do an illustration inspired by one of the most moving scenes in the series, from volume 4.

Pluto, if you didn't already know, is a retelling of an Astro Boy story from (I think) the 1950s. Urasawa went all out with the re-imagining, stripping out most of the gee whiz science fiction trappings from the original, and remaking the comic into a forbidding serial killer mystery that examined what it would mean to be human, especially when you lived in a future where robots were indistinguishable from humans. Of the two Urasawa series, 20th Century Boys is probably the better one (more subtle, with a great twisting conspiracy plotline), but Pluto indulges the science fiction nerd in me. It is my ultimate dream book: character driven science fiction about human-esque androids. Anyway, in volume 4 we get a scene between Atom (Astro Boy) and his creator, Professor Tenma. Tenma's a jerk, but he's a charasmatic jerk, someone brilliant to the point where he's borderline sociopathic, unable to relate to humans or understand why his morally questionable robot experiments would be horrifying to those with one iota of empathy. This scene in volume 4 is the only scene in the series that he shares with Atom while Atom is conscious, and it's a gut-puncher of a scene, as Tenma completely rejects Atom, who he has created to replace his dead son Tobio. Read the book, and if you don't feel like you've been slapped by that scene, well ... maybe you're a robot. :)

Next week: Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga. Oh, I love that series.