Boum talks The Jellyfish

[00:00:00] Your ears do not deceive you. You've just entered the Cryptid Creator Corner brought to you by your friends at Comic Book Yeti.

[00:00:07] So without further ado, let's get on to the interview. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Cryptid Creator Corner.

[00:00:14] I'm Byron O'Neill, your host for today's Comics Creator Chat,

[00:00:16] and we've got another special one today because I'm delighted to introduce Boom through the program today.

[00:00:22] She has a fantastic new graphic novel called The Jellyfish that's dropping soon from Pow Pow Press

[00:00:28] that we are going to dive in today and I will do my best not to endeavor to embarrass myself with my very poor French.

[00:00:34] So I keep telling myself that. But Boom, how's things going? How are you doing?

[00:00:38] Hi, I'm good. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:41] Yeah, absolutely. Welcome to the show. Well, I got a chance to read an advanced copy of The Jellyfish

[00:00:46] and kind of the basic storyline follows the young woman Odette who is slowly losing her vision.

[00:00:52] Wow. I first want to congratulate you on the courage to tackle such a personal topic,

[00:00:59] even if the main character Odette's experience isn't an exact mirror of your own with vision loss

[00:01:05] or at least I don't think it's an exact, we'll get into that in a minute. But this is my first

[00:01:11] no-have-probably-here out of 10 comics work for 2024. And I've been pushing reading 14,000

[00:01:17] I think or so comics pages so far this year and I'm not alone because the good reads reviews

[00:01:23] when I check them are overwhelmingly positive in a way I rarely see. So this is really amazing stuff.

[00:01:30] I wanted to start off with kind of what were you personally experiencing in terms of vision loss?

[00:01:37] Because as a disabled person myself with an autoimmune condition, they get triggered by

[00:01:42] some of the most random things at times and feeling like the medical system is failing me.

[00:01:49] This hit home really hard. So how did your own personal experience and

[00:01:56] condition dealing with this progressive vision loss manifest into The Jellyfish?

[00:02:02] It basically wrote itself. I've been having eye problems since probably 2007.

[00:02:11] I believe I don't have an exact date. It started kind of slowly and it didn't look like it was

[00:02:18] a big of a deal. I would get to see floaters, a bunch of people end up having them at some point

[00:02:25] in their life. So it's some dots, some great dots, transphobic dots that you see in your

[00:02:30] vision. What I understood from it is that they're kind of like cells that are in the

[00:02:38] gelatin of the eye and eventually you see them and they're kind of annoying.

[00:02:43] They're not dangerous, but at some point they float down to the bottom of the eye and then

[00:02:49] you're rid of them until a new one shows up. Most people get them, but I had like thousands

[00:02:55] of them at the same time in my right eye. So it was this huge blob blocking part of my vision.

[00:03:03] It was not like I could see through it, but I would draw. So whenever I would sit in front of a

[00:03:10] white sheet of paper, the contrast would make it so that I would see it quite often and it would

[00:03:15] be annoying and it moved like a jellyfish because it's inside the eye. And so let's say I would

[00:03:22] look to the right and then I would look right and then the blob would slowly float into place

[00:03:28] at the center of my vision with a delay. Then I would have like let's say I had something really

[00:03:33] tiny to draw and it was kind of in the way. I would look away, have it move out, draw the line

[00:03:38] and then slowly would move back in. And the doctors were kind of stumped. They didn't know what it

[00:03:44] had caused this. And so I didn't have a name. I didn't get a proper diagnosis for it at the

[00:03:48] time. And so because I didn't have a name for my disease, I made up one and I would say

[00:03:52] I have a jellyfish inside my eye. And I just ended up thinking it would probably be doable to write

[00:04:01] a story with a character who has a literal jellyfish inside of their eye. And I did, I almost made

[00:04:08] a short film all of this because I studied animation. I was in traditional animation and

[00:04:13] I worked in that field for some time. And in 2010 there was a call for submissions at the

[00:04:19] National Film Board of Canada for animated shorts. And I pitched one that was called a jellyfish,

[00:04:24] which was a five minute, very, very short film with the same kind of premise that the book has.

[00:04:31] I was one of three finalists. I didn't win. I was not selected, which is a good thing because

[00:04:35] the book I made more than 10 years later is much better than the film I would have made at the

[00:04:41] time and probably I guess that making the film would have, I would have been like,

[00:04:46] oh, okay. So that idea has been done and I wouldn't have made the comic afterwards.

[00:04:52] So because I didn't win, I put that idea into a drawer and I moved on. And I picked it up again

[00:05:00] nine years later because my eye kept worsening. I had more diseases in that same eye. So it's

[00:05:07] always the same eye. I guess I'm lucky that it's always, you know, the other one is Christine.

[00:05:12] Okay. So I wrote a script for 200 page and something graphic novel and I pitched it to

[00:05:20] Pow Pow Press and well, the French branch of Pow Pow. And I signed with them in 2021.

[00:05:27] And I had reworked the script with, you know, more insight that I had had

[00:05:32] through the years. But something like two weeks after I signed with them,

[00:05:37] I had an optic neuritis, which is an inflammation of the optic nerve in that same eye and I became

[00:05:42] blind in that eye. So now I am blind. I hide it. I'm in my emo phase and I'm almost 40 years old

[00:05:51] because it tends to get lazy and sometimes the droop, you know, goes on its own path.

[00:05:58] And I'm kind of, it's still new. It feels new. So after like the whole hospital or deal was over,

[00:06:05] they tried to save my eye and it didn't work. I went back into my script and into my storyboard

[00:06:11] and I changed a bunch of things. Most of it is the same, like the premise, the ending

[00:06:17] hasn't changed. The ending, I had like this course planned for this character,

[00:06:22] but I changed a lot of things, especially the appointment scenes where everything is

[00:06:28] pretty true to like my own life, most of them, not all of them, because I took some liberties

[00:06:36] to make, to write a better story out of my own eye problems. I didn't want to tell my own story

[00:06:43] because it was kind of just like, oh, well, you know, I have eye diseases and hospital

[00:06:48] appointments and then I get back home and I cook dinner for the kids. And I did so much

[00:06:56] so many journal comics before because I had a web comic called Boomeries, which was

[00:07:01] like four panel strips about slices of life of my own life. So they were all true stories and I

[00:07:06] felt I wanted to move on. So I didn't want to tell my own story in this book, but it's still, you know,

[00:07:13] it could be, it's part of my life still. It's probably my most personal book, even though it's

[00:07:18] fiction. Okay. Well, I think probably as a disabled person myself, it hits a little

[00:07:24] harder, it hits a little different than it may your average person. And I was curious, is it

[00:07:31] cathartic or is it something designed to help people or is it both? Or, you know...

[00:07:37] It's cathartic mostly. But I don't know if it's designed to help people, but it does.

