One of the most popular Manga books at your local bookstore is Rumble Girls but surprisingly enough no one from the other side of the Pacific Ocean had anything to do with it. Rumble Girls was written and drawn by California native Lea Hernandez. The collected edition of Rumble Girls has been released in traditional Manga size by NBM Publishing.
Hernandez is one of the of the few women in the comic book industry who has the freedom to move from major publishers like Marvel to doing her own work for large independent houses such as Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics. Hernandez creates such beautiful and layered material that sometimes it can seem indistinguishable from any traditional Manga works, plus shes got a mouth like a sailor.
Rumble Girls is a story of female pilots of powered armor know as HardSkins, who are near-future counterparts to professional wrestlers-- brawlers in staged battles playing characters made to be loved or loathed. The main character is Raven Tansania, who finds herself unwittingly assuming the persona of the Rumble Girl Silky Warrior Tansie for mammoth media conglomerate EnTeCo.
Check out this website for more information on Rumble Girls.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Rumble Girls is very layered with humor and social satire. How difficult is it to do something like that?
Lea Hernandez: Not really hard at all because thats how my mind works. If anything, I look at it and think that I could have done more. Crammed just a little more in!
DRE: How difficult is it to do satire?
LH: Are you kidding? Its a goldfish in the barrel of a gun! Its so easy. The hardest thing is just thinking up a gag thats going to make more than me laugh. In fact its not even fish in the gun of a barrel. Its like a goldfish bowl in a bazooka. All I have to do is turn on Fox News or MSNBC when Scarborough Country is on.
DRE: Do you go back and add stuff for the collected edition?
LH: I corrected a few things and I clarified a few little things. But generally I let it stand as it first came out. Once you do too much you never know when to put it down. It kind of hurt to let it be but Im not going to learn anything if I allow myself the luxury of editing and reediting something thats finished. And Im lazy.
DRE: What do you think of it being shrunk to look more like a foreign Manga book?
LH: Well thats the way I wanted it to be published to begin with but I was told I would make more money if it was American comic size. I was told a lot of things that didnt happen.
DRE: Did you have to correct anything because it was shrunk down?
LH: No in fact pages that were originally larger looked even better shrunk down.
DRE: How come you didnt publish the trade paperback through Image as the original serials were?
LH: Thats a tricky question. On the record, things changed at Image and it wasnt the place for me to be anymore. Thats the short version.
DRE: How did you get hooked up with NBM?
LH: I had contacted them and forgotten about it about three years ago. Things were going south with Image even then and I knew I was not going to find a middle ground with the promotions and marketing guy because he had gotten tired of promoting my work. I didnt have a contract with Image to do anything but a series so I contacted NBM and asked them if they were interested in doing a trade. Then all of a sudden [NBM publisher] Terry Nantier asked me about doing a trade and I thought that sounded good.
DRE: You do a lot of switching genders because when you did the Punisher you changed the gender as well.
LH: Well that was all Peter David. Peter David writes funny artist friendly scripts. I would have done the Punisher even if it was a guy but he would have looked funny in a kimono.
DRE: Manga and anime focuses a lot on switching genders. Why is that?
LH: If I was going to guess, based on what very little I know about Japan, I would say gender switching has a lot to do with the fact that they have a really regimented culture and society. That idea of getting to do something thats not normally socially acceptable. For instance in Ranma one of the gags was that Ranma really liked these parfaits which is a very girly dessert. That was one of the times he liked being the girl because he could eat them without embarrassing himself and looking like a sissy.
DRE: What appeals to you about gender switching?
LH: I dont know how guys feel about it but I like the way Margaret Cho put it Youre in a drag all the time even when you think you are not. That idea of being someone else and you cant get more else than being the opposite gender of the way you are born. In the context of the story the gender switching wasnt so much a statement about gender roles except that the engineered people are made to be either/or because they would have an easier time socially depending on what the occasion demanded. They could play for both teams. We have so much vanity in our culture that I thought that would be the ultimate vanity design to pay for your kid to have every advantage including gender. Taking it one step beyond wanting a boy or a girl.
DRE: Have you always drawn in this Manga style?
LH: I draw that way because I like to. I have styles that are cartoonier and I am capable of rendering really realistically. I draw really ace animals, portraits and stuff like that but I like drawing in the way I do. Its my favorite pair of shoes thats just right.
