March 12, 2024 • 49 mins
Join us this week for a conversation with an absolute icon in the world of queer superheroes, Jadzia Axelrod! Creator of one of the most prominent trans superhero comics, Galaxy: The Prettiest Star, as well as the latest Hawkgirl miniseries from DC Comics!
Our conversation isn't just about her comics though, we also get into Jadzia's colorful backstory and her dabblings with circus performance, puppeteering, and costume design! We also discuss her long history with podcasting, going all the way back to 2005, and how that influenced the way she would later write comics.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:16):
Welcome to Transcending Comics, a podcast dedicated to trans representation
in comic books, manga, and webtoons, both on panel and behind the scenes.
I'm your host, Tommy, and joining me today is someone who's a legend in the
world of podcasting and an undeniable icon in the realm of queer superhero comics.
Listeners of this show will recognize her work from our first book club episode
(00:37):
on Galaxy, The Prettiest Star.
She's also finished writing an excellent six-issue Hawkgirl miniseries for DC
Comics, and she literally wrote the book on queer superheroes with last year's DC Book of Pride.
She's also been making creative writing podcasts like The Voice of Free Planet
X, going all the way back to 2005, well before I even knew what a podcast was.
(00:59):
Outside of comics and podcasts, she's also worked as a costume designer,
a puppeteer, and a circus performer.
If any guest of this show has ever been qualified to moonlight as a superhero, it's probably her.
With all that said, I'm very excited to welcome today's guest, host Jadzia Axelrod.
Hello, thank you for having me. And what a wonderful intro.
(01:20):
I don't think I've ever been referred to as a legend and an icon in the same sentence.
Amazing. Please introduce me wherever I go. Will do. Yeah, if you just need
a hype gal, I'll be there.
Thank you. Thank you. It was nice. I've already done my homework once since,
yeah, we covered Galaxy as like our third episode.
And I was like, whoa, this person did podcasts and puppet work and circus work.
(01:42):
Oh my my gosh, she's awesome.
And so I had all those notes ready to pull from.
Amazing. But I've got to know with as much of a storied life as yours,
how is working as a comics writer compared to the other jobs I previously mentioned?
It's more fun, honestly, like as fun as a lot of those jobs were and are making puppets is fun.
(02:03):
Being in the circus was lots of fun, obviously, but like Like writing in general
and writing comic book superhero comics, especially as just the most fun I've ever had.
I'm not sure if I've ever heard you speak elsewhere about your time as a circus performer.
And I'd love to at least get a little bit about that. Like, sure.
Well, you know, it was it was in the early 2000s. Weren't we all in a circus
(02:28):
back then? No, I guess not. I was.
It started as something I did in college and kind of grew while I was in college.
It petered out after I kept trying to get it going.
I had a we had a small group that would perform right before like punk shows.
We would be opening acts. Yeah, it was a cool thing.
And so I would the ringmaster and I would come out and do a whole thing.
(02:51):
Like I would make it very clear that we weren't doing a magic show, essentially.
And I would have a deck of cards there and I bring someone up from the audience
and I would ask them to take a card and they would take a card.
And I was like, all right, memorize that.
You got that in your head. Put it back in the deck. Shuffle the deck. Thank you.
And then I would pluck a card out of the deck, staple it to my forehead,
and then say, is this your card?
And they'd say, no, because it never was. And I was like, yeah, it's not a magic show.
(03:17):
That was the tenor of our piece. And so I would do escape art in that,
and I would juggle odd objects from the audience, and I would stick needles in my hands and face.
We had one guy who would walk on a ladder of swords. words.
My wife was part of the show and she did contortion acts and we were not married at the time.
(03:38):
We had a performer at one point who could get really small and like compress
her body into small spaces.
So we brought her out in a very tiny wooden box that would open and then she
would like slink through tennis rackets and then racquetball rackets and badminton
rackets, all this stuff.
I had fire breathers. It was a great show.
It was hard to keep people doing it. Like you you really have to have a passion for circus work.
(04:02):
So if people would do it like once and they're like, this isn't for me. And like, that's fair.
But I loved it and I kept trying to do it. And I performed with that show, which was mine.
And then I performed with a couple other circuses after graduating college,
doing mainly juggling, but also some of the pins and needles stuff.
(04:22):
Cause that's always, it gets people excited to watch someone stick a needle right in their face.
So yeah and it was it was fun
while it lasted it's something that kind of petered off once
i moved to philadelphia i tried to keep it going here and
for some reason or another like venues kept canceling or like the show i was
a part of just fell apart and it was like enough that i was like clearly the
(04:48):
gods are speaking and i this is not worth keeping up here but back in my north North Carolina days,
I did a lot of weird and wonderful sideshow circus stuff.
Now, does that experience with the circus draw you to circus related characters
or like a desire to write them? Absolutely.
(05:08):
Absolutely. You know, like I love that.
I think it's the circus is such a wonder. I've written circus related characters
before, and it's such a wonderful,
unique unique performing art because everything is real and you're doing it
in real and so much your performance is rehearsed and scripted.
(05:29):
And I'm not a musician, but I think it's the closest I can get to being a musician
in that I'm doing something real and I'm causing an emotional reaction and I'm
having a good time with the audience.
My brother and sister are musicians, so I don't know why it skipped me,
but like it's not something that I do.
So like of the major ones, like we got Nightwing, Mr.
Miracle, Nightcrawler, like are there any in particular?
(05:52):
Oh, Nightcrawler for 100%. Nightcrawler has always been my boy.
Like, I mean, it seems it seems so silly now to be like, hey,
Jed Zia, why did you identify with this character who has such trouble with
how he looks in the external way?
And that is has trouble sometimes with being so furry and looking the way he does.
(06:15):
And it's like, oh, obviously, there's a reason your favorite characters are
Beast and Nightcrawler and ones like that. So yeah, childhood dysphoria aside.
I've always loved Nightcrawler.
I do think he's a great character, and I would write him forever.
I know Tom Taylor, who's currently writing Nightwing, also has a circus background,
so he's got me beat on that one.
(06:37):
But should he ever decide to stop doing Nightwing, which he'll probably do until
the day he dies, I'm happy to pick up that torch. As far as the books of the
moment go, I know the monthly issues of Hawkgirl have just finished coming out
and we've got the trade coming out in June.
Yes. How about we start with you telling us a bit about your Hawkgirl miniseries
(06:57):
and like what might appeal to readers that aren't terribly familiar with the
character outside of maybe some Justice League or CW show appearances?
Circumstances right well that's the beauty of this miniseries is
it's like a starting point like you can pick this
up cold i tried to write it that way there's a lot of lore that we dig into
(07:17):
both in like hawk person lore but also like kendra saunders lore because i'm
a huge fan of that character so there is stuff that i wanted to dig into with
her as a character and her history but i i tried to make it so that like
you weren't front-loaded with it. Like, it wasn't like there was a text page
that was like, here's everything you need to know going forward.
(07:38):
It was like, doled out very carefully over the series, kind of held your hand
through it, and if you were paying attention, by the time all of that stuff
was important in Issue 5, you had already picked up everything from context clues, and.
Asides, and small little bits and pieces.
That was something I really respected about the book, of.
How you were able to take a character with as much.
(08:00):
Of a complicated and eventful backstory as hot
girls and someone with a history that draws from
so many larger books and events and kind of
encapsulate that all in one six issue
series and then on top of that you throw in superman and
batman and galaxy and a dragon and like all in
six issues so like how did you manage to be like okay we're gonna
(08:22):
touch on everything about this character and also
all my favorite parts of the dc universe in just six
issues like how do you manage to condense that into so few
i mean i don't that was my personal brief though
was like i wanted to do that like each issue
was going to be like this is my favorite thing about superhero comics i'm
just going to write that just in case they never let me do
(08:43):
this again let me get all my little superhero jones
out so yeah we're going to fight a giant monster in the city we're
going to team up with batman and do a monster
noir mystery we're going to go to
a gay club in metropolis because i want
want there to be one like all of this stuff that's like we're
it was like a list almost like mentally i didn't
(09:04):
write it down or anything but it was a mental list of all the
cool things that i've always wanted to do with superhero comic
and i was like we're gonna do all of them here we go and start and i was really
fortunate that i got a character like kendra saunders to do that with because
i've loved that character since i first read her way back in the early 2000s
(09:25):
approximately Approximately when I stopped being a circus performer to get the timeline right.
And I was reading JSA and really just enjoying that character and her attitude
and her like not taking any guff from these old men characters that everyone
else was so respectful towards.
Love that. So I've always loved that character. And then to have her be like
(09:49):
my first like really real superhero floppy comic book job was just a dream come
true because it's a character that I feel like has not gotten the spotlight that she deserves.
And it's a character that has been kind of shunted off into supporting roles
and like in the background, like she always looks really good in the background
(10:10):
of group shots because you can draw her higher above everyone else with big wings.
But she hasn't really had a lot of meat, some story meat
that can really dig into there because she's always been part of an ensemble
or a supporting character of Hawkman.
And to have this be a story about her was very exciting to me as both a writer and a fan.
(10:30):
So I came into it with that in mind.
That's like, this is going to be one, everything I love about superhero comics,
and two, everything I love about Kendra Saunders.
And when I was putting that plot line together,
it was clear that I had essentially a galaxy-shaped hole in the story because
(10:51):
I needed someone who had a contrasting personality because modern Kendra is
very brusque and direct.
So a lot of the personality that I loved back in the early 2000s has kind of been sanded off.
And I wanted to address that, but in order
for everything to to make sense i still had to include it so she's
(11:11):
got a very brus direct personality now and i
needed someone with a more bubbly fun personality who also
had reality or energy or magic
based powers to make my kakamani superhero
plot work and that was galaxy
so she was topping the list of supporting
characters that i was asking to use i had backups
(11:32):
if they said no but thankfully galaxy the
prettiest star as a hit so they were more than happy to
include galaxy in hot girl and she's
slotted in quite nicely i feel like as for
all the other guest stars the only one that i made like
i have to do this was batman in part
because like that's a childhood dream right there to write a batman comic but
(11:54):
also one of the things i love most about the only other hot girl series the
walter simons and run was that he established this like peer relationship between
Kendra and Batman, which I've always liked.