[00:07:46] I don't know if I did it on purpose. The idea, well, some of the, some of me wanting

[00:07:53] to tell this story also came from the fact that people around me, like my husband,

[00:07:59] he would forget that I had eye problems. Like, every once in a while he'd be like,

[00:08:04] do you still have your jellyfish? And I'd be like, yes, it's not because I don't talk about it,

[00:08:10] that it's not there anymore. And it just hit me that for these people, even if they're in the

[00:08:14] know, they don't get to think about it like every waking hour, like I do or like anyone

[00:08:21] who has a chronic disease does. And so I wanted to write a story about a character in that kind of

[00:08:28] position, but I wanted the reader to feel the same way. And so that's why in my book,

[00:08:36] the character sees a jellyfish floating around, but the reader does as well. And so if the character

[00:08:41] loses their eyesight, the reader also loses their eyesight while reading the book. The book becomes

[00:08:48] harder and harder to read as you go on. It's very hard to speak of my book without

[00:08:53] spoiling some sort of, it's an experience. You have to read it.

[00:08:58] Yeah, it's very, very unique. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about there,

[00:09:04] you know, I can kind of speak from my own personal experience as a disabled person with no

[00:09:08] outward visible manifestation of, you know, the disability that they're going through is hard,

[00:09:14] right? It's isolating even from those we care about the most. And kind of what I loved about

[00:09:18] this story is the balance of portraying that very real struggle of loss with the joy that we can also

[00:09:24] find in the people that we love. And, you know, my own personal journey has been as much about

[00:09:29] me understanding how my illness affects my wife and my son as much as it does me and how I can

[00:09:36] lean on them for support and how that's okay because, you know, my nature is to try and

[00:09:41] spare everyone my own pain, which kind of I found makes it me even more withdrawn and then I feel

[00:09:47] even more alone. So it's just like vicious cycle. Now that I've made this completely about me,

[00:09:52] I don't want to dig too much into your own experiences. But, you know, kind of when you're

[00:09:56] scripting this thing out, how did you want to portray those emotional story beats that are

[00:10:01] so critical to this kind of story? How I wanted to portray, I'm, it came pretty naturally

[00:10:09] because this was built on my own fears from when I first started having eye problems. Like

[00:10:16] 10 years ago, I would walk on the street being like, this is probably going to happen at some

[00:10:19] point. And it's not so bad if I lose an eye, you know, I can I will be able to live an okay life

[00:10:26] with just one eye. And so it felt strange that it happened the way I had thought it would.

[00:10:32] Like, and so it I don't know. I would just write the story beats. And I wanted to incorporate some,

[00:10:41] you know, some characters forgetting that it that the main character has a disease or

[00:10:48] some other character not knowing because the main character wants to keep it a secret.

[00:10:53] And so I wanted to build tension on this. I don't know if I'm answering the question at all.

[00:11:00] Basically, I don't know what I'm doing. I think is what I'm trying to say.

[00:11:02] Okay, no, it's fine. Yeah, that that that ever increasing number of jellyfish that Odette sees,

[00:11:07] you know, ratchets up that tension that you just alluded to in the book, you know,

[00:11:11] as she she gradually moves through seasons, you know, in her life, you know, the medication

[00:11:16] I'm on for lupus can over time cause blindness for some people. So, you know, it caused a bit

[00:11:21] of anxiety, you know, while I was reading it. And I'm not going to give the ending way,

[00:11:26] but that was so perfect because it was so calming, you know, to kind of finish on that note. So

[00:11:33] when you're building this, yeah, when you're building that as a narrative element,

[00:11:37] you know, that that progress because I've never seen anything like this. And

[00:11:40] I don't think we're giving anything away in talking about, okay, yeah, there's more jellyfish

[00:11:46] like progressively, right? But as a narrative element, it's quite clever. So

[00:11:51] how did you come up with that and and haste that because it's, you know, you're drawing it out over

[00:11:57] 220 pages, you know, to some extent there. Yeah. Well, there were stories like, basically,

[00:12:05] every time something in Odette's life would be positive, there would be the disease trying to

[00:12:11] catch up to them. And I, I storyboarded the whole thing without really knowing if it would

[00:12:19] work, the jellyfish thing. And I explained it to my publisher at first. And he was kind of

[00:12:25] like, I am interested but also worried because I had to make sure that the comic would still be

[00:12:32] legible and that people would still want to look at it. Yeah. And so my goal was to make the

[00:12:40] jellyfish, like not even annoying at first, because you kind of forget it's there in

[00:12:45] the beginning, because it's so tiny and it becomes part of the of the comic. And then there's a point

[00:12:50] in the book where you can't not see it anymore. And I kind of went by trial and error. And every

[00:13:00] iteration of this book, even the storyboarding phase, which my storyboards are really,

[00:13:04] really crudely drawn, like ugly, the ugliest possible, even those they had jellyfish around

[00:13:11] and I think I wanted to make my point clear to my publisher. Like, I think I know what to do with

[00:13:17] this and you have to trust me that this will look good in the end. And I only had like basic

[00:13:25] cues like, okay, so the jellyfish will still be contained within the panels for this part because

[00:13:31] you know, it's not taking over Odess Life entirely. They still have, you know, they can still

[00:13:39] live and not think necessarily think about their disease all the time. But once the jellyfish pop

[00:13:45] outside of the of the panels, and they take over the rest of the page, I wanted to,

[00:13:52] like there's nothing not even there's a love story in there and not even this and not even

[00:13:59] Odess, Odette being happy will take the jellyfish away. It was just a matter of

[00:14:06] I would draw the whole page and then place a strategy strategically place the jellyfish around

[00:14:14] and I wanted to make sure because this can this is important action it needs to be legible.

[00:14:19] This is not important. I can put jellyfish all over them. So yeah, trial and error, I think

[00:14:26] there was a clear progression in the story. And how many jellyfish I put there was a bit of

[00:14:33] trial and error. Okay, okay. Yeah. It was my first time doing something like that,

[00:14:38] but I had this idea for a long time. So I think it's just matured in my brain for all these years.

[00:14:45] I think it's first thing, first time I've ever seen, like not not just jellyfish,

[00:14:50] but it used in this way, you know, and as as they increase as they become more common,

[00:14:56] it makes them so much more menacing. And you know, jellyfish makes for an interesting

[00:14:59] metaphor in my mind because they're they're these dangerous creatures, but only in their environment,

[00:15:05] right? And they still operate at the whim of the wave. But there's nothing sadder than a jellyfish,

[00:15:10] you know, sitting on the beach devoid of any agency, right? Like they can't do anything.

[00:15:15] And their addition pulls this very interesting almost horror element into the book, you know,

[00:15:22] for me, based on your reaction, you were a little bit surprised.