DRE: How about drawing the black lines around the newscasters in Real Hard TV Copy? Where did that come from?
LH: Thats supposed to come across as really super fake in the extreme. Rumble Girls has a lot to say about media and social stuff. I find most news pretty aggressively generic and when its not generic its offensive. They tease the news like its a TV show. I live mere hours away from the border of Mexico and sometimes they say stuff like Those dirty Mexicans are doing naughty things two hours away from here. Are your kids safe? Last year it was The Mexican abortion drug. Holy shit, our population is mostly Mexican, what the fuck is that? I think a lot of news is like that. Most news is commentaries are like Tattoos are bad. Lets show that footage. Horrible what a bunch of tramps. Now lets show it again. The idea was to make those newscasters come across as purely two dimensional.
DRE: Are people ever surprised to see youre not Asian?
LH: No they are actually more surprised to find out I am not Mexican.
DRE: Because of your last name. Now that surprises me.
LH: My husband is half Mexican and my children are a quarter. Im Irish-German-Scots but I like it here in Texas. As far as I am concerned I am about as Mexican as one could get.
DRE: I found a quote from you a few years ago where you said Im waiting for the comics market to catch up to me. Now it has!
LH: Hah! Prophetic isnt it? I knew it was coming and Im so glad I said stuff like that. I knew books that size would sell in bookstores. They just never got into bookstores via Image but via NBM and Cyberosia. I knew it! Girls dont go to comic stores, they go to bookstores.
DRE: I bet your stuff flies off the shelf in bookstores.
LH: It does well. It sells even for the comic book stores that order them, the ones that bother.
DRE: Did you honestly see this coming?
LH: I saw it coming but I didnt know what was going to make it happen. Its been pushing all this time and there just needed to be a breakthrough. It just needed to get into the bookstores. There is nothing wrong with comic books stores that gasoline and a match couldnt fix. Comic book stores are mostly focused on superhero type stuff, gaming stuff and what looks like soft-core porn. There is nothing wrong with liking that stuff but there is no place in comic book stores for the kind of stuff I do, thats a fact. Some of the stores that even order my stuff dont have people coming in to buy it.
DRE: Why did you start reading Manga?
LH: Ive just been queer for cartoons ever since I was a kid. For as long as I can remember if it was a cartoon I would watch it. When Wonderful World of Disney was a cartoon I would watch it and if it wasnt I wouldnt. I had no interest in live action whatsoever. Swiss Family Robinson, fuck em! We lived on a military base when I was a kid in the San Joaquin valley. They would show the Disney shorts in the base theatre. We got Disney comic books and then Speed Racer came on. I remember Speed Racer vividly and when I looked at it years later I thought the animation wouldnt hold up and I was right. It was not only worse than I remember but I thought Holy shit, this is cheap. But the stories were just as engaging as ever. There was so much drama and conflict there. Speed Racer was the last nail in the box for my queerness for Japanese stuff when I was kid. I already liked big eyed stuff and here was a drama. It wasnt a sitcommy bubble. My problem isnt that I think American cartoons suck just because they are American but they suck because they suck.
DRE: How about modern cartoons?
LH: I like a lot of the stuff on Cartoon Network. See it doesnt have to suck just because its American. Cartoon Network is the best thing to happen to cartoons in a long time. I dont like everything; nobody will ever be able to explain how Shake & Flick got on TV. I love Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls and the Adult Swim block.
DRE: Does your daughter read comics?
LH: Yes ever since she could read.
DRE: Have young kids ever told you what they like about Manga?
LH: They like the way it looks. They pick what appeals to them. My daughter doesnt like all Manga but what she gravitates towards generally is what is pretty or has appealing art. The writing also has to be pretty good so its an engaging read. Obviously she is a big Pokemon fan. A lot of those Pokemon are really cute. Even I like them. There isnt much to not like about them because they are so damn cute. But I think a lot of what appeals to her, is the decorativeness and clever designs. Clever in a way we arent seeing in America.
DRE: I read you did some work for Disney.
LH: I worked for Disney comics very briefly. I also did one cover for Marvel and that was plenty.
DRE: Did you ever do any animation?