And it was especially at that time when everyone was kind of looking at Kendra
as like a sidekick, Batman didn't. And that was a neat thing.
(12:16):
And I've really liked that. And I wanted to keep that in this sort of like,
setting up Kendra to a new stage.
Let's keep the fact that she and Batman have a respectful professional relationship.
All the others were like either editorial suggestions, like with the case with
Superman and Power Girl and Black Canary in the first issue,
(12:36):
or in the fourth issue with the dragon.
Obviously, there's a dragon tracking Metropolis. Some of the super family needs to be there.
And I was given a list of who was not being in a book that month.
And so I was like, great, I will take the lesbian.
We are absolutely using Steel. And let's throw Supergirl in there for fun.
On those batman elements getting to incorporate and
(12:58):
expand on that relationship yeah i was curious about
the choice of the court of owls yes the villains
for the book so of all the batman rogues
gallery why uh why the court of owls for this hawks versus
owls man oh it's versus owls yeah that
checks out that's yeah because like when i was trying to think
of villains for this book i was like well what
(13:19):
are the natural predators to hawks
turns out none because they're alpha predators but there's
a lot of other similar alpha predators that compete
for resources one of them is owls so
it's like we gotta have the court of owls in here and the other is foxes so
when i was coming up with a new villain with vulpecula i wanted her to be fox
(13:42):
based essentially and have that trickster fox spirit kind of element so yeah
it was really just down to to Hawks vs.
Owls, which just seemed a no-brainer. If I get more Hot Girl stories,
we're going to see more Hot Court of Owls in there because that conflict is
just really interesting to me.
(14:02):
Now, another central aspect of the book and kind of playing on that trickster
element was the nature of folklore in the story.
And I know you've mentioned elsewhere how much you see folklore in modern comics
and characters like Superman and Wonder Woman almost act more more like folklore
figures in relation to the culture. Now I'd love to know, like.
(14:23):
If others pick up on these same themes and treat the characters you've worked
on in a similar way, how do you hope that Galaxy and Hawkgirl get used in this manner in the future?
Oh, that's an interesting thing. I mean, I have had a little window into that
because Galaxy is a part of Nicole Maine's upcoming dreamer book, Bad Dream.
(14:44):
And so I have seen how someone else both sees Galaxy and uses Galaxy.
And that has been wild. wild.
Thankfully, Nicole is a wonderful writer with an amazing sense of character.
So it wasn't like I looked at what she had done and was like,
oh, no, oh, no, this is all wrong.
Like all of it was right. Everybody sounded right. Because the same things that
(15:07):
make Nicole such a great actor, the same things that make her such a great writer,
just a really great understanding of character from the ground up.
So, I mean, I would hope that they, one, are as good as Nicole is.
So let's start there no one of less quality than nicole should be doing this but also that there's a,
(15:28):
the same thing that i approach this character with is
that respect and fondness for what has come before like we talked a little bit
about the white wild simons and stuff and huge fan of the jeff johns jsa and
then early hawkman that really dug into this character and made her what she
is Because I wanted to come to that with a lot of respect.
(15:51):
Because I do like those stories. I do think they're good stories.
It was weird to read them again, looking at them from Kendra's perspective,
which I had not done originally.
And to see the ways in which they are.
It's a little strange from her perspective. It makes sense from the perspective
that's being shown, usually from the men in her life. But if you look at it
from her perspective, it's like, this is weird.
(16:12):
But I still like those stories, and I still think there's a lot to enjoy about
them. so that's all I would want it's just like a respect and a love that I
brought to the character I'm
not the first person to write Hot Girl and I won't be the last, one hopes.
But I do hope that people take what I've done and what I've added and respect
that and use it going forward.
(16:32):
It's weirder with Galaxy because there was nobody before me with Galaxy.
And so putting her in the DC universe, like having her be a part of that,
means that at some point other people are going to use her and tell stories with her.
And I just hope that they, again, respect what's coming for and are fun and are good stories.
(16:52):
On Galaxy, I mean, this being a trans comics podcast,
in her being a trans superhero like i'd love to
get into her a bit more by all means and yeah
so in hot girl you reveal that galaxy has
identified as trans since before even coming to
earth i'm curious if that's always been something in her backstory that you've
(17:13):
had in mind or if this was something that was added later to confirm that like
she's actually trans in a a literal sense and not just a very trans-like allegory
with alien associated identities.
Right. Well, you have to understand that I did not think there was going to
be more than one galaxy appearance.
(17:34):
I thought I was very fortunate to have gotten Galaxy the Prettiest Star picked up.
I did not think this was going to be something that was going to fly off the shelves.
And I did not think it was a character I was going to be writing later.
I thought, this is my one DC book. well i did what
i wanted to do here we go so a lot of
the larger concerns about her and
(17:56):
her story i honestly didn't think about like we leave her gender assigned at
birth nebulous on purpose right like because that's not what the story is about
like it's not about who she was on sandy it's about who she is on earth but
when we moved her to hawk girl now she's a part of the dc universe.
And so a lot of this stuff that was like kind of airy fairy metaphor stuff that
(18:19):
we could get away with in the graphic novel now had to be concrete.
Like we had to list exactly what her powers did. We had to show her gender assigned
at birth and her having a different identity than that back in C.
Andy to show who she is and to make her, I guess, textually trans.
I always always thought of her as textually trans, but I know some people didn't
(18:42):
when reading the book, and I get that.
But there was this need to do that for exactly what we talked about a moment
ago, which is like someone else is going to take this character,
and they're going to write something, and they're allowed because she's part of a shared universe.
So I need to make sure that all the details are canon and correct.
And so one of those things is like listing exactly what her power set is. Another is...
(19:07):
Showing her gender identity another is
explicitly having her say that she's a lesbian because we
never say that in galaxy the prettiest star we
don't have to because that's again that sort of identity claiming
is not in a book about identity claiming that
sort of identity claiming is not what the book is about so it
was a it was an interesting thing to do that and to
(19:29):
have to kind of make concrete a lot
of the stuff that we've left unfocused because that
with the graphic novel we had a very tight focus
of what we wanted to do and with putting her in that bigger universe
we need to allow all of that
other stuff to become crisp and clear so that other
people could build upon it and i know you've thrown a lot
(19:49):
out there about galaxy's backstory in hawk girl and the years between her own
graphic novel and her appearances in hawk girl and i know you've mentioned that
like you have like four years of stories that you have in your mind that you
pull pull from to inform how you write the character and her supporting characters now?
Yeah, I had to plot all that out in my head in order to write her at 22.
(20:14):
Because the decision, this wasn't my decision. This was an editorial thing where
they're like, we don't like the idea of a teenage galaxy. We like the idea of a young adult galaxy.
And therefore, she and Haunt Girl are peers. We like that dynamic.
And I was like, that does sound like a fun dynamic. I'm down.
Now I just have to figure out what she's been doing in the six years in between.
So I did plot all that out. So do you imagine, like, if you ever get the chance
(20:37):
to explore those years, would you prefer to do it in the form of,
like, more graphic novels in the same format as Galaxy's first one?
Or would you rather do it as, like, an ongoing monthly series?
I would like her stuff, her teenage stuff, to continue to be graphic novels.
That feels right. right like if we could do a series of graphic novels that
(20:57):
kind of cover the ground in between galaxy the prettiest star and hot girl and
then hot girl is her first like superhero superhero,
statement would be great but i'd also if we do get a galaxy ongoing which would be.
Nuts that would be awesome not impossible because the book is a hit it could
(21:17):
happen if i do get a chance to write that i would love to do it but i would
want it to be her in her early 20s doing superhero things, right?
Because that would be the fun of that.
And I noticed that, like, distinction between the superhero years and her teen years.
And when the graphic novel was all we had, I kind of enjoyed the fact that, like.
(21:39):
All of galaxy's conflicts and victories
are personal ones like that there isn't any
kind of external threat that's introduced and even
at that like every win is something like that's very
much internal to her it's not even like defeating the xenophobic
school or like changing her family's minds necessarily
and i'd really love to know like what went
(22:02):
into establishing those conflicts and deciding like okay this
might be a sci-fi or superhero book but
this is going to to be closer to the actual problems that
modern trans teens face yeah that was something
that i really wanted to do and one of the focus of and
i did think that i had to have like a fight at the end so
the original plot had like a tacked on
(22:23):
fight like lobo showed up too and like galaxy fought him and all this stuff
and it was thankfully the wisdom of my editor michelle wells who is like this
is not the ending you want i can tell that this is not the ending ending you
want? And I was like, yeah, it isn't.
And the reality was that I'd been afraid of the ending that I wanted.
(22:44):
Like, I knew that that was going to be hard emotionally to write,
but it was the right thing to do.
And so the second draft of the outline has the ending that's in the book where,
you know, she goes to homecoming and they don't let her in.
And it's still a moment of of triumph for her because she realizes that she
(23:09):
doesn't need the homecoming that she thought she wanted.
And that was very powerful. It was very difficult to write because of that.
But it was the right choice. And I'm glad I did that.
And to have this sort of like superhero story about the person she saves as
herself was really important.
And that was kind of the goal with that whole graphic novel.
(23:30):
If we do more graphic novels, it might be a little bit different.
Who knows? Each book is its own thing.
I'd be curious if you could speak to the character of Taylor's brother.
Like, yeah, I remember on that first read thinking that this character would
make for the perfect villain or antagonist for Galaxy.
And like, in a way I've not seen done in other trans narratives because galaxy's
(23:53):
transition literally prevents him from like turning back to his natural form
where he's stuck as a human because galaxy transitioned.
And do you imagine like if we revisit those early years of galaxy,
like, would you likely use him as an antagonistic force?