[00:15:26] That's the first time I get that, but I get it. Like when I would first post previews of the book,

[00:15:32] when I was working on the French version. So whenever I had a preview posted, it was in French.

[00:15:37] I would get English comments on, you know, Instagram or and the people because they couldn't

[00:15:43] read the French or I don't even know maybe I would post without any text, I would hide the text.

[00:15:48] So they didn't have the context and I would get people like, they were adorable being like,

[00:15:52] oh, those jellyfish are so cute. And I was like, oh, that's interesting that you think

[00:15:58] that they're cute. Some people thought like the jellyfish was, oh, that's familiar.

[00:16:02] Like here's some pet or like a wizard or something. Yeah. Yeah. And but yeah, I was like,

[00:16:08] no, and I wouldn't I wouldn't tell them like right away. They're actually not a good thing.

[00:16:13] Yeah. But I thought that was interesting. But then the horror is I think the horror

[00:16:17] comparison is closer to what they are, what they mean in the book then oh, they're just cute.

[00:16:26] Yeah, I mean, it's all about presentation because part of it is that slow burn that really sells it

[00:16:33] because there are these really nice grounding elements that make Odette feel like any of us,

[00:16:38] right? Beating the bunny or sitting on the toilet and being absorbed in clickbait,

[00:16:43] news cycles, all these seemingly mundane ways that a healthy person will spend their time and

[00:16:49] that ultimately this progression it will take her away resulting in vision loss.

[00:16:54] So sort of as a fledgling writer of comics who's trying to play with scripts now myself,

[00:16:59] God help me, I'm trying to understand pacing and kind of what elements should or should not

[00:17:04] be included. So here is that added element that you're personally battling similar

[00:17:10] circumstances to your protagonist, which isn't exactly the norm. So what made all those things

[00:17:17] worthy of inclusion, all those little things as you're trying to juggle trying to crank out 220

[00:17:23] pages of a graphic novel, right? Because clearly this is establishing her as a character but also

[00:17:31] helping to pace the jellyfish, right? And as they increase that tension just continues to ratchet.

[00:17:37] So it was important for me to have the reader get to know Odette and their environment and

[00:17:45] their job and then whatever they did when they were bored. So all the clickbait thing

[00:17:52] and you know, they go to the supermarket and they read the magazine headlines.

[00:17:59] And that's just this feels like something everyone does and it feels kind of ordinary.

[00:18:06] That's something that they won't be able to do if they lose their vision,

[00:18:10] or at least not in this exact way. And so I wanted to show things that they,

[00:18:19] you know, they're going to have to grieve this, the loss of all of this.

[00:18:24] And so that's also why they work in a bookstore. I don't show that reading a lot. They do

[00:18:31] read it in the book, but not a lot. But it's implied that they read. And there's a bunch of stuff like

[00:18:37] tiny, tiny things that I want to put here and there being like this will be gone. This will be

[00:18:43] gone or at least Odette thinks that it's going to be gone. There's some, there's ways to work

[00:18:48] around it. But you know, so it was important for me to set everything up to then I guess break

[00:18:57] everything. And I don't know, I wanted to, yeah, so work day, you know, colleagues, friends,

[00:19:08] the love story and everything, I wanted to make it feel, make the world seem alive.

[00:19:13] And so the people really, some people, I had like a few negative criticism for this book. It's

[00:19:21] got an overwhelmingly positive response, but some people like, oh, it's so boring. I thought it was

[00:19:28] boring when I was working on it after a while. Like when you've been working for three years on the

[00:19:33] same thing and you don't have a lot of outside opinions on this, I ended up thinking this is

[00:19:41] really, you know, mundane and boring and people will be bored to death. I thought the jellyfish

[00:19:47] thing was the good part. I'm like this, I believe in this. The rest of it, I'm not so sure. But then

[00:19:54] it came out and it had a lot of success. So I was like, okay, I have to trust myself more.

[00:20:02] So yeah, I just believe that it's more important, it's important to bring the character to life

[00:20:08] before you like throw bad things at them so that the reader can relate better and then

[00:20:14] understand their struggles. Does that answer your question?

[00:20:18] Yeah, it does. And I think...

[00:20:20] You have good questions. You're a big question.

[00:20:22] Well, thank you. I mean, I think the filter of being a disabled person and having gone through

[00:20:27] that relatively recently myself, it was like 2020 when everything really happened and hit,

[00:20:33] it is so life-altering and changing. And it is very difficult at times to articulate

[00:20:39] to people who haven't gone through something similarly. All those mundane things that we

[00:20:47] all take for granted, that all of a sudden can be gone in a flash. So for me, that slow burn was

[00:20:54] really powerful because I could see it immediately. I get into the pages, I'm like,

[00:20:58] I know exactly where this is going but I'm completely bought in and along for the ride

[00:21:03] because it's so well done. Thank you.

[00:21:07] Yeah, well, I should mention it's also a queer love story. For myself, I think I've finally

[00:21:13] entered into that delightful mental space where it's just a love story. It doesn't really require

[00:21:19] the designations. For me, it's finally like dreaming in a foreign language you're trying

[00:21:24] to learn. There's some subtle shift of the normalcy paradigm that makes... If that

[00:21:28] makes any sense, right? Yeah, it totally does. Well, to me, I don't know if I'm queer because

[00:21:37] sometimes I don't know anymore. I'm in a heteronormative relationship. I have a husband,

[00:21:42] I have children but I think representation is important. I don't think it's my role to tell

[00:21:52] stories about coming out or discrimination because I am not in that space and I think

[00:21:56] these people are better suited to write these stories. But queer people exist and they can

[00:22:02] have stories outside of that lens. I think that in The Jellyfish, any character could be interchangeable.

[00:22:12] You could put anyone in Odette's place and it would basically be the same story. It doesn't

[00:22:17] have... It can be a man or woman, a black, white, you know, it doesn't matter. And so

[00:22:23] it was just important to tell a story and I decided to make it queer because they exist. And I

[00:22:32] have a bunch of queer people in my life and I love them and I don't know. I guess it's...

[00:22:41] I have some sort of... I'm looking for my words in English. I get to do this and have

[00:22:48] a lot of people reading my work and so I think it's important to put these kinds of stories out

[00:22:54] there. These people exist and they have the right to exist. Yeah, of course. Losing my English.

[00:23:03] No, that's okay. Yeah, I mean there's so much representation actually in here and it's subtle.

[00:23:11] Right? Her partner, Nina, is a small girl. So we're also touching on body positivity

[00:23:16] representation in addition to disabled and queer. Odette is presenting as an androgynous but

[00:23:23] they're not done for show. It's not like you're beating a drum or waving a flag.