LH: I asked an animator named Lauren Faust, who worked on Cats Dont Dance, how could you stand to draw the same thing over and over again. I thought that was a pretty dumb question because thats what I do. She said that when you finally get to see it move its really exciting. Im not fit for any task as repetitive as that even with the reward. I enjoy the process of making comics. I like being in an animation studio a lot but Im not suited for it. I did always want to work in animation in the design part. I found out really quickly that I wasnt suited for it when I was painting animation cels and traveling mattes and nodding off at my desk even though I had a full nights sleep and a pot of coffee. I loved working with the people though. The two guys I worked with the most went off and founded this studio called DNA Productions which did the animation for Olive, the Other Reindeer.
DRE: More and more sexuality seems to be seeping into our culture. Are we becoming more or less oppressive about sexual issues or is it used by companies for marketing purposes?
LH: I dont think more and more is seeping in but we are just seeing it in a different way. The older I get the more convinced I am that nothing new happens but we just notice it more. For instance sexual scandal with elected officials, like thats never happened before. People think something is new when they notice it for the first time.
But do I think our culture has an unhealthy focus on people who are built like 12 year olds with Pamela Anderson tits? Yes I do. I am very uncomfortable and distressed with our current standard of beauty. Its really depressing which is why whenever I go anywhere for an appearance I chant to myself Margaret Cho, Kathy Bates, Camryn Manheim. I have three role models.
DRE: Do you have any tattoos?
LH: No I dont.
DRE: Have you ever seen tattoos of your work on other people?
LH: No I have not. No one has ever gone so far as to permanently mark themselves or risk a disease like hepatitis or HIV for me. It would be so cool if someone died with my characters face on their ass.
DRE: Do you spend a lot of time on the internet?
LH: Yes more than I mean to. Someone once said The way to tell how long youve been on the internet is to take the amount of time you think youve been on then multiply it by there. I have to make myself get off and go to bed. Google is an obsessives dream because you follow tangents down to the subatomic level. I can spend hours tripping around the internet reading stuff because Im an information junkie. I can do it until my ass cant take it anymore.
DRE: Had you known of SuicideGirls before?
LH: Yes I have. Its not a very a cheerful name though. Oh Ill be a pinup model and then Ill mutilate myself
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Hernandez is one of the of the few women in the comic book industry who has the freedom to move from major publishers like Marvel to doing her own work for large independent houses such as Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics. Hernandez creates such beautiful and layered material that sometimes it can seem indistinguishable from any traditional Manga works, plus shes got a mouth like a sailor.
Rumble Girls is a story of female pilots of powered armor know as HardSkins, who are near-future counterparts to professional wrestlers-- brawlers in staged battles playing characters made to be loved or loathed. The main character is Raven Tansania, who finds herself unwittingly assuming the persona of the Rumble Girl Silky Warrior Tansie for mammoth media conglomerate EnTeCo.
Check out this website for more information on Rumble Girls.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Rumble Girls is very layered with humor and social satire. How difficult is it to do something like that?
Lea Hernandez: Not really hard at all because thats how my mind works. If anything, I look at it and think that I could have done more. Crammed just a little more in!
DRE: How difficult is it to do satire?
LH: Are you kidding? Its a goldfish in the barrel of a gun! Its so easy. The hardest thing is just thinking up a gag thats going to make more than me laugh. In fact its not even fish in the gun of a barrel. Its like a goldfish bowl in a bazooka. All I have to do is turn on Fox News or MSNBC when Scarborough Country is on.
DRE: Do you go back and add stuff for the collected edition?
LH: I corrected a few things and I clarified a few little things. But generally I let it stand as it first came out. Once you do too much you never know when to put it down. It kind of hurt to let it be but Im not going to learn anything if I allow myself the luxury of editing and reediting something thats finished. And Im lazy.
DRE: What do you think of it being shrunk to look more like a foreign Manga book?
LH: Well thats the way I wanted it to be published to begin with but I was told I would make more money if it was American comic size. I was told a lot of things that didnt happen.
DRE: Did you have to correct anything because it was shrunk down?
LH: No in fact pages that were originally larger looked even better shrunk down.
DRE: How come you didnt publish the trade paperback through Image as the original serials were?