Or do you imagine they'd be able to work that out in a personally?
No, because his his problem is that he's her cover.
(24:16):
Right. Right. And so the moment that she doesn't need a cover anymore because
she's out, he feels relieved.
And like you can see his character change from that moment on because his problem
is, is like, I'm not a person anymore because I have to protect you.
And then when it's like she is no longer in hiding, he then is free to be his own person.
(24:39):
So I don't think he would be an antagonist if he shows up in any future books.
I think he would be a much friendlier person.
Because like he's had a hard time of it like this
is the problem with me writing books is like i fall in love with all
of the characters and like they all have my sympathy so
like even carl who is such a jerk like you understand why he's a jerk right
(25:01):
he's been in this situation he didn't ask for he has to do these things not
even for himself but for someone else and he has his own demons that he's fighting
and doesn't have a release for.
And so I would love to use him in future books and to kind of show him get that
release that he's always been looking for.
(25:22):
But we see a little bit of that in The Prettiest Star where once Taylor looks
the way she does, there is some relief that falls off his shoulders.
And that's why in the end, he's able to be like, she's not someone we can keep
in a cage, right? Even though we tried, that's over now and we need to accept
(25:42):
that and move on. And she's beautiful.
That's something that he's only able to do because he is no longer essentially the jailer.
And because he's not the jailer anymore, he doesn't have to keep her in jail.
I feel like that plays into one of the things I like most about your comics,
and that's the way you explore the human side of these very supernatural sci-fi situations.
(26:07):
And even taking that more to the superheroes themselves, I've noticed you have
a really good tendency to just expand on the world in massive and thought-provoking
ways with just a single line.
Like, what stuck out to me was Kat in Galaxy mentioning how like seeing Superman
isn't like a good or exciting thing, but like a sign that something terrible has happened.
(26:29):
And I'd love to know where this sentiment comes from within you as a writer
and just like as something you look to explore in your comics.
Yeah, I mean, that's what excites me as a writer is to be like, what if this was real?
Like, what if these were human beings who had to deal with this in a way that's
like kind of, there's lip service given to, but isn't really explored.
(26:52):
And like, if you are a normal person in a world of superheroes,
it's cool to see a superhero streak across the sky, but it's like an ambulance
that's gone by, right? Like, that means that someone's in trouble.
That means something bad has happened. if you see a superhero coming toward
you that means something bad has happened to you because they're coming to save
you from something that you cannot get out of yourself like that's terrifying.
(27:17):
That's that's that's existentially terrifying right like there's we position
superheroes as symbols of hope which they are but also to really be in that
world is like has got to be like terrifying.
And that's always been like, again, that's something that I find really appealing.
Like, what does it mean to be a real person in this world?
(27:39):
Where does Hawkgirl sleep when she's not at the Justice League?
How does she pay for that apartment?
What is Galaxy doing when she's not being a superhero?
What is Kat doing? Like, how does being in a city of superheroes change the
way you interact with people? There is a subplot that sadly was cut in Hot Girl
(28:00):
because I was trying to do too much.
But there was a subplot, which was Kat's subplot, which was her interacting
with people in Metropolis.
And we see what it means to be a normal person in a world and specifically a
city that has so many superheroes in it.
That's wonderful. And some that's terrifying. and like that
(28:21):
push and pull is what makes i think superhero story is so interesting
because it's so fun and colorful and
wonderful and dynamic and hopeful until it
isn't and then the world is about to end and then
like that push and pull is like i never
get enough i feel like that's something both marvel and dc have
left woefully unexplored like just an
(28:43):
average person's life in any major city in
these universes I feel like is just full of story potential
like I mean in Marvel just from the events like Spider-Man and
Avengers stuff like a normal person has probably experienced having spider powers
for like a week and getting turned into a lizard and finding out a loved one
is actually a scroll and like faced the end of reality and accepting that several
(29:08):
times and I feel like that's just.
That base level human perspective of someone that's not directly involved in
superheroes is something that's just as interesting as any of the superhero comics out there.
And I'd love to see that explored more outside of just plain superhero titles. Yeah.
Dwayne McDuffie, I want to say, wrote a I think it was Dwayne McDuffie who wrote
(29:28):
a great series called Damage Control in the 80s.
And it was a Marvel book. And the idea was these were the people who were there
to take care of the mess that superhero battles left. So they're the ones who
had to figure out a way to store the giant robot that's now taking over part of the Manhattan.
They had to rebuild things like and what was the cost of that?
(29:50):
And it was such a brilliant series, one of my favorites.
And so we had that sort of perspective of like, now that the superheroes have done their thing.
Now what do we do is just catnip to me. So, yeah, I've loved that series and
I'm not surprised that now getting a chance to do my own stories,
(30:11):
I get to pull from that perspective.
Now, I've also noticed you incorporate music quite a bit in your comics and
Galaxy in particular, pulling from like David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album and Ziggy Stardust.
Like if I see a song title as a chapter title, I'm going to put that on and
like see how well it matches. And sure enough, like I felt like that and the
(30:32):
following songs on their albums were a good fit for the vibe of the book.
And I'm curious if that's something that you put a lot of intention to or if
that's just happy byproduct of like having a writing playlist or where that
musicality in your comics comes from.
All right. I think we need to make clear everything in these books.
I put too much thought into.
(30:53):
All right. I am one of those writers who thinks about this stuff too much and
in too great a detail and making sure all the little pieces fit.
Because that's just who I am. So yeah, I thought about it too much.
I've wrestled over which David Bowie song to put in there.
With Galaxy, when you write a book about a teenager, you have to then like think
(31:15):
about, well, what was I into as a teenager?
Who was I like as a teenager to kind of get that teenage mindset back?
And one of the things that I was into as a teenager was 70s era David Bowie.
A friend in art class gave me a mixtape and I was like, this is amazing because
Because I had only heard like his 80s stuff, which is wildly different.
And to have that as a queer,
(31:37):
definitely not out trans teenager and to have this sort of like very gay and
very kind of gender nebulous rock and roll was just and to have it be like something
that happened long before you were born. And that was the other wild bit.
It was like, this was old and it was doing all this stuff.
(31:58):
It felt timeless. It felt like something from another world,
literally, because it was just so alien to me.
And I fell in love with it. So when I was thinking about the things that I liked
as a teenager that I would put into the character of Galaxy,
having her be a huge fan of 70s era David Bowie just made sense.
It fit a lot of the themes of the book and it fit a lot of the themes of the
(32:21):
character. So to have her be into that and then to have the chapter headings
with the different song titles just made a lot.
And of course, it's named after a David Bowie song.
And all of that is 70s era. If we get more books, maybe we'll do 80s era David
Bowie songs or 90s 2000 eras.
I mean, the dream is we get a gazillion galaxy graphic novels that we can do this with.
(32:43):
But in any case, with that, having those David Bowie song things and to also
have like music and dance be an integral part of her character and how she expresses joy,
just like was of a piece, right?
So then when we move that character to Hawkgirl, there has to be a similar sequence, right?
(33:04):
There has to be a sequence with dance and music and audio.
And it seemed weird to do it with like, to bring David Bowie back for that,
because David Bowie was such a galaxy as a teenager thing.
And we listen to more music as we get older. So it made sense to have her be more into modern stuff.
So it's like, who is the modern band she's listening to now at 22?
(33:27):
Well, it has to be Moona. It's got to be...
Bunch of queer women singing about just great dance moves, great dance songs,
great dance grooves. That's what I was trying to say, not moves.
So that has to be so like, yeah, she's going to go to the gay club in Metropolis,
they're going to play Moona, and she's going to get very excited.
And then the Boy Genius album came out earlier this year, earlier last year,
(33:51):
when I was writing this book.
And they have that line in the song Not Strong Enough,
where they just scream always an angel never a god over and
over again and i was like that is the theme
of hot girl so we have to include a reference to that
because it's like it's too good it's too right there so
yeah so she says a hot girl says a boy genius lyric in issue six canonically
(34:15):
galaxy loaned her the album but you don't need to know that to get the point
because kinder is not someone who's is going to search out pop music at this
point in her life but maybe she will now that galaxy.
Is her best friend because music is really
important to galaxy and we will we may see that if we get more stuff because
(34:35):
her powers keep her from interacting with screens for any long period of time
because it's hard to pay attention to an image on a screen when you can see
the individual light waves going and all that stuff so this is how you write
a millennial that's It's not a tick tocker.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
So she so she's not a screen person, but she gets into music like that's a different
(34:57):
form of energy that she can get behind and enjoy that everything else is too much.
Would that make her more of like a vinyl girl then?
Because she probably is a vinyl girl. That was that was what got me on Bowie.
Like I was 25 and with a friend and they put on Hunky Dory on vinyl and like
I'd never like Bowie was the other guy on under pressure for me up to that point
(35:21):
because I was a big queen.
Kid and i never got the appeal but
like then in that room like
i i somehow like the magic of
vinyl and hunky dory used together like i get both
of these now bowie is awesome and like i started a
vinyl collection from there starting with tracking down hunky dory
i used to have a record player and i don't
(35:44):
anymore but i still have some records that i've kept and every
now and then i think i should get a record player again and i
should start getting records there's just something thing about the
tactile thing of like putting a record down and putting
the needle down and being able to watch the needle move up
and down as it hits those grooves is something that
fascinated me as a kid and like i think still
(36:04):
is part of the experience other references i'd be remiss not to mention on this
podcast i know you make several allusions to whipping girl yeah and julia serrano
and i'd love to know about the influence of that on the book and your relationship
to that since And that was a foundational text for me as a trans person.
Like someone made me read that and I'm so glad they did.
(36:25):
I'm going to disappoint you because it's not a huge one. Unlike the Bowie thing.
It's it's more of the fact that it was the right title.
And that Kendra, you know, like this idea of a whipping boy of someone who gets
punished so that someone else can get away is in there.
And like to have her be a whipping girl instead of a whipping boy.