[00:23:28] But it is a bit of a kitchen sink on the sum, but if you pulled it off without it

[00:23:33] it feeling forced, which sometimes representation can't. I've seen that a lot in comics recently

[00:23:41] and I think that's the point to a lot of it. And that's good, we need that.

[00:23:48] But is there a secret sauce to the way you wanted to include all of these elements here

[00:23:55] in such a matter-of-fact way? Because that's really how it reads to me. It's just very

[00:24:00] matter of fact. It just is a teenage son and amongst younger people these things just are.

[00:24:07] People like yourself, close to 40, me pushing 50 and a little bit even a different.

[00:24:15] Pronouns, right? They're big deal to us. They're certainly a big deal to younger people but they're

[00:24:20] just so ingrained and embedded in the way you presented it. It definitely feels very embedded.

[00:24:27] It's younger and hip than I am. So I know that.

[00:24:30] I don't know if there's a secret sauce. I just decided to do it and not make it a big deal.

[00:24:41] There's going to be a lesbian couple in my next book and we just don't mention it. It just happens

[00:24:47] and no one speaks like, oh, they go two women together. It just happens. It's normal and

[00:24:54] I think that's what I intend to do with the rest of my future projects. Just make it normal.

[00:25:00] Make it like it's no big deal because it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be a big deal.

[00:25:07] Yeah, I think that's what I'm trying to say. It's a good thing that, oh, I wanted to say

[00:25:14] about the pronouns. In French we do have a neutral pronoun now but it's very new and it's not

[00:25:23] used widely yet. Also, French is a very gendered language. Everything has a masculine and a feminine.

[00:25:31] The chair is feminine for some reason and the door is feminine but the floor is masculine.

[00:25:38] So it was very hard for me to think about pronouns in French so I just went like, okay,

[00:25:43] Odette is going to be a she-her. But in the English version, I thought Odette was probably

[00:25:49] they-them. But because Odette is present at all times in the book, they're in every scene.

[00:25:57] There's only this scene where they're outside of a store and their friends are inside and that's

[00:26:03] the only moment where people speak of Odette. So that was the first time pronouns were needed

[00:26:10] and it was like page 142 I think. The translator was like, it's a bit late to

[00:26:16] introduce pronouns into the story so we just decided to not put any. And so inside the book,

[00:26:22] there are no pronouns being used for that at all. They are they-them in the blurbs and flaps or

[00:26:30] on the website or whatever but inside the book there's no pronouns. We just thought the reader

[00:26:35] can fill the blanks however they like. If they wanted it to be a she then she's a she.

[00:26:40] If they don't want to be there they-and I really like that idea that we don't really decide for the

[00:26:48] character. I really like that about English, the neutral thing that we don't have to-we

[00:26:53] start to have in French but it's still a work in progress. It certainly wasn't something

[00:26:59] I could work with when I wrote the script in 2019 so it's a new thing. Like it's-

[00:27:06] What is it? It's YELL. So he is YELL and she is EL and so it's a mix of both. It's YELL so that's IEL.

[00:27:17] Nice. But then it means that every adjective that we use has to be masculine and feminine

[00:27:23] so usually you have masculine dot and then the feminine ending. And so when you read something

[00:27:28] like a comic like in a text like an essay or that kind of thing that works but in a comic where

[00:27:36] everything is familiar and it's all mostly dialogue it's not very natural yet. I trust that we're

[00:27:44] probably gonna find a way to make it more neutral in the future. Young people are very

[00:27:50] creative and it's gonna work out. I'm probably part of the last generation who's gonna struggle

[00:27:55] with this but hopefully I will adapt. I won't do that. But yeah so I decided against it for this

[00:28:04] book because of the time frame we were in and because it was not quite there yet for the French.

[00:28:12] Yeah so that was like a real serious talk I had with the translators and we worked together to

[00:28:19] make it work for the English version of the book. Very cool. Thank you so much for the

[00:28:23] education like I had no idea that's really cool. All right let's take a quick break.

[00:28:29] Hey comics fam. Itty comic book publisher Banda Bar's just got a level up and announced it is now

[00:28:35] a cooperative. This heralds a new era for them including a partnership with Dallas Stories

[00:28:41] and they added several new members to the ownership group. Marcus Jimenez is now chief

[00:28:46] operating officer Brent Fisher takes on the role of chief diversity officer

[00:28:50] and Joey Galvez is introduced as head of Kickstarter ops and social media manager

[00:28:55] which is sure to increase their capabilities overall as a publisher

[00:28:59] and it further promotes their mission statement of advancing representation

[00:29:03] inclusion and diversity in the media. They also established a new board of directors to help

[00:29:08] chart the new path of their journey with new projects in the works like Alaska by dropping

[00:29:13] in June unbroken soon launching on Kickstarter and pollen coming up with Dauntless stay

[00:29:18] tuned to this space for more exciting news from the growing Bards family. Let's get back to the show.

[00:29:27] I'm always blown away for me you know the model undertaking that is

[00:29:31] the graphic novel monster right it's like so many pages and and this feels so divergent from your

[00:29:40] your more journalistic style of boomeries you know your webcomic that you're more known for

[00:29:46] so did you ever have that like oh shit moment when you're putting the graphic novel together

[00:29:51] like what have I done or are you just busy just cranking away. I had a lot of fun working on it

[00:29:58] it's probably the most fun I've ever had and so I would get up in the morning being like

[00:30:02] yeah yeah I get to work today like work on this towards the end maybe the last 50 pages or so

[00:30:12] I definitely felt like this is a marathon this is the longest thing I've ever worked on

[00:30:19] and it's not my first long form comic my first one was a small revolution but it was 80

[00:30:27] 89 pages I think and it was in 2012 published in 2012 and so it's been a while and I did a

[00:30:35] lot of shorter strips or one page two page gag comics thing in between so this was brand new for me

[00:30:45] to like go beyond 200 pages was unthinkable a few years ago but now I'm writing a book that's even

[00:30:52] longer than the jellyfish so I think I I think I enjoyed it but it's it's a process it's very long

[00:31:00] um we had a set date uh where like my deadline was to have the so we could print the book and have it

[00:31:07] available at a specific book fair in Montreal in November and so I remember like the September

[00:31:13] 7th it was my date so the whole summer I spent inside basically um my husband took all of his

[00:31:21] uh holidays off work uh so that he could be there for the kids and I wasn't there because I

[00:31:27] would work but that like long days and weekends too so the at the end of it was a bit of a

[00:31:34] bit of a rush a bit of um I don't think I'll do that again I think the next book if if I can

[00:31:41] my publisher is very uh mellow and loose like if I'm not done I'm not done yet so I'm probably

[00:31:47] not gonna set a specific date and I'm just gonna be done when I'm done because this was this

[00:31:54] was hard and then we missed the book fair because um there was a paper shortage and uh