LH: Thats a tricky question. On the record, things changed at Image and it wasnt the place for me to be anymore. Thats the short version.
DRE: How did you get hooked up with NBM?
LH: I had contacted them and forgotten about it about three years ago. Things were going south with Image even then and I knew I was not going to find a middle ground with the promotions and marketing guy because he had gotten tired of promoting my work. I didnt have a contract with Image to do anything but a series so I contacted NBM and asked them if they were interested in doing a trade. Then all of a sudden [NBM publisher] Terry Nantier asked me about doing a trade and I thought that sounded good.
DRE: You do a lot of switching genders because when you did the Punisher you changed the gender as well.
LH: Well that was all Peter David. Peter David writes funny artist friendly scripts. I would have done the Punisher even if it was a guy but he would have looked funny in a kimono.
DRE: Manga and anime focuses a lot on switching genders. Why is that?
LH: If I was going to guess, based on what very little I know about Japan, I would say gender switching has a lot to do with the fact that they have a really regimented culture and society. That idea of getting to do something thats not normally socially acceptable. For instance in Ranma one of the gags was that Ranma really liked these parfaits which is a very girly dessert. That was one of the times he liked being the girl because he could eat them without embarrassing himself and looking like a sissy.
DRE: What appeals to you about gender switching?
LH: I dont know how guys feel about it but I like the way Margaret Cho put it Youre in a drag all the time even when you think you are not. That idea of being someone else and you cant get more else than being the opposite gender of the way you are born. In the context of the story the gender switching wasnt so much a statement about gender roles except that the engineered people are made to be either/or because they would have an easier time socially depending on what the occasion demanded. They could play for both teams. We have so much vanity in our culture that I thought that would be the ultimate vanity design to pay for your kid to have every advantage including gender. Taking it one step beyond wanting a boy or a girl.
DRE: Have you always drawn in this Manga style?
LH: I draw that way because I like to. I have styles that are cartoonier and I am capable of rendering really realistically. I draw really ace animals, portraits and stuff like that but I like drawing in the way I do. Its my favorite pair of shoes thats just right.
DRE: How about drawing the black lines around the newscasters in Real Hard TV Copy? Where did that come from?
LH: Thats supposed to come across as really super fake in the extreme. Rumble Girls has a lot to say about media and social stuff. I find most news pretty aggressively generic and when its not generic its offensive. They tease the news like its a TV show. I live mere hours away from the border of Mexico and sometimes they say stuff like Those dirty Mexicans are doing naughty things two hours away from here. Are your kids safe? Last year it was The Mexican abortion drug. Holy shit, our population is mostly Mexican, what the fuck is that? I think a lot of news is like that. Most news is commentaries are like Tattoos are bad. Lets show that footage. Horrible what a bunch of tramps. Now lets show it again. The idea was to make those newscasters come across as purely two dimensional.
DRE: Are people ever surprised to see youre not Asian?
LH: No they are actually more surprised to find out I am not Mexican.
DRE: Because of your last name. Now that surprises me.
LH: My husband is half Mexican and my children are a quarter. Im Irish-German-Scots but I like it here in Texas. As far as I am concerned I am about as Mexican as one could get.
DRE: I found a quote from you a few years ago where you said Im waiting for the comics market to catch up to me. Now it has!
LH: Hah! Prophetic isnt it? I knew it was coming and Im so glad I said stuff like that. I knew books that size would sell in bookstores. They just never got into bookstores via Image but via NBM and Cyberosia. I knew it! Girls dont go to comic stores, they go to bookstores.
DRE: I bet your stuff flies off the shelf in bookstores.
LH: It does well. It sells even for the comic book stores that order them, the ones that bother.
DRE: Did you honestly see this coming?
LH: I saw it coming but I didnt know what was going to make it happen. Its been pushing all this time and there just needed to be a breakthrough. It just needed to get into the bookstores. There is nothing wrong with comic books stores that gasoline and a match couldnt fix. Comic book stores are mostly focused on superhero type stuff, gaming stuff and what looks like soft-core porn. There is nothing wrong with liking that stuff but there is no place in comic book stores for the kind of stuff I do, thats a fact. Some of the stores that even order my stuff dont have people coming in to buy it.
DRE: Why did you start reading Manga?