Obviously, she's a girl. But again, it was that like not nudge,
(36:48):
nudge, wink, wink to Julia Serrano and the book.
I wish it was deeper than that. I really wish.
But it's not. I'm sorry.
Well, no, you can't win them all. but
before we wrap up i do want to make sure to touch on
your podcasting career since i mean
i don't understand how someone gets into podcasting in
(37:09):
2005 like how did you find your way to this medium and like using it as a way
to narratively tell stories yeah i mean earlier adopters got early adapt i guess
like it was something my friends were into and i was fascinated by it Like I had done college radio,
and I have a background in performance. We've talked about that.
(37:31):
So the idea of, I understood the power of the spoken voice, and I was interested
in the medium of podcasting and having a radio show that's not a radio show.
And I had just been a part of 365 Tomorrows, which was a writing collective
where we put out pieces of flash fiction, science fiction stories every day for a year.
(37:55):
And so I had all these stories that I really liked, but weren't really something
that we could do more with.
But I could do audio of them and I could play around with the sound of that,
with sound effects, with music, with different voice actors. and that was a lot of fun.
And yeah, it was a weird time to be in podcasting in 2005 because like all you
(38:18):
had to do to get an audience then was.
Was to be on like one directory because there
is so few podcasts you could fit them on
one web page if you were on podcast pickle
you got an audience because that's where people looked and
then you know and that was only for
a couple years and then it exploded and then there was no way to keep up with
(38:40):
all the podcasts that were happening but in those early days it was wild yeah
it was really interesting to be a part of the podcasting community at that time
Because like we were in the first wave was like a whole bunch of audio enthusiasts, really.
And like people who are radio people or people who were like interested in the
technology and playing with it.
(39:01):
And then after that was the second wave, which I was a part of,
which was more about like, now that we have this technology,
now that it's here, now people have done this.
What can we do with it? How can we stretch it? What kind of stories can we tell and utilize it? of it.
What can we do since we're not making a radio show and we're not,
it doesn't have to be a certain length. It doesn't have to be a certain format.
(39:22):
It doesn't have to be about, it doesn't have to just be talk radio that you
download. It could be something else.
And that was a really cool thing to be a part of. And I really liked that.
And I loved how experimental some of the people were.
Got. And it was just a really nice community to be a part of back then.
How would you say all those years of writing for narrative story podcasts have
(39:44):
shaped the way that you go about writing comics now?
Oh, definitely has. I mean, it's something that I've always,
like, I used to want to be a playwright. So I read a lot of plays.
I watched a lot of plays. I listened to a lot of radio plays and things recorded.
And so like the idea of telling a story entirely through dialogue
is something thing that i've always loved and enjoyed
(40:06):
and it's second nature now to be like
how do we tell this story through dialogue well of course they just talk about
it and it feels weird to say i've been training my whole life for this but i
really have in a lot of different ways and here i am now i have to ask on behalf
of a friend here who they're kind of going the opposite route of you they started
with writing their own comic scripts he's the person who kind of introduced
(40:29):
me to both both podcasting and comic writing.
And he's now moving to audio dramas at first with directly adapting published
comics into them and as practiced and now kind of more original audio drama work.
And I'd love if I could get some advice for him based on your experience going
the opposite direction of like how he might be able to use that comic writing
(40:51):
experience in the realm of audio drama.
I mean, I mean, there's such different mediums because you can draw a lot more
as an audio drama, right?
Like you don't want to have too many words on a page in a comic book.
And I know I pushed that as far as probably it should be pushed in some of the
bits of Hot Girl where we just had to get all this information in.
(41:12):
But with an audio thing, you can have someone just keep talking as long as what
they say is interesting and as long as the performer is engaging, right?
So that's, it's very different. You also like...
Have everything in front of you with a comic right
like the illustration is there you don't have to say
(41:33):
and then he lifted something very heavy whereas in an audio drama you have to
be like well joe i don't know if you could lift that it looks really heavy oh
no i got it so like there's limitations to both mediums you have a lot more
control of time in an audio drama so So that's a lot of fun.
You can kind of control time a little bit in comics, but not people are going
(41:57):
to read as fast or as slow as they're going to.
Like you can force their hand a little bit by increasing panels and drawing
things out over a page turn.
But as far as like really controlling the sense of time, you can't beat an audio drama for that.
Because like that's all there is, is just people locked in listening.
And it's also strange, right? Because like comics, there is no sound.
(42:18):
Like you can have a sound effect. you can have people talking
you can do all these things to kind
of mimic it but if there's any sound at all it's going
to be in the reader's head and it could be
there it could not be there and you've no
control over that whereas an audio
medium you have so much control especially of the
sound because that's all it is i don't know
(42:41):
man it's they're so different they're so different i
mean the biggest thing is like you have to be entertaining either way like
at the end of the day you need to do what
the medium does best you need to show you need
to show bodies in motion which is what superhero comics
do amazingly well or in the audio you
need to show ideas in motion and like one of those i don't know it's such a
(43:09):
weird thing to think about yeah uh it's like you have to figure out what the
each one does best and lean into that and yeah they're very Very different. They're so different.
The more I think about it, the more I'm struck by how different they are,
which is funny because like in writing them, it's like you think basically the same.
You're writing in sound effects, you're writing in dialogue,
you're doing essentially the same, but they are wildly different.
(43:33):
And I guess that's just to respect those differences and revel in them.
Now, do you have any intention of returning to the world of podcasting yourself? So much work.
It's so much work. And it's like, the reason I stopped is because I had a child.
And she is a lot of work. And I love her to death. But it's like,
(43:55):
audio writing and recording and editing is so much work.
And I just don't have the time to do it.
And if I have that spare time, then it has to go for things that people are going to pay me for.
Which is like you know i love podcasting and
i i would like to go back to it because we
left a lot of stuff dangling with the voice of free
(44:15):
planet x and like i have ways to tie
up all those threads i promise you everybody who
have listened to that show and love it and want to know what happens
next i do know what happens next i have it all planned
out but like it's hard to justify that time before
no money essentially and that's really what it comes down to and especially
with but the comics having gotten into so many people's hands and been so affecting
(44:40):
to people and really helping them in ways that the podcast, as fun as it was, never did.
It really feels like I should keep doing more of that.
As for future comics, if anything, can you tell us about upcoming projects?
I guess both in comics and elsewhere. I can't. I know. I know. I wish I could.
There is stuff coming up from DC see that you
(45:04):
will see probably not this year no definitely
not this year probably next year it
takes a long time to draw these books and like i would
rather the artists take their time and do their
best possible job than rush them so like that's part and
parcel with everything but yeah you'll see it hopefully next
year maybe the year after either way
(45:25):
it'll be worth it so be patient for that
there's a couple things that are like in pitch stage and
that may turn into to real books but that's going
to be another few years again so nothing on the horizon
that i can talk about but know that there's more
stuff coming ah better than
nothing but yeah there's if you liked galaxy the pretty
(45:45):
star and you liked hot girl you're gonna love what's coming but more than that
i can't say okay now i always do like to close with one kind of wild card question
tailored to the guest and for this since galaxy takes such heavy inspiration
from aladdin sane and Ziggy Stardust.
If you were to write a comic or a story of any kind about any character around
(46:08):
Bowie's Hunky Dory albums, what kind of story would it be? Life on Mars is on
Hunky Dory, right? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah.
Like because that's one just a killer song
and also like there's a nice there's a
narrative in there that you can build upon so yeah
it would absolutely be is there life on
mars and it would absolutely evoke that song in
(46:32):
a lot of different ways it would be very sad but it's
a god-awful sad affair would we be doing like a literal
story on mars or more of the like i always
took it as a a more grounded story of like one poor girl that's
like seeing her future slip by and wondering or
still considering all the things that used to
inspire her growing up yeah i think we
(46:54):
can use mars as like a sort of mythological touchstone kind
of thing and the wondering of the possibilities
of the future that either are past
or if they're at least unanswered yeah we're uh
we're going real literal could be galaxy meets a martian
girl from young justice i love miss martian i
would love to have galaxy mish martian have a meetup that'd be great but yeah
(47:18):
zia it's been absolutely wonderful having you on the show oh it's been a delight
yeah if our listeners want to follow your work where can they find you online
don't don't follow me okay don't follow her no no it's fine um i'm I'm just really,
I'm really burnt out on social media in general.
So, but I'm still there. So you might as well.
(47:40):
I'm Planet X on just about everything worth looking for. So if you go to Twitter, it's on there.
Blue Sky, Blue Ski, however you want to look at it. That's Planet X. Instagram is Planet X.
The website is jadziaaxorod.com, which has links to other stuff.
The newsletter i need to update that because there's
(48:01):
no tiny letter anymore but it's it's being moved
to somewhere else so and that will be on the website
and on all social medias when it is moved yeah so
just planet x is is a good call if you're looking for me anywhere but i'm on
these places find me look at my outfits and my food that i cook it'll on instagram
it'll be great yeah she's a lot of fun folks and it's i'm a delight yeah especially
(48:24):
mid book like that That really enhanced the hot girl experience.
And that's what got me into Muna, by the way. Like, I hadn't heard them before.
And I'm so glad you said their name first, because that's still my only touchstone.
So I'm like, I don't want to be asking about Mune and then look like an idiot.
I mean, that's just my guess. I think it's pronounced Muna. It may be pronounced M-U-N-A.
(48:46):
Who knows? The point is, they're great. And go listen to them.
All right. Well, if the listeners at home have requests or recommendations for
comics or creators you'd like us to cover in the future.
You can send them our way on social media. You can find us on the Transcending
Comics Instagram and Facebook page, on Twitter as at Transcending Comics,
or email us at transcendingcomics at gmail.com.
We'd like to thank you again for giving our podcast a chance and give a special
(49:08):
shout out to Ray Day Parade for designing our logo.
Our intro and outro music this week is A Little Soul, and you've been starring by Carlson.
Check out more of his music on carlson.com.
