Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

Why did you choose to include Devil Dinosaur in this issue?

I got a list of animals in the MArvel U and I saw Devil Dinosaur and I love dinosaurs so I had to have one in there. Then I saw some pages Ig had done for Marvel Adventures Avengers which he drew a dino and I got giddy to see his take.
 
The characters of Throg and Ms. Lion have both gone down well with the fans, are you pleased about this?

Extremely. They are my favorite characters, along with Lockjaw, Hairball, Lockheed, Redwing and Zabu. :) Seriously, I love that I set out to create personalities for these characters and folks seem to really like them. Before the first issue came out, people wondered how the animal thing would work. Would they talk, not talk--how would it work? My hope was that you'd enjoy the characters so much, you'd forget they were talking animals and suspend disbelief.
 
Any hints to what we can expect in the next issue?

Well, as we saw on the last page, they're falling into the ocean, so we'll see. Also, as reported in the news, Bo Obama makes an appearance as well. I'm shameless, but I'm having fun!

Had you had much experience of drawing frogs before this issue?

Not to my memory! I did a little basic research on their anatomy,
especially the skeleton, to get an idea of how they are put together.
Did you know that a frog's skull is about half the size as its torso?
And that they don't have necks or ribs? I didn't either, before this!
 
Did you enjoy getting to draw the very cool character of Frog-Thor?
 
I did! It's always a fun challenge to find the line between animal and
human form when drawing an anthropomorphic character. Of course,
Walt Simonson's design was spot-on, and editor Nate Cosby wanted
us to be as true to the original as possible, so that was easy.
Reading Simonson's comics made me realize how faithful Chris Eliopoulos remained in his script! Ig Guara did a fabulous job giving him that noble Thor quality, of course. I was very happy to work on a book with Ig since he became a favorite of mine working on Marvel Adventures Avengers with my husband Paul Tobin.

Do you have any pets yourself?
 
I do not. I would like a puppy, but it would need to be a special non-pooping, non-chewing, non-shedding puppy. If I had a larger apartment I might think about getting a cat.

Your art has a very unique style, did it take you a long time to develop this?
 
I think most artists develop continuously over their lifetimes. Mine comes from being a comics reader almost from birth, and spending my whole life reading any comic book that happened to fall into my hands. My most profound influences are probably Archie and Harvey comics, Los Bros Hernandez, and the How to Cartoon books by Jack Hamm. But I could also claim Milton Caniff, Hayao Miyazaki, Wendy Pini, and Jack Kirby as strong influences.

Do you find you are treated any differently being a female comic book artist in a primary male-dominated world?
 
I don't think so. Where I live in Portland, Oregon (a city which sometimes seems to be populated ENTIRELY by comic book people,) the creative community is totally NOT dominated by men. I think the superhero genre will continue to have more and more lady creators in the coming years. Popular adventure is no longer marketed solely at a male audience, and girls who
grew up on Naruto, Harry Potter, and Twilight will develop into mature,
unique artists that editors want to hire.