[00:32:03] a shortage of workers worker shortage sure anyway um so we missed it by a week

[00:32:11] ah

[00:32:15] but you know it was out for Christmas in French it did okay but I had worked you know

[00:32:22] my butt off to make it for that specific date and it still didn't didn't work so there was a bit of a

[00:32:28] bummer um but yeah I don't I don't know I'm maybe because it's new to me I like doing longer work

[00:32:37] now um it's it's still feels uh fresh okay in some way yeah but it's it's long it takes a long

[00:32:44] time yeah yeah I don't think people really understand how long some of those things can

[00:32:49] take years and years yeah the jellyfish is three years but not full time but then the last year and a

[00:32:56] half more than full time uh so and but it was like I did only that I cleared my schedule out of

[00:33:05] anything else and I only worked on the book and um my next one I'm planning I'm starting now I'm

[00:33:13] doing working on the storyboard and I'm planning on planning on finishing in April of 2026 so I'm

[00:33:18] giving myself some time to uh work on it and people feel like oh it's two years like well yeah

[00:33:26] yeah I got kids and Mary yes life and yeah yeah yeah and summer and during summer the kids are off

[00:33:34] schools so I don't know how much I'll be able to work so I have to take that into account

[00:33:41] the summer is off or kind of yeah I know what that's like

[00:33:47] well you started boomeries in what 2011 I think is that that right okay and it seems like to

[00:33:54] to some extent diving into your own life and voicing like vulnerability and insecurities and

[00:34:00] like all these things and throwing them out in the world that maybe the jellyfish

[00:34:03] jellyfish wasn't as hard to do maybe in that way it may just my brain envisioning that way

[00:34:08] you know I've been trying to find my own comics voice um kind of through the expression

[00:34:14] of my own disability and I'm finding it's all very highbrow shit like it's allegories and metaphors

[00:34:19] aplenty you know in in my endeavor um just being an open book in this day and age of social media

[00:34:26] and everything else being what it is does that come easy to you like it does I guess I'm an extra

[00:34:32] extrovert and I like to talk and I'm probably annoying uh boomeries I just made fun of myself

[00:34:39] so many times and after a while it became second nature to just put myself out there I think

[00:34:45] that said I feel like the jellyfish is my most personal work uh it's quite different and

[00:34:52] it was not hard to do yeah well as I said it was um as I said it was cathartic so I

[00:34:59] felt good doing it and I feel I feel good when people read it because I worked hard on it um

[00:35:07] I'm probably I don't know uh I want to say suited for this I guess uh it comes natural to me um I'm

[00:35:17] also a natural uh going like going to conventions and seeing a bunch of people comic work is very

[00:35:22] solitary work yeah and so when I go to festivals and conventions I'm really happy to get to

[00:35:28] see a bunch of people so I'm very outgoing um I don't know I don't find it hard uh to speak

[00:35:36] about there's some personal stuff I'm still holding on to that I'm not sure I maybe I'll

[00:35:42] write something about it one day maybe I won't um so I'm you know I'm not like here's me with like

[00:35:50] all uh all my background all my backstory everything on a silver platter and choosing what to tell

[00:35:59] and what not to tell uh I don't know yeah feels I'm I'm it feels natural to me yeah I mean there's

[00:36:09] there's definitely a freedom in being an open book for sure like you can't hurt me it's all out

[00:36:13] there what are you gonna say yeah you know yeah right yeah well there's a contrast between the

[00:36:20] the boomeries and the jellyfish um which is sort of understandable given their structures but I

[00:36:24] wanted to dig into that difference uh a little bit for for you as a as a narrative storyteller

[00:36:30] you know because boomeries is by its nature it requires more exposition you know to get the

[00:36:35] message across in just a few panels right there's not that many um the jellyfish is very different

[00:36:41] we've talked about that these these quiet narrative moments with Odette where it's topographical

[00:36:50] you know to the scene uh where they're in a grocery store right and the announcement comes on for

[00:36:56] instance but otherwise there's not that exposition you know it's otherwise quiet except for them and

[00:37:03] the jellyfish you know always the jellyfish and and it's interesting because from her perspective

[00:37:10] they're they're not always within you know her natural visual periphery you know sometimes

[00:37:16] they're hind them or you know floating within the confines of a you know this panel environment

[00:37:21] like a companion like a familiar you know that we were talking about but these are two very

[00:37:27] different style approaches but they have that sort of same shared threading of you you know in them

[00:37:35] um with what you're trying to portray big picture thematically so is it was it difficult to

[00:37:40] make the switch you know between these two you know you've got three panels four panels that you're

[00:37:47] telling something very concise versus 220 page graphic novel right yeah um it was uh an interesting

[00:37:55] switch I think um what happened is that it's a mix of a lot of things when I was a teenager I would

[00:38:04] write like epic novels like I had this one novel I wrote uh that's like 450 pages long and like 8 by

[00:38:14] 11 like inch not just tiny pages like huge pages um and then when I went into traditional animation

[00:38:23] that's where I learned to be concise uh show not tell usually the strip thing is different but

[00:38:31] um animation you don't want to have talking other times so you show through movement and also I learned

[00:38:38] to synthesize my drawings and make them much simpler and I think what happened in that

[00:38:46] time span that you know trickled into boomeries and the few years I started working on comics is

[00:38:52] that I thought that I was a cartoony kind of uh artist that I worked with cartoons that I

[00:38:57] that humor was my thing and um I eventually started missing what I had been doing in the

[00:39:04] as a team and I feel like the jellyfish is kind of going back to who I was when I was a teenager

[00:39:11] so you know more serious story longer taking more time uh more introspective and so it kind of

[00:39:20] feels like I've touched this kind of subject matter when I was a teenager with you know I have

[00:39:26] much more experience now and I'm hopefully a much better writer and um cartoonist and story

[00:39:33] trailer than I was at 14 uh but it feels kind of true to myself as for the format um I think boomeries

[00:39:44] helped a great deal with my timing because I was constrained to four panels most of the time so I

[00:39:49] had to learn to like really make it work and now that I have like this blank canvas of

[00:39:55] you know infinite pages if I want to uh it's it's really interesting to put those this knowledge

[00:40:04] to work that that would um but I tend to still apply the show don't tell uh recently I was a

[00:40:13] mentor for another um young cartoonist and I kept telling him don't you don't need to write the character

[00:40:20] thinking she's looking at whatever like we understand that she's thinking that don't tell just use the

[00:40:28] drawings to show comics are a written language they're a language and we are lucky enough to

[00:40:34] have both you can have tax and you can have image and the image can tell things that the text

[00:40:39] can't so um I tried to do uh to do that in my work um as I was drawing it in the jellyfish I think

[00:40:48] there's a sequence of like 17 pages where there's no dialogue at all no text and as I was working on

