I’m sure a few of us can relate to this piece, but if you’ve been following her sketch posts on Patreon, you might have already figured out today’s guest: the crafty, funny, magical Megan Brennan! Megan’s written a whole bunch of Amazing World of Gumball graphic novels, contributed to a billion anthologies, hosted one half of my favorite Animorphs podcast, and has a very fun book forthcoming from Random House Graphic that we’ll talk about a little later. Let’s get into it!
Good morning, Megan! Today I’m pretending to be in one of those Sailor Moon-themed fan cafes. Please join me over a cute parfait.
OF COURSE!!!!!! Life goals = using a spoon to break apart ice cream shaped like Luna’s head.
Let’s imagine for a moment, for the sake of our readers at home, that this character does not strike a chord with my very bones. What am I looking at here?
HOW COULD YOU!!! It’s Chibi-moon, or possibly as I knew her then: Rini, from Sailor Moon. She’s Usagi’s daughter from the fuuuuture who gets sent back in time to hang out with a bunch of teens and be horrible and then be overly cute. Anyway I drew her as a teen here, probably because I wished she got a sequel series of her being Sailor Moon.
I was mentally trying to articulate why I liked this specific character so much (I couldn’t find other fanart from this time, but found TWO Chibi-moon drawings), and I think mainly I felt obligated to pick a designated fave because of all those anime shrines online. (for uh, people who didn’t grow up feral on the internet in 2001, people made little fan websites dedicated to their fave characters, full of lovingly-crafted gifs and info etc etc. we didn’t have streaming anime, so I found out abt a lot of anime through fan sites without having ever watched the show)
Anyway, people loved to hate on Chibi-moon then because she was annoying. Which is fair, especially with her English dub voice, in my opinion. BUT that online-joking hate that just made me like her more, in a “i wanna root for the underdog!” kind of way.
Plus I was mainly a Sailor Moon comic reader, and she has an interesting arc in the comic: she starts out as this freak who can’t grow up (literally) and has no friends. She goes back in time to basically try to save her mom, by stealing a magic crystal, typical Sailor Moon stuff! She kind of inserts herself into Usagi’s life and won’t explain what she’s doing, and it goes…badly. Eventually, she turns evil out of jealousy over…basically everything Usagi has. But after having this bad-girl makeover moment as Wicked Lady (which I LIVED for), she realizes that she has all these people who love her, and has to protect them, and that gives her power.
I always felt kind of like a weird dork as a kid secretly reading manga, and weirdly this overly cute character had some of the same energy. Plus the power fantasy of punishing people who you felt like didn’t appreciate you? And acknowledgement of dark/resentful feelings towards other people, when as a girl you’re socialized to kind of Be Nice?? There’s a lot going on there for tween me.
Anyway I wanted her to be a cool teen because I wanted to be a cool teen. THANKS FOR COMING TO MY CHIBI-MOON TED TALK.
I love to see grid paper represented in childhood art. About how old were you when you made this? Was it sandwiched between homework assignments, or did you have notebooks for drawing?
It was in a sketchbook! It’s hard to see in the photo, but I had this sketchbook I must have gotten at? Borders? Or something, that had lavender grid paper inside – I don’t remember if I picked the grid paper for a reason, I might have, given that I do have some comics in the same sketchbook! I think I mostly picked it for the floral pastel stuff on the cover. I think a little prior to this sketchbook (around? 6th grade?) I usually just drew on printer paper. But absolutely had doodles in all my notebooks also.
You were also kind enough to share some drawings of “original characters,” a concept which we have not yet plumbed here at the Fanart Emporium. Were you telling a lot of stories around this time? Do you remember what they were about? What was inspiring you?
YES! At about 5th grade I sort of “decided” to be a newspaper comic strip artist (which I changed my mind about multiple times before actually deciding to make comics as a career), but after I read Sailor Moon/other manga, I wanted to do that soooo bad. I remember some fantasy story with 4 characters with powers of the four elements – I think legally, all tweens have to make one of those – which I never drew, but I think grew out of my Sailor Moon Sailor Earth OC (unfortunately, didn’t come across any of my art of her) plus reading a LOT of Tamora Pierce books.
The particular comic in here was when I was trying to be slightly more original – this one was about two girls who go to school in the future, and stumble upon an organization that was going to secretly protect Earth from invading aliens? I don’t know where I was going with this; I definitely didn’t design any actual aliens – but I liked drawing the lead girls. I’m guessing this was about when I started finding webcomics – I had branched out from looking at anime fansites to looking at artist art sites, and I think webcomic links came from there. That was where I really saw comics that felt like what I wanted to do – stuff heavily influenced by manga, with jokes (still loved newspaper strips too). I didn’t read Western comics until late in high school.