Join us again next time as we continue transcending boundaries and exploring
the colorful world of trans, non-binary, and genderqueer representation in comic books of all kinds.
As the curtains fall on this episode of Transcending Comics,
(49:29):
remember that comics have the power to inspire change in countless worlds,
including our own. Keep reading, keep writing.
Music.
Music.
(00:16):
Welcome to Transcending Comics, a podcast dedicated to trans representation
in comic books, manga, and webtoons, both on panel and behind the scenes.
I'm your host, Tommy, and joining me today is someone who's a legend in the
world of podcasting and an undeniable icon in the realm of queer superhero comics.
Listeners of this show will recognize her work from our first book club episode
(00:37):
on Galaxy, The Prettiest Star.
She's also finished writing an excellent six-issue Hawkgirl miniseries for DC
Comics, and she literally wrote the book on queer superheroes with last year's DC Book of Pride.
She's also been making creative writing podcasts like The Voice of Free Planet
X, going all the way back to 2005, well before I even knew what a podcast was.
(00:59):
Outside of comics and podcasts, she's also worked as a costume designer,
a puppeteer, and a circus performer.
If any guest of this show has ever been qualified to moonlight as a superhero, it's probably her.
With all that said, I'm very excited to welcome today's guest, host Jadzia Axelrod.
Hello, thank you for having me. And what a wonderful intro.
(01:20):
I don't think I've ever been referred to as a legend and an icon in the same sentence.
Amazing. Please introduce me wherever I go. Will do. Yeah, if you just need
a hype gal, I'll be there.
Thank you. Thank you. It was nice. I've already done my homework once since,
yeah, we covered Galaxy as like our third episode.
And I was like, whoa, this person did podcasts and puppet work and circus work.
(01:42):
Oh my my gosh, she's awesome.
And so I had all those notes ready to pull from.
Amazing. But I've got to know with as much of a storied life as yours,
how is working as a comics writer compared to the other jobs I previously mentioned?
It's more fun, honestly, like as fun as a lot of those jobs were and are making puppets is fun.
(02:03):
Being in the circus was lots of fun, obviously, but like Like writing in general
and writing comic book superhero comics, especially as just the most fun I've ever had.
I'm not sure if I've ever heard you speak elsewhere about your time as a circus performer.
And I'd love to at least get a little bit about that. Like, sure.
Well, you know, it was it was in the early 2000s. Weren't we all in a circus
(02:28):
back then? No, I guess not. I was.
It started as something I did in college and kind of grew while I was in college.
It petered out after I kept trying to get it going.
I had a we had a small group that would perform right before like punk shows.
We would be opening acts. Yeah, it was a cool thing.
And so I would the ringmaster and I would come out and do a whole thing.
(02:51):
Like I would make it very clear that we weren't doing a magic show, essentially.
And I would have a deck of cards there and I bring someone up from the audience
and I would ask them to take a card and they would take a card.
And I was like, all right, memorize that.
You got that in your head. Put it back in the deck. Shuffle the deck. Thank you.
And then I would pluck a card out of the deck, staple it to my forehead,
and then say, is this your card?
And they'd say, no, because it never was. And I was like, yeah, it's not a magic show.
(03:17):
That was the tenor of our piece. And so I would do escape art in that,
and I would juggle odd objects from the audience, and I would stick needles in my hands and face.
We had one guy who would walk on a ladder of swords. words.
My wife was part of the show and she did contortion acts and we were not married at the time.
(03:38):
We had a performer at one point who could get really small and like compress
her body into small spaces.
So we brought her out in a very tiny wooden box that would open and then she
would like slink through tennis rackets and then racquetball rackets and badminton
rackets, all this stuff.
I had fire breathers. It was a great show.
It was hard to keep people doing it. Like you you really have to have a passion for circus work.
(04:02):
So if people would do it like once and they're like, this isn't for me. And like, that's fair.
But I loved it and I kept trying to do it. And I performed with that show, which was mine.
And then I performed with a couple other circuses after graduating college,
doing mainly juggling, but also some of the pins and needles stuff.
(04:22):
Cause that's always, it gets people excited to watch someone stick a needle right in their face.
So yeah and it was it was fun
while it lasted it's something that kind of petered off once
i moved to philadelphia i tried to keep it going here and
for some reason or another like venues kept canceling or like the show i was
a part of just fell apart and it was like enough that i was like clearly the
(04:48):
gods are speaking and i this is not worth keeping up here but back in my north North Carolina days,
I did a lot of weird and wonderful sideshow circus stuff.
Now, does that experience with the circus draw you to circus related characters
or like a desire to write them? Absolutely.
(05:08):
Absolutely. You know, like I love that.
I think it's the circus is such a wonder. I've written circus related characters
before, and it's such a wonderful,
unique unique performing art because everything is real and you're doing it
in real and so much your performance is rehearsed and scripted.
(05:29):
And I'm not a musician, but I think it's the closest I can get to being a musician
in that I'm doing something real and I'm causing an emotional reaction and I'm
having a good time with the audience.
My brother and sister are musicians, so I don't know why it skipped me,
but like it's not something that I do.
So like of the major ones, like we got Nightwing, Mr.
Miracle, Nightcrawler, like are there any in particular?
(05:52):
Oh, Nightcrawler for 100%. Nightcrawler has always been my boy.
Like, I mean, it seems it seems so silly now to be like, hey,
Jed Zia, why did you identify with this character who has such trouble with
how he looks in the external way?
And that is has trouble sometimes with being so furry and looking the way he does.
(06:15):
And it's like, oh, obviously, there's a reason your favorite characters are
Beast and Nightcrawler and ones like that. So yeah, childhood dysphoria aside.
I've always loved Nightcrawler.
I do think he's a great character, and I would write him forever.
I know Tom Taylor, who's currently writing Nightwing, also has a circus background,
so he's got me beat on that one.
(06:37):
But should he ever decide to stop doing Nightwing, which he'll probably do until
the day he dies, I'm happy to pick up that torch. As far as the books of the
moment go, I know the monthly issues of Hawkgirl have just finished coming out
and we've got the trade coming out in June.
Yes. How about we start with you telling us a bit about your Hawkgirl miniseries
(06:57):
and like what might appeal to readers that aren't terribly familiar with the
character outside of maybe some Justice League or CW show appearances?
Circumstances right well that's the beauty of this miniseries is
it's like a starting point like you can pick this
up cold i tried to write it that way there's a lot of lore that we dig into
(07:17):
both in like hawk person lore but also like kendra saunders lore because i'm
a huge fan of that character so there is stuff that i wanted to dig into with
her as a character and her history but i i tried to make it so that like
you weren't front-loaded with it. Like, it wasn't like there was a text page
that was like, here's everything you need to know going forward.
(07:38):
It was like, doled out very carefully over the series, kind of held your hand
through it, and if you were paying attention, by the time all of that stuff
was important in Issue 5, you had already picked up everything from context clues, and.
Asides, and small little bits and pieces.
That was something I really respected about the book, of.
How you were able to take a character with as much.
(08:00):
Of a complicated and eventful backstory as hot
girls and someone with a history that draws from
so many larger books and events and kind of
encapsulate that all in one six issue
series and then on top of that you throw in superman and
batman and galaxy and a dragon and like all in
six issues so like how did you manage to be like okay we're gonna
(08:22):
touch on everything about this character and also
all my favorite parts of the dc universe in just six
issues like how do you manage to condense that into so few
i mean i don't that was my personal brief though
was like i wanted to do that like each issue
was going to be like this is my favorite thing about superhero comics i'm
just going to write that just in case they never let me do
(08:43):
this again let me get all my little superhero jones
out so yeah we're going to fight a giant monster in the city we're
going to team up with batman and do a monster
noir mystery we're going to go to
a gay club in metropolis because i want
want there to be one like all of this stuff that's like we're
it was like a list almost like mentally i didn't
(09:04):
write it down or anything but it was a mental list of all the
cool things that i've always wanted to do with superhero comic
and i was like we're gonna do all of them here we go and start and i was really
fortunate that i got a character like kendra saunders to do that with because
i've loved that character since i first read her way back in the early 2000s
(09:25):
approximately Approximately when I stopped being a circus performer to get the timeline right.
And I was reading JSA and really just enjoying that character and her attitude
and her like not taking any guff from these old men characters that everyone
else was so respectful towards.
Love that. So I've always loved that character. And then to have her be like
(09:49):
my first like really real superhero floppy comic book job was just a dream come
true because it's a character that I feel like has not gotten the spotlight that she deserves.
And it's a character that has been kind of shunted off into supporting roles
and like in the background, like she always looks really good in the background
(10:10):
of group shots because you can draw her higher above everyone else with big wings.
But she hasn't really had a lot of meat, some story meat
that can really dig into there because she's always been part of an ensemble
or a supporting character of Hawkman.
And to have this be a story about her was very exciting to me as both a writer and a fan.
(10:30):
So I came into it with that in mind.
That's like, this is going to be one, everything I love about superhero comics,
and two, everything I love about Kendra Saunders.
And when I was putting that plot line together,
it was clear that I had essentially a galaxy-shaped hole in the story because
(10:51):
I needed someone who had a contrasting personality because modern Kendra is
very brusque and direct.
So a lot of the personality that I loved back in the early 2000s has kind of been sanded off.
And I wanted to address that, but in order
for everything to to make sense i still had to include it so she's
(11:11):
got a very brus direct personality now and i
needed someone with a more bubbly fun personality who also
had reality or energy or magic
based powers to make my kakamani superhero
plot work and that was galaxy
so she was topping the list of supporting
characters that i was asking to use i had backups
(11:32):
if they said no but thankfully galaxy the
prettiest star as a hit so they were more than happy to
include galaxy in hot girl and she's
slotted in quite nicely i feel like as for
all the other guest stars the only one that i made like
i have to do this was batman in part
because like that's a childhood dream right there to write a batman comic but
(11:54):
also one of the things i love most about the only other hot girl series the
walter simons and run was that he established this like peer relationship between
Kendra and Batman, which I've always liked.