LH: Ive just been queer for cartoons ever since I was a kid. For as long as I can remember if it was a cartoon I would watch it. When Wonderful World of Disney was a cartoon I would watch it and if it wasnt I wouldnt. I had no interest in live action whatsoever. Swiss Family Robinson, fuck em! We lived on a military base when I was a kid in the San Joaquin valley. They would show the Disney shorts in the base theatre. We got Disney comic books and then Speed Racer came on. I remember Speed Racer vividly and when I looked at it years later I thought the animation wouldnt hold up and I was right. It was not only worse than I remember but I thought Holy shit, this is cheap. But the stories were just as engaging as ever. There was so much drama and conflict there. Speed Racer was the last nail in the box for my queerness for Japanese stuff when I was kid. I already liked big eyed stuff and here was a drama. It wasnt a sitcommy bubble. My problem isnt that I think American cartoons suck just because they are American but they suck because they suck.
DRE: How about modern cartoons?
LH: I like a lot of the stuff on Cartoon Network. See it doesnt have to suck just because its American. Cartoon Network is the best thing to happen to cartoons in a long time. I dont like everything; nobody will ever be able to explain how Shake & Flick got on TV. I love Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls and the Adult Swim block.
DRE: Does your daughter read comics?
LH: Yes ever since she could read.
DRE: Have young kids ever told you what they like about Manga?
LH: They like the way it looks. They pick what appeals to them. My daughter doesnt like all Manga but what she gravitates towards generally is what is pretty or has appealing art. The writing also has to be pretty good so its an engaging read. Obviously she is a big Pokemon fan. A lot of those Pokemon are really cute. Even I like them. There isnt much to not like about them because they are so damn cute. But I think a lot of what appeals to her, is the decorativeness and clever designs. Clever in a way we arent seeing in America.
DRE: I read you did some work for Disney.
LH: I worked for Disney comics very briefly. I also did one cover for Marvel and that was plenty.
DRE: Did you ever do any animation?
LH: I asked an animator named Lauren Faust, who worked on Cats Dont Dance, how could you stand to draw the same thing over and over again. I thought that was a pretty dumb question because thats what I do. She said that when you finally get to see it move its really exciting. Im not fit for any task as repetitive as that even with the reward. I enjoy the process of making comics. I like being in an animation studio a lot but Im not suited for it. I did always want to work in animation in the design part. I found out really quickly that I wasnt suited for it when I was painting animation cels and traveling mattes and nodding off at my desk even though I had a full nights sleep and a pot of coffee. I loved working with the people though. The two guys I worked with the most went off and founded this studio called DNA Productions which did the animation for Olive, the Other Reindeer.
DRE: More and more sexuality seems to be seeping into our culture. Are we becoming more or less oppressive about sexual issues or is it used by companies for marketing purposes?
LH: I dont think more and more is seeping in but we are just seeing it in a different way. The older I get the more convinced I am that nothing new happens but we just notice it more. For instance sexual scandal with elected officials, like thats never happened before. People think something is new when they notice it for the first time.
But do I think our culture has an unhealthy focus on people who are built like 12 year olds with Pamela Anderson tits? Yes I do. I am very uncomfortable and distressed with our current standard of beauty. Its really depressing which is why whenever I go anywhere for an appearance I chant to myself Margaret Cho, Kathy Bates, Camryn Manheim. I have three role models.
DRE: Do you have any tattoos?
LH: No I dont.
DRE: Have you ever seen tattoos of your work on other people?
LH: No I have not. No one has ever gone so far as to permanently mark themselves or risk a disease like hepatitis or HIV for me. It would be so cool if someone died with my characters face on their ass.
DRE: Do you spend a lot of time on the internet?
LH: Yes more than I mean to. Someone once said The way to tell how long youve been on the internet is to take the amount of time you think youve been on then multiply it by there. I have to make myself get off and go to bed. Google is an obsessives dream because you follow tangents down to the subatomic level. I can spend hours tripping around the internet reading stuff because Im an information junkie. I can do it until my ass cant take it anymore.
DRE: Had you known of SuicideGirls before?
LH: Yes I have. Its not a very a cheerful name though. Oh Ill be a pinup model and then Ill mutilate myself
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
missy:
eased...