[00:40:54] it I was like I am really really dumb like this is people are just gonna be like and read through

[00:41:01] the pages like really quickly but from what I understood it's a very very emotional

[00:41:06] slow paced scene and people tend to slow down when they read I I didn't know what to expect really so

[00:41:13] I was working on them and it seemed endless like oh my god this is such a long scene what what the

[00:41:18] fuck am I doing right but uh I then it ended up working in the end I think that's what

[00:41:25] we needed the book needed some sort of not a breather but a slowing down just to take

[00:41:32] in everything that's going on and then we can go towards the uh the ending better there's more than

[00:41:40] 17 pages of without dialogue but there's I think 17 consecutive pages without dialogues

[00:41:49] I don't know maybe I'm a fool I enjoy I enjoy showing without text there's a my next book has

[00:41:56] a lot of text in some instances because there's three very different characters and they're all

[00:42:01] main characters they're really important and one of them is not very talkative and whenever she's

[00:42:08] this spotlight it's very quiet around her so there's going to be a bunch of really really

[00:42:12] quiet pages it's just I don't know it's just a change and I think it's like you know comics

[00:42:19] look like you can look like movies sometimes better than pros can because we can show and not tell

[00:42:27] and I don't know there's an ambience and everything we can just set up with just drawings

[00:42:34] I think it can be very powerful and the strip didn't well no I did some strips that didn't need

[00:42:39] any language but there's text in pretty much every kind of like almost all the boom restricts

[00:42:47] I don't know it's a nice change of pace I'm enjoying it I'm gonna keep doing that kind

[00:42:51] of thing I don't know if I'm gonna ever go back to doing strips on a more regular base

[00:42:58] basis I'm I could maybe I'm not saying like no but nobody says no nobody says no no no I

[00:43:06] I just let me comics and whatever floats my boat at the moment I'm gonna I'm gonna do

[00:43:11] awesome well was the intent always for it to stay black and white throughout or at some

[00:43:16] point you were just working on you're like nah I'm not doing color because I've seen the

[00:43:20] some of the versions that are colored just certain panels on your insta and they look great so

[00:43:26] oh thank you I don't think color is my forte especially colored comics I think illustration

[00:43:32] is a whole other thing I am doing colored comics for children's magazine at the moment like it's

[00:43:42] series in a recurrent magazine I'm not really enjoying myself that much I don't think it's

[00:43:51] some people are awesome at this I think a comic you have to worry about the legibility and

[00:43:58] sometimes color can go against it it can be counterproductive because there's so much color

[00:44:04] that you're kind of like what am I looking at where's the character if you don't find

[00:44:09] like if you don't you can't guide the readers I to exactly where you want to like the course of

[00:44:16] action the speech bubbles in the right order you have to use the color to do that and and some full

[00:44:23] color comics don't do that for me and especially mine I don't think I am that good that's it

[00:44:29] my next one I wanted to have some color but I won like maybe two pantons two colors so it's

[00:44:36] not going to be like used like oh this dress is pink it's going to be used as a way to highlight

[00:44:42] some things I don't know maybe shadows or hello you know patterns but not this is blue this is pink

[00:44:50] like this this hair is pink because it's really pink but no she might be blonde but her hair is pink

[00:44:55] you understand what I'm trying to say yes um so that's going to be different working with

[00:45:01] two colors I've never done that really before I've done one black like black line art and

[00:45:07] colored shadow but I want to try something different I like to uh I like challenges every time I start

[00:45:16] a new project usually there's some sort of challenge involved something new that I'm

[00:45:20] trying to learn because otherwise I feel like I would um I have the French word in my head

[00:45:28] uh I feel it's my it's the only way I can learn I want my work to stay alive and not do the same

[00:45:36] thing over and over and over and I want to keep learning and I want to try new things and so

[00:45:41] my next one is uh it's going to be the color handling well I hope I do well I'm not there

[00:45:47] yet I'm not I'm just reporting no real pages until 2025 at least okay if the French word

[00:45:56] feels like the way you want to express it use the French word let people look it up and let them

[00:46:00] you know if they're interested drop it stagnate stagnate like say the same yes okay so it's the

[00:46:10] same stagnate it's felt the same but it's it's the ag and yeah okay well yeah that's pretty easy

[00:46:21] um who or what are some of your inspirations as an illustrator aside from battle angel Alita

[00:46:28] apparently oh that's that was my favorite manga when I was a teenager I kind of had a feeling

[00:46:32] because jellyfish really does have a I hate using it some extent but it does have a manga you know

[00:46:40] sensibility to it like it looks kind of like a manga you know I found that real interesting

[00:46:46] because um I I do read manga I don't read a lot of them now and it's not because I don't like them

[00:46:52] it's just because I have less time to read I probably and also I read a bunch of comics

[00:47:00] from Quebec where I'm from and there's so many of them now that's the new thing they didn't use

[00:47:05] to be uh we didn't have that many books when I started 12 12 years ago 13 13 years ago

[00:47:15] um and so whenever I read it's often something that my you know local peers have been doing

[00:47:20] so it's really great that I get to read that much um but as a teenager I would read manga but

[00:47:25] it was not that widely available like 30 years ago right so it was harder to find and so it was

[00:47:32] more limited and there were like my little dragon ball gun um I said gun them but that's the

[00:47:38] Japanese and French titles of Battle Angel Alita Kenshin and Evangelion and there was probably more

[00:47:45] but they were hard to find so I kind of stopped reading manga for a long time just because I didn't

[00:47:52] think they were so available not they are everywhere and it's great uh what what so

[00:47:58] whenever people compare my style to manga I find it interesting because I haven't read

[00:48:03] that many and I'm kind of like I see it why why does it look like manga that much

[00:48:10] I think it's because I like to vary the the the compositions and so sometimes the panels bleed

[00:48:17] outside of the page sometimes there's no panel at all and there's not a lot of panels per page

[00:48:22] maybe like six to eight I have it here it exists it's real yay I got it this weekend

[00:48:29] so it's still it smells good I've been like new books smell yeah yeah the ink the fresh ink um

[00:48:37] the gray tones definitely help uh but I um I play video games and I play Japanese video games

[00:48:44] and I think the the art style probably came from video games more than it did from manga

[00:48:51] when there was a teen and I don't know I think afterwards I kept incorporating things I liked

[00:48:58] in some other people's work into my own like making it my own just isn't it just like copying

[00:49:03] yeah um in terms of influences it's hard to say visually I enjoy a bunch of different

[00:49:11] styles I really enjoy the the autobiomemoir uh journal kind of a comic like I'm my own

[00:49:21] uh target audience I suppose I make the books I would want to read I follow

[00:49:28] people do I think I think most people do yeah uh making comics is kind of selfish when you think

[00:49:35] about it making books I guess it's selfish um but in a good way uh but um I have a bunch of friends