And it was especially at that time when everyone was kind of looking at Kendra
as like a sidekick, Batman didn't. And that was a neat thing.
(12:16):
And I've really liked that. And I wanted to keep that in this sort of like,
setting up Kendra to a new stage.
Let's keep the fact that she and Batman have a respectful professional relationship.
All the others were like either editorial suggestions, like with the case with
Superman and Power Girl and Black Canary in the first issue,
(12:36):
or in the fourth issue with the dragon.
Obviously, there's a dragon tracking Metropolis. Some of the super family needs to be there.
And I was given a list of who was not being in a book that month.
And so I was like, great, I will take the lesbian.
We are absolutely using Steel. And let's throw Supergirl in there for fun.
On those batman elements getting to incorporate and
(12:58):
expand on that relationship yeah i was curious about
the choice of the court of owls yes the villains
for the book so of all the batman rogues
gallery why uh why the court of owls for this hawks versus
owls man oh it's versus owls yeah that
checks out that's yeah because like when i was trying to think
of villains for this book i was like well what
(13:19):
are the natural predators to hawks
turns out none because they're alpha predators but there's
a lot of other similar alpha predators that compete
for resources one of them is owls so
it's like we gotta have the court of owls in here and the other is foxes so
when i was coming up with a new villain with vulpecula i wanted her to be fox
(13:42):
based essentially and have that trickster fox spirit kind of element so yeah
it was really just down to to Hawks vs.
Owls, which just seemed a no-brainer. If I get more Hot Girl stories,
we're going to see more Hot Court of Owls in there because that conflict is
just really interesting to me.
(14:02):
Now, another central aspect of the book and kind of playing on that trickster
element was the nature of folklore in the story.
And I know you've mentioned elsewhere how much you see folklore in modern comics
and characters like Superman and Wonder Woman almost act more more like folklore
figures in relation to the culture. Now I'd love to know, like.
(14:23):
If others pick up on these same themes and treat the characters you've worked
on in a similar way, how do you hope that Galaxy and Hawkgirl get used in this manner in the future?
Oh, that's an interesting thing. I mean, I have had a little window into that
because Galaxy is a part of Nicole Maine's upcoming dreamer book, Bad Dream.
(14:44):
And so I have seen how someone else both sees Galaxy and uses Galaxy.
And that has been wild. wild.
Thankfully, Nicole is a wonderful writer with an amazing sense of character.
So it wasn't like I looked at what she had done and was like,
oh, no, oh, no, this is all wrong.
Like all of it was right. Everybody sounded right. Because the same things that
(15:07):
make Nicole such a great actor, the same things that make her such a great writer,
just a really great understanding of character from the ground up.
So, I mean, I would hope that they, one, are as good as Nicole is.
So let's start there no one of less quality than nicole should be doing this but also that there's a,
(15:28):
the same thing that i approach this character with is
that respect and fondness for what has come before like we talked a little bit
about the white wild simons and stuff and huge fan of the jeff johns jsa and
then early hawkman that really dug into this character and made her what she
is Because I wanted to come to that with a lot of respect.
(15:51):
Because I do like those stories. I do think they're good stories.
It was weird to read them again, looking at them from Kendra's perspective,
which I had not done originally.
And to see the ways in which they are.
It's a little strange from her perspective. It makes sense from the perspective
that's being shown, usually from the men in her life. But if you look at it
from her perspective, it's like, this is weird.
(16:12):
But I still like those stories, and I still think there's a lot to enjoy about
them. so that's all I would want it's just like a respect and a love that I
brought to the character I'm
not the first person to write Hot Girl and I won't be the last, one hopes.
But I do hope that people take what I've done and what I've added and respect
that and use it going forward.
(16:32):
It's weirder with Galaxy because there was nobody before me with Galaxy.
And so putting her in the DC universe, like having her be a part of that,
means that at some point other people are going to use her and tell stories with her.
And I just hope that they, again, respect what's coming for and are fun and are good stories.
(16:52):
On Galaxy, I mean, this being a trans comics podcast,
in her being a trans superhero like i'd love to
get into her a bit more by all means and yeah
so in hot girl you reveal that galaxy has
identified as trans since before even coming to
earth i'm curious if that's always been something in her backstory that you've
(17:13):
had in mind or if this was something that was added later to confirm that like
she's actually trans in a a literal sense and not just a very trans-like allegory
with alien associated identities.
Right. Well, you have to understand that I did not think there was going to
be more than one galaxy appearance.
(17:34):
I thought I was very fortunate to have gotten Galaxy the Prettiest Star picked up.
I did not think this was going to be something that was going to fly off the shelves.
And I did not think it was a character I was going to be writing later.
I thought, this is my one DC book. well i did what
i wanted to do here we go so a lot of
the larger concerns about her and
(17:56):
her story i honestly didn't think about like we leave her gender assigned at
birth nebulous on purpose right like because that's not what the story is about
like it's not about who she was on sandy it's about who she is on earth but
when we moved her to hawk girl now she's a part of the dc universe.
And so a lot of this stuff that was like kind of airy fairy metaphor stuff that
(18:19):
we could get away with in the graphic novel now had to be concrete.
Like we had to list exactly what her powers did. We had to show her gender assigned
at birth and her having a different identity than that back in C.
Andy to show who she is and to make her, I guess, textually trans.
I always always thought of her as textually trans, but I know some people didn't
(18:42):
when reading the book, and I get that.
But there was this need to do that for exactly what we talked about a moment
ago, which is like someone else is going to take this character,
and they're going to write something, and they're allowed because she's part of a shared universe.
So I need to make sure that all the details are canon and correct.
And so one of those things is like listing exactly what her power set is. Another is...
(19:07):
Showing her gender identity another is
explicitly having her say that she's a lesbian because we
never say that in galaxy the prettiest star we
don't have to because that's again that sort of identity claiming
is not in a book about identity claiming that
sort of identity claiming is not what the book is about so it
was a it was an interesting thing to do that and to
(19:29):
have to kind of make concrete a lot
of the stuff that we've left unfocused because that
with the graphic novel we had a very tight focus
of what we wanted to do and with putting her in that bigger universe
we need to allow all of that
other stuff to become crisp and clear so that other
people could build upon it and i know you've thrown a lot
(19:49):
out there about galaxy's backstory in hawk girl and the years between her own
graphic novel and her appearances in hawk girl and i know you've mentioned that
like you have like four years of stories that you have in your mind that you
pull pull from to inform how you write the character and her supporting characters now?
Yeah, I had to plot all that out in my head in order to write her at 22.
(20:14):
Because the decision, this wasn't my decision. This was an editorial thing where
they're like, we don't like the idea of a teenage galaxy. We like the idea of a young adult galaxy.
And therefore, she and Haunt Girl are peers. We like that dynamic.
And I was like, that does sound like a fun dynamic. I'm down.
Now I just have to figure out what she's been doing in the six years in between.
So I did plot all that out. So do you imagine, like, if you ever get the chance
(20:37):
to explore those years, would you prefer to do it in the form of,
like, more graphic novels in the same format as Galaxy's first one?
Or would you rather do it as, like, an ongoing monthly series?
I would like her stuff, her teenage stuff, to continue to be graphic novels.
That feels right. right like if we could do a series of graphic novels that
(20:57):
kind of cover the ground in between galaxy the prettiest star and hot girl and
then hot girl is her first like superhero superhero,
statement would be great but i'd also if we do get a galaxy ongoing which would be.
Nuts that would be awesome not impossible because the book is a hit it could
(21:17):
happen if i do get a chance to write that i would love to do it but i would
want it to be her in her early 20s doing superhero things, right?
Because that would be the fun of that.
And I noticed that, like, distinction between the superhero years and her teen years.
And when the graphic novel was all we had, I kind of enjoyed the fact that, like.
(21:39):
All of galaxy's conflicts and victories
are personal ones like that there isn't any
kind of external threat that's introduced and even
at that like every win is something like that's very
much internal to her it's not even like defeating the xenophobic
school or like changing her family's minds necessarily
and i'd really love to know like what went
(22:02):
into establishing those conflicts and deciding like okay this
might be a sci-fi or superhero book but
this is going to to be closer to the actual problems that
modern trans teens face yeah that was something
that i really wanted to do and one of the focus of and
i did think that i had to have like a fight at the end so
the original plot had like a tacked on
(22:23):
fight like lobo showed up too and like galaxy fought him and all this stuff
and it was thankfully the wisdom of my editor michelle wells who is like this
is not the ending you want i can tell that this is not the ending ending you
want? And I was like, yeah, it isn't.
And the reality was that I'd been afraid of the ending that I wanted.
(22:44):
Like, I knew that that was going to be hard emotionally to write,
but it was the right thing to do.
And so the second draft of the outline has the ending that's in the book where,
you know, she goes to homecoming and they don't let her in.
And it's still a moment of of triumph for her because she realizes that she
(23:09):
doesn't need the homecoming that she thought she wanted.
And that was very powerful. It was very difficult to write because of that.
But it was the right choice. And I'm glad I did that.
And to have this sort of like superhero story about the person she saves as
herself was really important.
And that was kind of the goal with that whole graphic novel.
(23:30):
If we do more graphic novels, it might be a little bit different.
Who knows? Each book is its own thing.
I'd be curious if you could speak to the character of Taylor's brother.
Like, yeah, I remember on that first read thinking that this character would
make for the perfect villain or antagonist for Galaxy.
And like, in a way I've not seen done in other trans narratives because galaxy's
(23:53):
transition literally prevents him from like turning back to his natural form
where he's stuck as a human because galaxy transitioned.
And do you imagine like if we revisit those early years of galaxy,
like, would you likely use him as an antagonistic force?
Or do you imagine they'd be able to work that out in a personally?
No, because his his problem is that he's her cover.
(24:16):
Right. Right. And so the moment that she doesn't need a cover anymore because
she's out, he feels relieved.