I think around the time I had this sketchbook, I made some other friends who liked to draw, which was so important for me at the time! We were in the after-school program because our parents worked late, so essentially we had a LOT of time to kill, so we drew a lot. I remember I got this strong urge to draw more to get “as good as” my friends, and I made them do silly jam comics with me, once I found out that was a thing. Finding other people who draw feels more and more vital as people age and really stop drawing! I got lucky in finding other kids who were obsessed with manga like I was, at that time. I don’t know if I would have had as much fun doing it without that push.
I love this answer so much, but also need to clasp your hands in Elemental Powers Tween solidarity. My OC was a very cool psychic earth type with rollerblades. Just, like, regular rollerblades.
GALE, I’M SCREAMING
One of your claims to fame is a trilogy of minicomics called Magic Girls. You’re currently expanding them into a full-length graphic novel with Random House Graphic, which is great news, because I need to know what happens. These minicomics detail the increasingly-distressing life of a tween who was a magical girl until her costume upgrade turned out to be a dud, at which point she threw it all away for a glamorous life of school, TV snacks, and occasional reluctant sidekick activities. There are crushes and transfer students and student clubs that turn out to be dark cults – whom among us has not had these exact experiences – and they’re just a delight to read.
So, to bring it around to question time: you drew this fanart of a magical girl when you were around the age of your main character. What brought you back to this subject? How do you go about creating a loving parody with such tween-accurate chaotic energy? Give me tips??
It’s so funny to go back to look at stuff I drew at that time, because I didn’t realize HOW MUCH I’m directly drawing on my own tween energy to make it! A lot of the stuff I felt then is still relevant now (anxieties about friendships/lack of, uncomfortable crushes, trying to figure out your “thing”, feeling looked-over), but as an adult I am more aware of what’s going on and have more distance from it. I’ve been trying to both be aware of the ridiculousness of some of the problems you have at that age, while trying to be sympathetic to my characters. It sounds weird, and I resisted letting these characters have grounded emotional stuff going on as I expanded the plot at first, if I’m being honest. But after going through writing book 1, I think acknowledging that you can both be acting ridiculous and from a real emotional place is the ultimate teen feeling? I hope that comes through for the reader. I both laugh at my younger self, and want to give her a hug, which is also how I feel about all my tween characters.
What are you into now, and why do you want people to join you in fandom hell?
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT, THE WITCHER. I got sucked into the books and TV show and I was playing the game and having so much fun. But it is an acquired taste. (also, not for kids, at all)
Also I’m caught up on Demon Slayer (thanks Shonen Jump app for being amazing!!!) and I’m STRESSED about Nezuko & Tanjiro! But the art is incredible. My other fave manga coming out right now are Land of the Lustrous, Delicious in Dungeon & Witch Hat Atelier. We are so lucky to have so many good comics to read easily!
In all honesty I am answering this during social isolation and all I can think about is Animal Crossing.
The absolute hardest same. Hello from egg hell.
THERE ARE SO MANY EGGS AND YET, not enough of all of them to make bank on crafting things before Bunny Day.
(Editor’s note: The problem has since been patched, but the memories remain. Egg hell is a state of mind.)
Any advice for young notebook doodlers?
Don’t stop doodling!! I feel like kids now have less time to kill, and I wonder how that affects doodlers – I got sooooo much doodling in during waiting for Neopets games to load, waiting for websites to load…
Anyway I feel really strongly that doodling is really important, even if you don’t want to be a “professional” artist, because doodling is FUN art. You aren’t making something perfect. You’re figuring things out. You’re thinking while you move your hand. You’re making marks. I didn’t keep a sketchbook for a while in college, because I was overwhelmed making Serious pieces for class. Now that I look back, part of trying to push back against that was doing a collab project with a friend where we intentionally were trying to work quickly and without second guessing. It was so freeing! And it all flowed in a way that projects I did the way I was “supposed to” didn’t.
My sketchbooks now are pretty much all “doodles”, really, and the act of thinking while doodling it where all my ideas come from, to be honest! It’s so hard to sit and think of ideas, like the way we think a Great Writer or Artist comes up with ideas is by sitting at a desk and just focusing until ideas appear, but it never works like that. I have to make my hand move and make a list that is intentionally bad until there’s a good idea somewhere at the end of the list. Or alternately: draw a page of whatever things feel right, until one of them sparks more ideas. Somehow if you’re half-thinking and half making marks, your brain can make connections it wouldn’t otherwise. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.
Well, I’m out of parfait, so I’m calling it. This was so much fun! Thanks again for your time!!
THANK YOU GALE!! I can’t wait to read everyone else’s surveys, thank you for organizing! <3
The coolest teen! Go follow Megan online and read all her comics!!!