[00:49:44] also who are cartoonists and Montreal there's a pretty big comic scene and we meet up uh every

[00:49:50] other week or whatever to just draw together and so even if I'm like all alone working on a comic I know

[00:49:57] I can send a message to a friend being like hey I need try I need help with that scene can you

[00:50:03] help with the dialogue or can you help with that hand I've been trying to draw and I can't seem

[00:50:06] to draw especially a friend of mine whose name is cab and she's a cartoonist also now we were

[00:50:13] friends when we were 14 15 weird to see how far we've come and how we're both published authors

[00:50:21] she did utown which was published by only um last year last year okay yeah uh and so

[00:50:30] if you look at her her both our styles are different but you can definitely see some

[00:50:36] cab in my work and you can definitely think it's a boom in her work just because we've

[00:50:40] known each other for so long and we've worked together and uh we worked on our latest books at

[00:50:46] the same time and so we've kind of influenced mutually influenced each other uh for 25 years

[00:50:54] so it's so it's my comic buddy people mix and mix us up all the time we don't look alike at all

[00:51:02] but people mix us just because we always come as a team even if we worked independently from

[00:51:07] each other but we are always like we go to a festival together and also my name is the start

[00:51:13] of the b and her name starts with a c so we're all so always alphabetically uh you know one beside

[00:51:20] the other anyway um yeah so I read a bunch I like to be influenced by movies too I watch movies I

[00:51:29] not a lot of them I admit I'm not a tv person but uh or I read books or video games I get

[00:51:36] inspiration from everywhere around me and and life I tell things that you know are pretty true to life

[00:51:46] even if I go into my next one's gonna have some magic realism slash very very light sci-fi

[00:51:56] but it's still what's important in the story is their relationship between the characters and their

[00:52:02] uh I guess mental health and um relation to to uh their memories and everything so it's still very

[00:52:10] human and not very action oriented so I guess even if I improved something happening like in space

[00:52:17] with robots it would still be about people talking to each other and having relationships

[00:52:22] I don't I think I'm that kind of person yeah well tell me a little bit more about the

[00:52:28] the Montreal scene because I don't I don't feel like I know that much about it I've got a I understand

[00:52:34] as much as I can Toronto right and in that scene but you you know pow pow is based in in Montreal

[00:52:40] if I'm not sure yeah yeah yeah so you know how did you end up with them as a publisher or is that

[00:52:46] very much just a question because no it's not a dark question pop always a very very good publisher

[00:52:53] basically you could go through their catalog and not a single one is a miss I would say like every

[00:53:01] single book is great uh publisher um and they're they're very small teams so now there are three

[00:53:07] people three people but there have been three for like two months so it was two people and then

[00:53:12] just for a few years and for the first like 10 years papa was one person and um he's a he's

[00:53:20] a cartoonist that was actually his goal was to publish his own things first and then he became too

[00:53:24] busy being an editor publisher that he doesn't draw comics anymore but he works with comics all the

[00:53:31] time um but the Montreal scene what's special about it is that it's bilingual and because

[00:53:39] so there's you know English speaking people and French speaking people and as a French speaking

[00:53:44] I'm a friend good phone so I grew up in French um I was influenced like the comics we had access to

[00:53:51] we had a bunch of comics from the US so that's because we're you know a close neighbor uh

[00:53:57] but we also had a bunch of comics from France and Belgium so the Tain Tain, Asterix and then

[00:54:03] other ones because they were imported to Quebec and so we uh we had this and then Manga

[00:54:10] so because we had the French and the English influences it feels like comics from Quebec

[00:54:15] are their own thing they look like nothing else and uh I think it's it shows like I've been to

[00:54:22] France I've been to the Anglème comics festival which was in January which is one of the biggest

[00:54:28] comics festival in the world and the comics from Quebec don't look the same as they do in

[00:54:34] France even if they're in the same language it or same language it's not quite the same French

[00:54:40] but we understand them and they understand us but not as much as we do understand them

[00:54:47] we have a better understanding of their French um and so I guess it's just a mix of things we

[00:54:54] have been exposed to and because we're so close to the US we uh we have that baggage which is

[00:55:02] similar to yours but then we speak French and so we have some sort of different culture

[00:55:08] it's just so interesting and the Montreal comic scene Montreal is the second biggest city in Canada

[00:55:14] and so there's a lot of people living there it's uh the comic scene is very very live there's a

[00:55:21] great great comics festival in Quebec uh in Montreal there's one in Quebec City as well

[00:55:29] and so we have a bunch of festivals and it's really I don't know it's alive there's a

[00:55:33] whole bunch of opportunities to meet new people and meet other cartoonists and budding cartoonists

[00:55:38] and and established cartoonists and uh there's just a love for the comics uh in Quebec it's

[00:55:46] better than used to be uh it used to be seen as a children's literature okay on its way to

[00:55:54] being more accepted as like literature on its own terms and not just like a sub literature thing

[00:56:04] I recommend going to Montreal for the comic festival at least it's a good one okay nice really cool I

[00:56:11] always like hearing about scenes and these different little spots of the world and I'm also

[00:56:18] curious as a rabbit mom I think you have had rabbits there's a rabbit in the story yes I don't know

[00:56:24] if you still have a rabbit currently or not no I have two cats now but I've had two yeah

[00:56:30] not at the same time I had two rabbits uh like one rabbit at a time uh when I still

[00:56:35] live with my parents I would have rabbits I would take care of them okay yeah let's just

[00:56:40] purely my curiosity because my wife had one as a child really awful ending to that story which I

[00:56:44] won't go into unless you just really wanted to know um but they they seem like a finicky pet

[00:56:50] like based on my limited understanding right so I want you to be the ambassador for for rabbits

[00:56:56] here why should everyone have rabbit oh rabbits are basically cats that don't climb everywhere

[00:57:05] they could be really similar to cats uh because they want to be around you they follow you around

[00:57:14] when you when they're happy they kind of grind their teeth so it's kind of like they're purring

[00:57:19] uh they have they have a litter box uh they you've said the litter box where okay so their poop is

[00:57:25] could roll around in the house but it's um because they're her uh they eat uh plants their poop is

[00:57:32] kind of like dust so if you step on it it becomes poop dust oh great uh so it's not you know not that

[00:57:39] get yeah that's not so much of a selling point though like yeah but they do have litter boxes

[00:57:47] they can play uh they are really cuddly they're really soft they're really cute I really enjoy

[00:57:53] having rabbits and they they are not meant to be in a cage all day long and they can be very friendly

[00:58:01] like climb on the sofa and lie with you and sleep beside you and watch tv that kind of thing that

[00:58:06] cats do okay but they don't like climb on the shelves and knock things off so that's that's

