Artist Statement
Comic books have always intrigued me. I remember reading them from the age of 6; the French comic called Tin-Tin. The comic’s stories revolve around a young blonde photographer and his little white terrier and their various adventures. What I found so amazing as a child was that Tin-Tin was a story being told picture by picture, so it didn't matter I didn't know French. I could still "read" it because art tells as much of a story as words do.
I am selfish. I love making up my own stories, creating whole worlds and complicated plots. I can’t imagine myself being happy doing anything other than producing comic(s) that I enjoy reading. And I want other people to enjoy them too. Yet I know there not a great deal of difference between the comics I make and the ones available today, except the audience I have in mind when I make comics is primarily female (though I know anyone would enjoy them). The majority of comics are created with a 13-24 year old white middle-class male audience in mind.
Most women and girls feel intimated by or are uninterested in comics because they are created for such a narrow audience and don't offer much to those outside of it. Comics that are created for women do sell well. Shojo Manga (Japanese comics for women) like Sailor Moon, Ah My Goddess and Card Captor Sakura, are super popular in America. Many women and girls read these comics because they are not only created for with them in mind, but the bulk are by women. My comics will achieve because they are drawn and written with action, adventure, humor, intrigue, etc., and the main character(s) are female. I know by making the main character female, as they are in Traveling Winds (a comic I make with Ariel Slaughter), it encourages reader identification. I've sometimes found identifying with a male character can be hard to relate to or boring. As much as I enjoy reading X-Men, I can never envision myself as Cyclops or Gambit. I have some trouble with Storm or Jean Grey. The essence of any work is to get the viewer into it. It seems the same kinds of comics are done, redone or slightly re-adapted with the same kind of characters, story lines, and finales. Men writing female characters tend to be cliché (which I'll also own up to doing), but women don't deal with, respond to or react to problems and situations the same way men do. This is neither good or bad, just as a woman, I offer a perspective somewhat under-voiced. I like adapting a story that might seem cliché, by making the main character female. Traveling Winds follows the common hero-quest formula; set in a fantasy medieval time, the main character Leira's search for information about her family gets her involved in a larger bringing-peace-to-a-war-torn-land plot. Her quest gets more complicated when Ashling, a fairy with a quest of her own, forces Leira to be her protector.
My process for beginning an issue of Traveling Winds is the same for any of my comic work. First, I start with writing. It maybe something personal, like a poem or just the story for the next issue. I break down the writing in scenes (or panels). Then decide how many scenes go on a page and how their layout. The number of panels I put on a page depends on the visual/emotional effect I want to achieve as well as the number I pages I have to present the story. I'll use many panels on one page to show rapid action or a lot of talking. I'll use one whole page for a single scene to convey importance, as in a three page comic self-portrait. On smaller paper I do rough page layouts, cementing everything before I do the final art on 11 by 17 in paper. I like to draw with 2H-5H pencils because it gives me a light, sketchy drawing to ink, with technical pens and brush-tip markers. Once the inking is done, I letter by printing the dialogue out and cutting and pasting it directly onto the art. Now, I'm not being published, so to bring my work to everyone, I post it online (for anyone with a computer and Internet access that is) to read.
I love making comics. But I want to make comics and be able to eat. I believe there is a large appeal to having a woman creator and female character(s). That opens up a greater number of possibilities. I assume much of the popularity of manga in America has to do with the void of American comics created for and by women (to an extent). Many women read manga because it were created with them (females) in mind. I think given the chance, my comics could do as well as any of them because my goal is to produce comics that I and other people to enjoy reading.
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