When coming up with Wonder Woman cover designs, sometimes people will pitch ideas to me, either the writer or the editor. And it's interesting, because I know they're not trying to, but they end up pitching things that end up feeling like damsel-in-distress covers, where the tension comes from her needing to be rescued somehow. And it's something I immediately push back against.
I've become really aware of all the subtle things you can communicate through the art and how you're presenting a character, particularly someone like Wonder Woman, who means so much to so many people.
I realize that this is not what you want to put on a cover with Wonder Woman emblazoned on it. She could be in trouble, but she doesn't need to be completely out of control. So whenever I'm doing these covers, I try to make sure that there's an element where, even if there is danger, it's not something where agency is taken away from her.
A lot of times we look at the past as something that was really great, but we ignore things that have actually gotten better since then.Our girls [Paper Girls] are now dealing with what their futures look like, and reflecting on what they hoped the present day versions might be like.
I want her to be powerful on these covers, and sometimes that's a quiet power and other times it's a more bombastic power. But when you're going to have a book out there that's called Wonder Woman and she's on it, you have a responsibility to put out a certain kind of image.
It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.
One of my favorite comics is Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers. They do such a wonderful job of showing you how the character of Maggie ages and really doesn't present that with any kind of judgment.
Matt Wilson, the colorist, has this great palate [in Paper Girls] that brings up all these emotions and this feel of the '80s without being actually as kind of as bright and primary as it could have been.
[Paper Girls] needed to have a certain kind of almost neon style to it, but at the same time we wanted also to show the modern perspective that we had.
We wanted the book [Paper Girls] to feel to evoke the '80s, but not necessarily feel that it was drawn then.
Back then, as a kid, you could really just do whatever you wanted until your parents got home.
The '80s were a really different time for kids.Technology has changed so much of how we stay in touch and keep tabs on people.
What I like about Paper Girls in particular is that because we're approaching it more from a female perspective, we're able to consider the emotional states of these characters a little bit more, and think more of their interiority.
Nothing I've worked on has been asked this much of me to put it on the page [like Paper Girls].
[Paper Girls] is very much is about how we are thinking about our past and growing up.
I don't think I've ever worked on a project [Paper Girls] that is this personal. We draw so much on our memories of growing and we're putting so much of our present day into it as well.
With Erin [from Paper Girls], I wanted to show what she might look like when she's 40, and I wanted it to feel authentic. In terms of inspiration I ended up using my wife for a lot of it. Just to kind of to give me almost an anchor so that I would be invested in making this character real.