[00:58:13] a better thing like it's easier managed than cats but if they're bored they will well cats do that too

[00:58:21] I was or dogs they do that too like they are gonna eat at your eat away at your furniture or your

[00:58:26] wires so you have to rabbit proof your home but cats do that and then they can climb and then

[00:58:32] eat stuff on top of shelves so it's it's really similar to cats I would say okay okay yeah

[00:58:40] chaos carbons so yeah it's like rabbits are not as much of uh chaos I really love cats uh but rabbits

[00:58:47] are not you know as bad uh they're not as well cats are not very expressive dogs are expressive

[00:58:56] cats not as much and bunnies not as much it's all in the ears mostly uh happy like

[00:59:03] happy rabbit will hop around and bounce around and they're called binkies I think they're gonna

[00:59:08] binky because they're pretty really cute and you're really soft I yeah I have friends that I have

[00:59:17] close friends that just swear by the rabbits um that are also comic artists it's there's something about

[00:59:24] comic artists and rabbits too I don't know it's because we are at home and you normally it's

[00:59:30] because we work from home and we're available like we can't take care of them at all times

[00:59:35] because if we're not home uh a rabbit is they could get in small spaces and be in danger so when

[00:59:42] you're not home usually you have them in a cage uh but then if you're not home all the time then the

[00:59:48] rabbit's in their cage all the time which is not ideal so usually uh a rabbit is not an ideal pet for

[00:59:54] someone who's not has no one at home most of the time unlike cats like cats are kind of like

[01:00:00] you know I do my own thing rabbits are not like that they're very social

[01:00:03] yeah cats don't need nobody well what else you got cookin I know you you've already alluded to the

[01:00:11] next project that you seem to be working on already so yeah so this uh for now it's called

[01:00:19] in transit the it's a working title but working titles are dangerous and it's probably gonna

[01:00:24] end up having that title anyway um it's set in the 90s and it's the it's a story where there's a health

[01:00:33] program a private health program that allows you to exchange bodies with somebody else so if you're

[01:00:39] unhappy with the life you're having at the moment you can take your conscience and exchange with

[01:00:45] somebody else maybe you'll be a better fit like your personality is going to be a better fit for

[01:00:49] that other body in that other life but because it's set in the 90s I want it to have a very tactile

[01:00:56] aspect so like you're you're shopping for a new life in a catalog like it's it's like a dating

[01:01:03] thing you read a small blurb with a photo and you're like maybe this one made me this one but

[01:01:09] of course it implies that uh your mental health not doing so well because you want to you know

[01:01:15] quit on your life but it's at the same time you there's uh it implies that the people around you

[01:01:23] won't know that you've made the switch because you'll you know your body will still be there

[01:01:28] and you know how some people change sometimes like they start new things only and it seems

[01:01:32] very very unlike them but that's because they they have made the switch so you know that's

[01:01:38] the premise I am not done yet I'm doing uh the storyboard uh I've designed uh the main characters

[01:01:46] which I'm okay with I'm not entirely uh convinced that I found their final final um design

[01:01:54] I still got a lot of thing time ahead of me to think about it uh I hope to be done with

[01:02:01] the storyboard soon probably in May at the latest okay and so it's going to be probably 240 pages

[01:02:10] so slightly longer than um the jellyfish and uh yeah so that's where I'm at nice but sounds great

[01:02:17] I'm looking forward to that one um I was digging around in your your patreon yesterday you're

[01:02:21] you're very active there like a lot of people I know have a patreon but like don't do all that much

[01:02:26] with it where would you like people to find you online patreon is the place to be I know there's a

[01:02:32] paywall there but I only ask for like one buck and then you have access to everything it's more like a

[01:02:36] tip jar it's a blog that's uh I use it just to talk about everything I'm working on at the moment

[01:02:43] um most of it behind the $1 paywall uh otherwise I'm very active on I'm active on facebook

[01:02:50] and instagram mostly um and yeah I have a portfolio which is the very official thing but I don't

[01:02:58] update it every day because I don't have a new illustri- like fancy illustration to put on

[01:03:02] there every day yeah but I think patreon is the best place because that's where I post the most

[01:03:07] and that's where I have the the most interesting uh things to talk about because I go into detail

[01:03:13] like this is how I work on the script this is how I do my storyboards people on my patreon

[01:03:18] have been here for a few years they have seen the and like me working on the jellyfish from start to

[01:03:23] finish working on the pitch until the end but I didn't show the actual pages and so the

[01:03:29] anglish-speaking patrons have been waiting for this codenbook for for a long time and uh they're

[01:03:35] really excited yeah I could see that for sure but they've seen like the the research I did for

[01:03:42] the characters and the the backgrounds and the outfits and the some scenes I rewrote I would post

[01:03:50] like old version new version of the scene I would I would talk about um you know the the festivals

[01:03:58] and I'm going to what happened there and that kind of uh you know I do a recap every month

[01:04:04] two of everything that's happened professionally speaking in the past month um yeah so it's um

[01:04:11] it's it's just a blog where I can rent but people can choose to read me or not I suppose

[01:04:19] but uh I think that's the place to be if they there's one place they could if not all then

[01:04:25] instagram is the second best one okay we'll put links to them in the show notes then

[01:04:30] awesome in summation you know my personal read of the jellyfish in one word brilliant

[01:04:36] like I love the hell out of it you know I think everyone should pick it up it's it's so honest and

[01:04:41] like grounded you know embracing the real joys and sadness in in our lives you know as a disabled

[01:04:47] person I just wanted to say how much it meant to me to see more representation in the medium

[01:04:53] and how much I appreciate it you know sometimes I feel very frustrated by healthy people and

[01:04:57] that's going to sound like terrible like and slanderous and I don't mean it in that way um

[01:05:02] I get it yeah I'm sure you do um and that's my point right they they don't always get it

[01:05:10] um but you put a book like this in front of their hands and maybe they will get it a little bit

[01:05:13] better right um and that's what we're all trying to do is make those connections and

[01:05:17] understand each other a little bit better um but don't buy it for that reason you know okay

[01:05:22] okay maybe partially but buy it because it's genuinely amazing I think it's fantastic

[01:05:26] it's out in what early May May I'm not sure if it's May 7th or May 8th because I've seen both

[01:05:33] wait I think it's I think it's May 8th but I've seen like bookstores like lunches May 7th so

[01:05:40] May 7th or 8th so soon very soon well call your your comic bookshops drop in the bookstore

[01:05:47] tell them you want to copy y'all um boom thanks so much for joining me on the show today it's

[01:05:51] been fun thank you so much for having me yeah this is Byron O'Neill on behalf of all of us at

[01:05:56] Comic Book Yeti thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time take care everybody

[01:06:01] this is Byron O'Neill one of your hosts of the Cryptic Creator Corner brought to you by

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