And like you can see his character change from that moment on because his problem
is, is like, I'm not a person anymore because I have to protect you.
And then when it's like she is no longer in hiding, he then is free to be his own person.
(24:39):
So I don't think he would be an antagonist if he shows up in any future books.
I think he would be a much friendlier person.
Because like he's had a hard time of it like this
is the problem with me writing books is like i fall in love with all
of the characters and like they all have my sympathy so
like even carl who is such a jerk like you understand why he's a jerk right
(25:01):
he's been in this situation he didn't ask for he has to do these things not
even for himself but for someone else and he has his own demons that he's fighting
and doesn't have a release for.
And so I would love to use him in future books and to kind of show him get that
release that he's always been looking for.
(25:22):
But we see a little bit of that in The Prettiest Star where once Taylor looks
the way she does, there is some relief that falls off his shoulders.
And that's why in the end, he's able to be like, she's not someone we can keep
in a cage, right? Even though we tried, that's over now and we need to accept
(25:42):
that and move on. And she's beautiful.
That's something that he's only able to do because he is no longer essentially the jailer.
And because he's not the jailer anymore, he doesn't have to keep her in jail.
I feel like that plays into one of the things I like most about your comics,
and that's the way you explore the human side of these very supernatural sci-fi situations.
(26:07):
And even taking that more to the superheroes themselves, I've noticed you have
a really good tendency to just expand on the world in massive and thought-provoking
ways with just a single line.
Like, what stuck out to me was Kat in Galaxy mentioning how like seeing Superman
isn't like a good or exciting thing, but like a sign that something terrible has happened.
(26:29):
And I'd love to know where this sentiment comes from within you as a writer
and just like as something you look to explore in your comics.
Yeah, I mean, that's what excites me as a writer is to be like, what if this was real?
Like, what if these were human beings who had to deal with this in a way that's
like kind of, there's lip service given to, but isn't really explored.
(26:52):
And like, if you are a normal person in a world of superheroes,
it's cool to see a superhero streak across the sky, but it's like an ambulance
that's gone by, right? Like, that means that someone's in trouble.
That means something bad has happened. if you see a superhero coming toward
you that means something bad has happened to you because they're coming to save
you from something that you cannot get out of yourself like that's terrifying.
(27:17):
That's that's that's existentially terrifying right like there's we position
superheroes as symbols of hope which they are but also to really be in that
world is like has got to be like terrifying.
And that's always been like, again, that's something that I find really appealing.
Like, what does it mean to be a real person in this world?
(27:39):
Where does Hawkgirl sleep when she's not at the Justice League?
How does she pay for that apartment?
What is Galaxy doing when she's not being a superhero?
What is Kat doing? Like, how does being in a city of superheroes change the
way you interact with people? There is a subplot that sadly was cut in Hot Girl
(28:00):
because I was trying to do too much.
But there was a subplot, which was Kat's subplot, which was her interacting
with people in Metropolis.
And we see what it means to be a normal person in a world and specifically a
city that has so many superheroes in it.
That's wonderful. And some that's terrifying. and like that
(28:21):
push and pull is what makes i think superhero story is so interesting
because it's so fun and colorful and
wonderful and dynamic and hopeful until it
isn't and then the world is about to end and then
like that push and pull is like i never
get enough i feel like that's something both marvel and dc have
left woefully unexplored like just an
(28:43):
average person's life in any major city in
these universes I feel like is just full of story potential
like I mean in Marvel just from the events like Spider-Man and
Avengers stuff like a normal person has probably experienced having spider powers
for like a week and getting turned into a lizard and finding out a loved one
is actually a scroll and like faced the end of reality and accepting that several
(29:08):
times and I feel like that's just.
That base level human perspective of someone that's not directly involved in
superheroes is something that's just as interesting as any of the superhero comics out there.
And I'd love to see that explored more outside of just plain superhero titles. Yeah.
Dwayne McDuffie, I want to say, wrote a I think it was Dwayne McDuffie who wrote
(29:28):
a great series called Damage Control in the 80s.
And it was a Marvel book. And the idea was these were the people who were there
to take care of the mess that superhero battles left. So they're the ones who
had to figure out a way to store the giant robot that's now taking over part of the Manhattan.
They had to rebuild things like and what was the cost of that?
(29:50):
And it was such a brilliant series, one of my favorites.
And so we had that sort of perspective of like, now that the superheroes have done their thing.
Now what do we do is just catnip to me. So, yeah, I've loved that series and
I'm not surprised that now getting a chance to do my own stories,
(30:11):
I get to pull from that perspective.
Now, I've also noticed you incorporate music quite a bit in your comics and
Galaxy in particular, pulling from like David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album and Ziggy Stardust.
Like if I see a song title as a chapter title, I'm going to put that on and
like see how well it matches. And sure enough, like I felt like that and the
(30:32):
following songs on their albums were a good fit for the vibe of the book.
And I'm curious if that's something that you put a lot of intention to or if
that's just happy byproduct of like having a writing playlist or where that
musicality in your comics comes from.
All right. I think we need to make clear everything in these books.
I put too much thought into.
(30:53):
All right. I am one of those writers who thinks about this stuff too much and
in too great a detail and making sure all the little pieces fit.
Because that's just who I am. So yeah, I thought about it too much.
I've wrestled over which David Bowie song to put in there.
With Galaxy, when you write a book about a teenager, you have to then like think
(31:15):
about, well, what was I into as a teenager?
Who was I like as a teenager to kind of get that teenage mindset back?
And one of the things that I was into as a teenager was 70s era David Bowie.
A friend in art class gave me a mixtape and I was like, this is amazing because
Because I had only heard like his 80s stuff, which is wildly different.
And to have that as a queer,
(31:37):
definitely not out trans teenager and to have this sort of like very gay and
very kind of gender nebulous rock and roll was just and to have it be like something
that happened long before you were born. And that was the other wild bit.
It was like, this was old and it was doing all this stuff.
(31:58):
It felt timeless. It felt like something from another world,
literally, because it was just so alien to me.
And I fell in love with it. So when I was thinking about the things that I liked
as a teenager that I would put into the character of Galaxy,
having her be a huge fan of 70s era David Bowie just made sense.
It fit a lot of the themes of the book and it fit a lot of the themes of the
(32:21):
character. So to have her be into that and then to have the chapter headings
with the different song titles just made a lot.
And of course, it's named after a David Bowie song.
And all of that is 70s era. If we get more books, maybe we'll do 80s era David
Bowie songs or 90s 2000 eras.
I mean, the dream is we get a gazillion galaxy graphic novels that we can do this with.
(32:43):
But in any case, with that, having those David Bowie song things and to also
have like music and dance be an integral part of her character and how she expresses joy,
just like was of a piece, right?
So then when we move that character to Hawkgirl, there has to be a similar sequence, right?
(33:04):
There has to be a sequence with dance and music and audio.
And it seemed weird to do it with like, to bring David Bowie back for that,
because David Bowie was such a galaxy as a teenager thing.
And we listen to more music as we get older. So it made sense to have her be more into modern stuff.
So it's like, who is the modern band she's listening to now at 22?
(33:27):
Well, it has to be Moona. It's got to be...
Bunch of queer women singing about just great dance moves, great dance songs,
great dance grooves. That's what I was trying to say, not moves.
So that has to be so like, yeah, she's going to go to the gay club in Metropolis,
they're going to play Moona, and she's going to get very excited.
And then the Boy Genius album came out earlier this year, earlier last year,
(33:51):
when I was writing this book.
And they have that line in the song Not Strong Enough,
where they just scream always an angel never a god over and
over again and i was like that is the theme
of hot girl so we have to include a reference to that
because it's like it's too good it's too right there so
yeah so she says a hot girl says a boy genius lyric in issue six canonically
(34:15):
galaxy loaned her the album but you don't need to know that to get the point
because kinder is not someone who's is going to search out pop music at this
point in her life but maybe she will now that galaxy.
Is her best friend because music is really
important to galaxy and we will we may see that if we get more stuff because
(34:35):
her powers keep her from interacting with screens for any long period of time
because it's hard to pay attention to an image on a screen when you can see
the individual light waves going and all that stuff so this is how you write
a millennial that's It's not a tick tocker.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
So she so she's not a screen person, but she gets into music like that's a different
(34:57):
form of energy that she can get behind and enjoy that everything else is too much.
Would that make her more of like a vinyl girl then?
Because she probably is a vinyl girl. That was that was what got me on Bowie.
Like I was 25 and with a friend and they put on Hunky Dory on vinyl and like
I'd never like Bowie was the other guy on under pressure for me up to that point
(35:21):
because I was a big queen.
Kid and i never got the appeal but
like then in that room like
i i somehow like the magic of
vinyl and hunky dory used together like i get both
of these now bowie is awesome and like i started a
vinyl collection from there starting with tracking down hunky dory
i used to have a record player and i don't
(35:44):
anymore but i still have some records that i've kept and every
now and then i think i should get a record player again and i
should start getting records there's just something thing about the
tactile thing of like putting a record down and putting
the needle down and being able to watch the needle move up
and down as it hits those grooves is something that
fascinated me as a kid and like i think still
(36:04):
is part of the experience other references i'd be remiss not to mention on this
podcast i know you make several allusions to whipping girl yeah and julia serrano
and i'd love to know about the influence of that on the book and your relationship
to that since And that was a foundational text for me as a trans person.
Like someone made me read that and I'm so glad they did.
(36:25):
I'm going to disappoint you because it's not a huge one. Unlike the Bowie thing.
It's it's more of the fact that it was the right title.
And that Kendra, you know, like this idea of a whipping boy of someone who gets
punished so that someone else can get away is in there.
And like to have her be a whipping girl instead of a whipping boy.
Obviously, she's a girl. But again, it was that like not nudge,
(36:48):
nudge, wink, wink to Julia Serrano and the book.
I wish it was deeper than that. I really wish.
But it's not. I'm sorry.
