I do more research about 'Lumberjanes' than I did for a story of medieval knights.
— Noelle Stevenson
I really want to see normalization of queer sexuality - as well as the lack of sexuality.
It was definitely a very appealing prospect to be in a company, especially as an art student: we had it hammered into us that the odds of us finding a job, especially fresh out of school, was very slim, and we could expect to work as a bartender for the next three years after we graduate.
There are some things that are more appropriate for different audiences. But the goal with all ages is to create comics that anyone can read, that don't talk down to kids. Kids can handle a lot more than people think.
Hopefully, comics will be enough to support me after I graduate.
I think my lack of 'Pokemon' knowledge and complete confusion at the descriptions makes people think I'm adorable, like a lost baby duckling or your grandmother trying to use an iPad.
I was always looking for the female characters in sci-fi and fantasy who were more than just the girlfriend.
There's a whole world of people out here whose experiences are not being reflected in the media that they're reading. And that does affect the way we view ourselves... and the people we think we can be.
It took me a really long time to get past all of that internalized dissociation with being female that I was being given by media.
I personally always have a hard time relating to queer characters in media because I didn't really see myself in them. They were kind of pigeonholed early on as the gay character, and they would naturally end up with the other gay character who would emerge at some point as their love interest.
'Runaways' was exciting because it was something brand-new and fresh, and I'm hoping to be able to bend the rules in my own way of what a Marvel superhero story can be.
I've always had a lot of story ideas rattling around in my head, but 'Nimona' felt very tangible very early. I knew the ending. So I just started making more and more pages, and then I made it a webcomic, like, 'OK, I'm really gonna do this.'
I always have a tendency to take on too many things.
'Nimona' was originally a vague idea I had when I was in high school, when I was just getting into shapeshifting characters. It was a straightforward superhero story at the time. Nimona was named Nightshade, and she had an eyepatch for some reason. There was nothing really special about it, though.
I was a junior at school, and I had just taken my first comics class, and we were doing an exercise for this other class where we had to create our own characters,and 'Nimona' just kind of came out of that. I decided that I liked her so much that I wanted to do a comic with her.
I went to Maryland Institute College of Art, and I studied illustration there.
We can make this industry and this environment and comic book shops and comic book conventions and comic books themselves, we can make them a thing that is accessible to everybody so that nobody feels unwelcome, and nobody feels like this isn't their place.
It's not hard to figure out when you're not welcome.
The reason I wanted to do a webcomic was that I could be my own boss, and I could call the shots myself.
I was going to be a storybook illustrator or an editorial illustrator. I ended up in a comics class by mistake because all the others were full, so I was like 'I'll stay for one class, and then I'll go take something else, because I don't care about comics.' I got pulled in really fast; I discovered I had a voice in comics that I didn't know I had.
Kids aren't dumb - they might not get something, but they're going to figure it out.
Support the female voice in all its forms. Support other female creators and work to make an environment that is inclusive and allows female-led projects to thrive organically.
'She-Ra' was ahead of its time.
People are like, 'Are Nimona and Ballister romantic?' And I'm like, 'No! Of course not.' 'Well, are Ballister and Goldenloin in a relationship?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, okay.'
The first movie I saw was 'Prince of Egypt' - that was the first movie I saw in theaters.
I know that when I was a kid, and I was reading whatever I could get my hands on, I didn't associate myself with the girl characters.
I feel that kids are smart, and I feel that kids will understand things even if they don't understand them from personal experience.
Some comics are made to be displayed digitally, and it doesn't degrade them.
I'm very lucky to have been given a lot of freedom in my career, but it's also fun to play in other people's playgrounds!
I've been a huge animation fan since I was a kid, so the idea of seeing my characters in full motion on the big screen is completely mind-blowing.
I think technology is changing and growing, and the best approach to have is to be self-aware and aware of what's going on around you and also have some idea of who you are and how to make that ever-changing climate work in your favor.
I didn't get into comics until college, and it was sort of an accident.
It's easy to feel like you don't have any control over yourself or your life or your body as a teen - everything is changing so fast, and a lot of it feels so outside of your power. I think that's why a lot of teens form really strong attachments to fictional characters or celebrities, draw their own characters or write themselves into fan fiction.
I really liked Quentin Blake, who did all of Roald Dahl's stuff. I don't think I really got Quentin Blake as a kid, but as I grew older, I really appreciated the kind of knowledge and the skill that went into those seemingly effortless drawings, and I really wanted to capture some of that in my own work.
The first time I shopped at a comic shop, it was because I had been published in a comic book. As I became more involved in comics, I started going more and more, usually to support my friends or lady-friendly comics.
It felt like a huge risk when I first started putting my comic online. It was very scary to put myself out there that way and to open up something that I cared about very dearly - and to be the only creator involved with it.
Just make the comics you want to see, and people will notice.
I swear slightly more when there aren't children around, but not that much.
It seems like everyone in my peer group has more 'Pokemon' knowledge than I do.
I love the female characters in 'She-Ra.' There isn't another show quite like it.
I've always kind of gravitated toward characters who are a bit distant from the narrator or the point-of-view characters, so that's kind of important to me, to set up a different character who would be the point-of-view character for the story.
'Winnie the Pooh's Grand Adventure' - the movie where Rabbit adopts a baby bird and raises her, and then the bird grows up and flies away and leaves him - I cried.
I don't think naturally I tend toward anything that's really distinctly branded as adult. I feel like I sort of write for myself as I would've been at 12 or 13 years old.
The good thing about doing a comic that's entirely my own voice as a debut is that people approached me with similar jobs, with stuff that they knew that I could do justice to because they had read what I'd already done. It meant that I was getting jobs that I was actually interested in, and I didn't have to prove myself on someone else's property.
I tend to bristle at people praising alt comics as some kind of perfect comics paradigm, because there's quite a lot of misogyny in its history as well. Like, in my first comics class, every single great comic creator we studied was male.
Fantasy is usually considered an escape, but it's also a way to deal with weighty real-world issues from a safe distance and in a context where you usually have some kind of power that you don't have in real life.
Not long after I started posting the first 'Nimona' pages online, a literary agent reached out to me, and I ended up signing with him before I returned to school for my senior year.
Social media is basically the entire reason I have a career right now. Like everything, my readership for 'Nimona' came because I was active on Tumblr.
I've always liked shape-shifter characters. I gravitated towards characters like Mystique from 'X-Men,' Zam Wesell from 'Star Wars,' and Tonks from 'Harry Potter.'
Usually I start with a concept, which I then sketch out so that I can get a feel for the character. The character doesn't really become real to me until I draw them.
