I'm a writer and a feminist of color, and I've written complex, powerful women for my entire career. I'm just one voice, but there are many others like me.
If you tell people what everything is before they have a chance to experience it, then I feel like it's a much different experience.
I don't think of myself as having any freedom when it comes to how 'Monstress' is structured and how the story is going because a comic book has to be even more tightly structured than a novel, because there is no room for mistakes. Once the art is done, the art is done.
I love writing prose. I really love writing prose. It's very pleasurable for me.
Comics writing is for your artist. It's not for the general reader; it's for the artist. So I love writing scripts for artists.
I love writing comics too much.
As creators and as readers, we need to always be pushing it - by looking for the books, looking for the artists and people and stories to support what we feel to be a better representation of all women. Of real women.
If men disappeared tomorrow, we'd still be having the abortion debate. If men disappeared tomorrow, there would still be racism and conflicts over religion.
A novel is 400 pages; it's an endurance race. There's no artist, so I have to describe everything. It's all prose. Whereas with comics, I can rely on the artist. It's really wonderful to have that collaboration and to not always feel the burden of describing everything myself and also just to have someone who can paint the world.
We like to imagine that women would do a better job of ruling the world - and I'm one of those optimists - but women aren't a superior kind of life form just because of our gender. We're awesome but not perfect. We're human. Just like men.
We've been conditioned to be incredibly avoidant. 'I'm afraid I'll be called a racist if I say something wrong,' is the familiar retort. Well, okay, that's scary and difficult, but staying silent, avoiding the issue, doesn't mean that racism goes away.
I can't control what a reader takes from a story.
As women, we have to deal with constant threats of violence. And it's in our media and fiction, too. So we internalize it.
Take 'Ex Machina.' Everyone said it was one of the great feminist works of science fiction. But what I found disappointing is that everything about the main female character is defined by men.
Because there are almost no men in 'Monstress,' we're focused completely on women. It's removed from traditional structures.
Male heroes are entitled to particular privileges, and why not the women as well?
Sana Takeda is a genius. It's really that simple. Her vision and sense of story and beauty is beyond compare. I loved working with her on 'X-23.' I knew, though, that she could do much more beyond the constraints of a traditional superhero story.
Every single girl in the world has had to fight to have herself heard, to have space, and to have a self in societies that try their best to deny them all three.
As a writer, I find that a good way of evolving a character is through an examination of his or her defining relationships - and what's more defining than a relationship with someone you love?
Timing is irrelevant when it comes to desire.