Well, no, you can't win them all. but
before we wrap up i do want to make sure to touch on
your podcasting career since i mean
i don't understand how someone gets into podcasting in
(37:09):
2005 like how did you find your way to this medium and like using it as a way
to narratively tell stories yeah i mean earlier adopters got early adapt i guess
like it was something my friends were into and i was fascinated by it Like I had done college radio,
and I have a background in performance. We've talked about that.
(37:31):
So the idea of, I understood the power of the spoken voice, and I was interested
in the medium of podcasting and having a radio show that's not a radio show.
And I had just been a part of 365 Tomorrows, which was a writing collective
where we put out pieces of flash fiction, science fiction stories every day for a year.
(37:55):
And so I had all these stories that I really liked, but weren't really something
that we could do more with.
But I could do audio of them and I could play around with the sound of that,
with sound effects, with music, with different voice actors. and that was a lot of fun.
And yeah, it was a weird time to be in podcasting in 2005 because like all you
(38:18):
had to do to get an audience then was.
Was to be on like one directory because there
is so few podcasts you could fit them on
one web page if you were on podcast pickle
you got an audience because that's where people looked and
then you know and that was only for
a couple years and then it exploded and then there was no way to keep up with
(38:40):
all the podcasts that were happening but in those early days it was wild yeah
it was really interesting to be a part of the podcasting community at that time
Because like we were in the first wave was like a whole bunch of audio enthusiasts, really.
And like people who are radio people or people who were like interested in the
technology and playing with it.
(39:01):
And then after that was the second wave, which I was a part of,
which was more about like, now that we have this technology,
now that it's here, now people have done this.
What can we do with it? How can we stretch it? What kind of stories can we tell and utilize it? of it.
What can we do since we're not making a radio show and we're not,
it doesn't have to be a certain length. It doesn't have to be a certain format.
(39:22):
It doesn't have to be about, it doesn't have to just be talk radio that you
download. It could be something else.
And that was a really cool thing to be a part of. And I really liked that.
And I loved how experimental some of the people were.
Got. And it was just a really nice community to be a part of back then.
How would you say all those years of writing for narrative story podcasts have
(39:44):
shaped the way that you go about writing comics now?
Oh, definitely has. I mean, it's something that I've always,
like, I used to want to be a playwright. So I read a lot of plays.
I watched a lot of plays. I listened to a lot of radio plays and things recorded.
And so like the idea of telling a story entirely through dialogue
is something thing that i've always loved and enjoyed
(40:06):
and it's second nature now to be like
how do we tell this story through dialogue well of course they just talk about
it and it feels weird to say i've been training my whole life for this but i
really have in a lot of different ways and here i am now i have to ask on behalf
of a friend here who they're kind of going the opposite route of you they started
with writing their own comic scripts he's the person who kind of introduced
(40:29):
me to both both podcasting and comic writing.
And he's now moving to audio dramas at first with directly adapting published
comics into them and as practiced and now kind of more original audio drama work.
And I'd love if I could get some advice for him based on your experience going
the opposite direction of like how he might be able to use that comic writing
(40:51):
experience in the realm of audio drama.
I mean, I mean, there's such different mediums because you can draw a lot more
as an audio drama, right?
Like you don't want to have too many words on a page in a comic book.
And I know I pushed that as far as probably it should be pushed in some of the
bits of Hot Girl where we just had to get all this information in.
(41:12):
But with an audio thing, you can have someone just keep talking as long as what
they say is interesting and as long as the performer is engaging, right?
So that's, it's very different. You also like...
Have everything in front of you with a comic right
like the illustration is there you don't have to say
(41:33):
and then he lifted something very heavy whereas in an audio drama you have to
be like well joe i don't know if you could lift that it looks really heavy oh
no i got it so like there's limitations to both mediums you have a lot more
control of time in an audio drama so So that's a lot of fun.
You can kind of control time a little bit in comics, but not people are going
(41:57):
to read as fast or as slow as they're going to.
Like you can force their hand a little bit by increasing panels and drawing
things out over a page turn.
But as far as like really controlling the sense of time, you can't beat an audio drama for that.
Because like that's all there is, is just people locked in listening.
And it's also strange, right? Because like comics, there is no sound.
(42:18):
Like you can have a sound effect. you can have people talking
you can do all these things to kind
of mimic it but if there's any sound at all it's going
to be in the reader's head and it could be
there it could not be there and you've no
control over that whereas an audio
medium you have so much control especially of the
sound because that's all it is i don't know
(42:41):
man it's they're so different they're so different i
mean the biggest thing is like you have to be entertaining either way like
at the end of the day you need to do what
the medium does best you need to show you need
to show bodies in motion which is what superhero comics
do amazingly well or in the audio you
need to show ideas in motion and like one of those i don't know it's such a
(43:09):
weird thing to think about yeah uh it's like you have to figure out what the
each one does best and lean into that and yeah they're very Very different. They're so different.
The more I think about it, the more I'm struck by how different they are,
which is funny because like in writing them, it's like you think basically the same.
You're writing in sound effects, you're writing in dialogue,
you're doing essentially the same, but they are wildly different.
(43:33):
And I guess that's just to respect those differences and revel in them.
Now, do you have any intention of returning to the world of podcasting yourself? So much work.
It's so much work. And it's like, the reason I stopped is because I had a child.
And she is a lot of work. And I love her to death. But it's like,
(43:55):
audio writing and recording and editing is so much work.
And I just don't have the time to do it.
And if I have that spare time, then it has to go for things that people are going to pay me for.
Which is like you know i love podcasting and
i i would like to go back to it because we
left a lot of stuff dangling with the voice of free
(44:15):
planet x and like i have ways to tie
up all those threads i promise you everybody who
have listened to that show and love it and want to know what happens
next i do know what happens next i have it all planned
out but like it's hard to justify that time before
no money essentially and that's really what it comes down to and especially
with but the comics having gotten into so many people's hands and been so affecting
(44:40):
to people and really helping them in ways that the podcast, as fun as it was, never did.
It really feels like I should keep doing more of that.
As for future comics, if anything, can you tell us about upcoming projects?
I guess both in comics and elsewhere. I can't. I know. I know. I wish I could.
There is stuff coming up from DC see that you
(45:04):
will see probably not this year no definitely
not this year probably next year it
takes a long time to draw these books and like i would
rather the artists take their time and do their
best possible job than rush them so like that's part and
parcel with everything but yeah you'll see it hopefully next
year maybe the year after either way
(45:25):
it'll be worth it so be patient for that
there's a couple things that are like in pitch stage and
that may turn into to real books but that's going
to be another few years again so nothing on the horizon
that i can talk about but know that there's more
stuff coming ah better than
nothing but yeah there's if you liked galaxy the pretty
(45:45):
star and you liked hot girl you're gonna love what's coming but more than that
i can't say okay now i always do like to close with one kind of wild card question
tailored to the guest and for this since galaxy takes such heavy inspiration
from aladdin sane and Ziggy Stardust.
If you were to write a comic or a story of any kind about any character around
(46:08):
Bowie's Hunky Dory albums, what kind of story would it be? Life on Mars is on
Hunky Dory, right? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah.
Like because that's one just a killer song
and also like there's a nice there's a
narrative in there that you can build upon so yeah
it would absolutely be is there life on
mars and it would absolutely evoke that song in
(46:32):
a lot of different ways it would be very sad but it's
a god-awful sad affair would we be doing like a literal
story on mars or more of the like i always
took it as a a more grounded story of like one poor girl that's
like seeing her future slip by and wondering or
still considering all the things that used to
inspire her growing up yeah i think we
(46:54):
can use mars as like a sort of mythological touchstone kind
of thing and the wondering of the possibilities
of the future that either are past
or if they're at least unanswered yeah we're uh
we're going real literal could be galaxy meets a martian
girl from young justice i love miss martian i
would love to have galaxy mish martian have a meetup that'd be great but yeah
(47:18):
zia it's been absolutely wonderful having you on the show oh it's been a delight
yeah if our listeners want to follow your work where can they find you online
don't don't follow me okay don't follow her no no it's fine um i'm I'm just really,
I'm really burnt out on social media in general.
So, but I'm still there. So you might as well.
(47:40):
I'm Planet X on just about everything worth looking for. So if you go to Twitter, it's on there.
Blue Sky, Blue Ski, however you want to look at it. That's Planet X. Instagram is Planet X.
The website is jadziaaxorod.com, which has links to other stuff.
The newsletter i need to update that because there's
(48:01):
no tiny letter anymore but it's it's being moved
to somewhere else so and that will be on the website
and on all social medias when it is moved yeah so
just planet x is is a good call if you're looking for me anywhere but i'm on
these places find me look at my outfits and my food that i cook it'll on instagram
it'll be great yeah she's a lot of fun folks and it's i'm a delight yeah especially
(48:24):
mid book like that That really enhanced the hot girl experience.
And that's what got me into Muna, by the way. Like, I hadn't heard them before.
And I'm so glad you said their name first, because that's still my only touchstone.
So I'm like, I don't want to be asking about Mune and then look like an idiot.
I mean, that's just my guess. I think it's pronounced Muna. It may be pronounced M-U-N-A.
(48:46):
Who knows? The point is, they're great. And go listen to them.
All right. Well, if the listeners at home have requests or recommendations for
comics or creators you'd like us to cover in the future.
You can send them our way on social media. You can find us on the Transcending
Comics Instagram and Facebook page, on Twitter as at Transcending Comics,
or email us at transcendingcomics at gmail.com.
We'd like to thank you again for giving our podcast a chance and give a special
(49:08):
shout out to Ray Day Parade for designing our logo.
Our intro and outro music this week is A Little Soul, and you've been starring by Carlson.
Check out more of his music on carlson.com.
Join us again next time as we continue transcending boundaries and exploring
the colorful world of trans, non-binary, and genderqueer representation in comic books of all kinds.
As the curtains fall on this episode of Transcending Comics,
(49:29):
remember that comics have the power to inspire change in countless worlds,
including our own. Keep reading, keep writing.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!