Comic genius
Australian graphic artist Nicola Scott has been tasked with creating the next chapter of her illustrated idol, Wonder Woman. Here she describes what it’s like being g a woman in a geeky y man’s world. Styledy byy Kate Darvill. Photographed by Duncan Killi
“IN THIS WONDER WOMAN BOOK, FEMINISM IS AN ABSOLUTELY KEY PART”
Ifirst saw Wonder Woman when I was four years old. I can remember sitting on the sofa with my sisters and female cousins when the TV show came on. They weren’t interested, but I was obsessed. She was my first introduction to a superhero and was a fictional character that I fixated on. And I never grew out of it. It was because of Wonder Woman that I decided to draw comics.
“I originally wanted to be an actress – I even auditioned for a Wonder Woman TV show once – but about 15 years ago I decided it wasn’t for me. I found it demoralising being constantly rejected, which is crazy since I went from one creative career to another where all you do is get critiqued.
“I come from an artistic family: my mother is an artist, my gran was an artist, my sister is a graphic designer, my other sister is a singer/songwriter, and we’ve all had good, happy careers, so I needed to do something creative.
“The skills I have are I can act and I can sew and I can draw, so I put acting in a box, studied fashion design for a year, and I was sitting in my place having breakfast on a Sunday morning drawing, and I came back to the question again about what I wanted to do. I’d done some commercial illustrations before, and thought: ‘If I had to draw the same thing all day every day as a job, what would I want to draw?’ And then I thought: ‘God, it’d be fun if I could just draw Wonder Woman!’ Because any time I was sitting on the phone, if there was a pen in front of me, I’d just start drawing her. I’d draw her face – I’d start with an eye because eyes are always fun to draw – I’d draw the rest of the face, then I’d draw the tiara, then I’d draw the head and that would be it. That would be all I would draw all of the time. That was my doodle.
“It’s embarrassing to say, but it was like an Oprah lightbulb moment. I thought: ‘Oh my god, that’s a job that somebody has right now, that’s a real job. I want that job.’ Then I realised: ‘I’m going to draw comic books.’
“Now when I draw I use a lot of my skills: I act out a lot of the characters, I get to cast everybody, I know where all the seams go when I’m drawing the costumes, and I’m aware of blocking and three-dimensional space, so I have a lot of fun. You can really go to town on production design in comics because there’s just no limit, you can create your own world. It’s a ridiculously fun job that just requires a lot of time.
“Wonder Woman is owned by Warner Bros and she, Superman and Batman are what DC Comics considers its holy trinity of characters, its top three.
“But Wonder Woman’s audience is a little more niche, and every time her origins story is told it can get diluted rather than enriched. Every time a creative team comes on and they have a new directive or the company has a new agenda, she sort of gets removed from what her point really is and why she was popular in the first place – they keep trying to make her cool. She’s cool, you just have to let her be cool! She spent the last 20 years becoming more like Xena, like a warrior, tough, aggressive, a little man-hating. They hook her up with all the guys, she’s been everyone’s girlfriend at some point … I mean, really?
“I’ve worked for DC for the past 10 years now and when you look at the greater industry, including people who make their own comics, the number of women working in the industry is huge, at least 50/50. But the closer you get to the core of it, the thinner it gets. A lot of that is to do with it being a bit of an old boys’ club, although that is disappearing as social media galvanises the disparate groups. But it has also got to do with the workload – you need a certain level of experience to get there, and you need to have thick skin. I know a lot of guys who have got right to the middle and wanted to get out, because the turnover [of work] is quite demanding; each comic issue is generally 20 to 24 pages, and generally they come out once a month, so that means creating 20 pages a month.
“I don’t personally find it hard being at the centre of such a geeky man’s world, but I’m not a wallflower type and I got into the industry older than most. It helps that I’m Australian, it helps that I’m tall, that I’m loud, and that I work from my home in Sydney, it keeps me out of the drama at head office in the US. I haven’t been intimidated but I feel like a lot of younger girls in particular are, just by how full on it is.
“About six years ago my writing partner Greg Rucka and I started our own title, Black Magick, a witch noir about a female police detective who practises witchcraft, and it has opened up a whole new, more nuanced audience for me. Black Magick is my first original property, and it’s really fun owning something myself, having a stamp on something that has a shelf life, that will outlive my ability to produce it.
“Geek culture has become more mainstream recently because of the Marvel movies and television shows like Big Bang Theory that have opened up a whole new geek-centric audience – nobody knew what Comic-Con was 10 years ago, now it’s on the news!
“It’s very funny, you’re in this tiny little bubble industry but you have a limited fame within that, so I do get recognised at Comic- Con. Not everyone who’s into comics knows who I am, but it certainly helps to stand out as an Australian and stand out as a female creator in the mainstream. “At this year’s Comic-Con we celebrated 75 years of Wonder Woman. It’s an incredible time for Greg and me to be working on her. And DC is really letting us stamp our agenda on her – we are working on retelling her traditional origins story, which hasn’t really been done in continuity for about 30 years. So we’re giving it a modern twist, we’re shining some fresh perspective on it. We’re really taking it back to the real 1940s origins as well.
“Being a female creator gives me influence, because I’m part of the team telling the stories, so I can bring things to the foreground of the panel that aren’t part of the story but they’re part of the subtext. If there’s a gender subtext that I think is relevant or is interesting or is cheeky to slide in there, I will always do it.
“Certainly in this Wonder Woman book, feminism is an absolutely key part of the agenda. And certainly on Paradise Island, where she comes from, is all women. These women have all been around for thousands of years, of course they’ve been having relationships with each other; they’re not a bunch of horny straight women just waiting for a man to come along!
“The pressure of working on it is multifold, especially because Wonder Woman is having a bit of a renaissance with the new film coming up and the 75th anniversary building momentum. Her general audience is sassy women and gay guys. Wonder Woman is quite a figurehead, but I think because she made a really good impression in the Batman v Superman movie that was out recently, it was a great introduction to a whole new bunch of fan boys.
“Wonder Woman is my dream project and one I’ve been wanting for many years. It is amazing, but terrifying, but it feels really beautiful. She’s my patron saint. I hope I don’t fuck it up!”