Today’s guest is the stellar Hannah Templer! She’s a deeply powerful colorist and cartoonist with just a mile-long list of credits, and is responsible for the aggressively engrossing Cosmoknights, available at fine independent bookstores near you. Let’s get into it!
Hello, Hannah! Today, I am pretending to be in a very stylish piano lounge, except the piano lounge is in space. Technology is wonderful. Take a seat, won’t you?
Wow!!!!!! Neat! I love space… thanks for having me.
This drawing is wonderfully evocative, and I need to know everything about it. Please tell us what’s happening here.
Thank you. This is some Matrix Reloaded fanart I did in 2003– I was 13 years old. It is a depiction of several of the main characters from the film posing for a group photo. I was extremely into this movie and I went to see it in theaters seven times. As you can see, it really spoke to me.
I notice that this is a traditional piece, with light touches of marker. Was this typically the style that you were working in at this time? Did you share your art online at all, and what was that experience like for you?
Interestingly enough, I think this piece was actually done with shellac inks– I was only able to get my hands on my first marker set at age 16, so all of my traditional art until then was created using brush and inks on printer paper (extremely chaotic). I did get my first digital tablet in 2003 (the year this piece was created), but it was an earth-shattering disappointment because I couldn’t figure out how to use it– so I continued to work traditionally for many years.
To answer your question about sharing art online: absolutely yes, I posted it ALL– and regrettably it is ALL still up because I am locked out of each of my three old DeviantArt accounts. This will be my legacy.
As a teen I had a complicated experience posting art online– I lived overseas during high school and didn’t have many close friends where I lived, but I DID have a constant online community on DeviantArt. It was positive and fun for the most part, with a lot of chibis and crossover fanart (Hugo Weaving playing both Agent Smith and Elrond was a RICH vein), but unfortunately over time I became pretty absorbed in comparing myself to other artists skill-wise… by junior year of high school it ended up becoming a huge source of stress for me. So at age 15 I decided to take a year off posting art online and focus on drawing for myself. I spent the year studying other illustrators I loved and drawing from life, and this was arguably one of the best decisions I ever made for my work– it helped me refocus my personal love for drawing and art away from the high-pressure lens of maintaining an online audience, and I think my overall relationship with social media is better for that early experience.
This is so interesting to me!! Both the shellac ink revelation and the fact that you were able to take a step back from posting online when you realized it wasn’t working for you – that’s really admirable. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment!
You were also kind enough to share some very good fanart of Helga from Disney’s Atlantis, created around the same time. I feel truly blessed to see it. Do you feel like there were any throughlines in terms of what media and characters you were gravitating towards during this period in your life?
Absolutely! I have shifted in and out of many fandoms (Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Treasure Planet, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill, etc.) but Atlantis was always the one constant, even now. It was my first fandom and I really latched onto Helga Sinclair as a character– I mean REALLY latched onto her– in retrospect I see now that this was a way for my brain to compartmentalize being a lesbian, but it has taken me 20 years to understand this (and I’m still pulling that rat’s nest apart). I used to think about her all the time, draw her constantly, wrote a zillion pieces of fanfiction, and even marked her height on my door frame because of how badly I wanted to BE her (and/or smooch???? her????). It was confusing.
So any time a character even remotely resembles Helga or the femme fatale archetype, my brain still goes whole hog– Elle Driver from Kill Bill, Eva from Metal Gear Solid, Widowmaker Overwatch… my brain is just this shape now.
On a serious note, although being queer is absolutely a huge part of this, villainous women are also what spurred my love for writing at an early age. I remember being absolutely transfixed by the idea that a woman could be complex and evil, either by nature, by choice, or as a result of a lifetime of misfortune. With Helga in particular, I was completely obsessed with trying to understand what drove her to make the decisions she did, and I really believe writing hundreds of pages of character-driven fanfiction legitimately made me a better writer.
I will cosign this.
Speaking of cool buff women, your original graphic novel, Cosmoknights, hit bookstores last fall. It has basically everything I could possibly ask for in a comic: intergalactic royal drama, giant robot fights, a baby gay finding her place in the universe, and a very resonant “system’s fucked let’s tear it down” vibe. In another interview that’s well worth the read, you described it as “a story about female friendship and queerness in the face of heteronormativity,” which I absolutely love.
So after everyone’s first question, which is: please oh please when is the next one coming out, I’m suffering, I would love to know — would you say that Cosmoknights is in conversation in any way with the stories that you were consuming when you were younger? How did those childhood interests end up taking root in your current work, and no I’m not just asking about Cass?
To answer the first part of the question– I don’t have concrete dates for Cosmoknights Book 2 yet, but I probably will sometime soon– rest assured I am working hard on it and am really excited about it.
Cosmoknights is my dream project, so yes, it is absolutely rooted in the passions closest to my heart. I mean, quite literally one of the scenes in Cosmoknights (book one) is lifted from a Helga fanfiction I wrote when I was 15. I also think Treasure Planet’s influence on Cosmoknights is pretty obvious– I am obsessed with the bizarre aesthetic that comes from squishing futuristic space tech with archaic architecture and design. I also love Zone of the Enders.
Less literally, as I mentioned earlier, I developed a love for writing complex and conflicted female characters pretty early on. While Cosmoknights is a space opera, it is largely driven by its cast. I love creating sci-fi universes and filling them with mechs and robots and cool tech, but I spend far more time on the character outfits, backstories and motives. Pretty early on when creating Cosmoknights I decided I wanted the sci-fi setting to feel incidental to the very familiar every-day experiences and interactions of the main characters– again, although they’re in an alternate future universe in space, their lives should resonate very closely with our own. We really get into the weeds in Book 2 with character conflict, and I’m excited for everyone to both sympathize with and be critical of their faves.
You’ve also worked on a wonderful tie-in comic for the Netflix series GLOW (written by Tini Howard, colors by Rebecca Nalty, available at fine comic book purveyors everywhere). This is super interesting to me as a person who’s used to adapting books that already exist, but not to working on stories inspired by television shows. What was that process like for you? Were there any surprising challenges, or things that you really loved about working on this miniseries?
It was a really amazing experience! GLOW was already one of my all-time favorite TV shows, so it was an absolute dream to be tapped on the shoulder for it, and I was doubly lucky to be able to work with Tini Howard, who is a fantastic writer and collaborator. My editors at IDW were wonderful too (thank you Megan and Elizabeth!) and Rebecca knocked it out of the park with the colors.
The process was actually very fluid– I’ve worked on licensed properties before that were a little more stringent with approvals, but the GLOW showrunners (Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive) were both very trusting of our vision. I felt strongly from the beginning that the comics should be their own thing and not just a carbon copy of the show onto paper– I took a lot of inspiration from 80s cartoons for the visual aesthetic and made sure to take advantage of the comics medium for storytelling and acting choices. It’s definitely a different flavor from the show, but the characters and story should still feel familiar and fun (and Tini did a great job capturing a lot of that!)
I think my favorite part of working on the miniseries was getting messages from the cast– it was such a delight to chat with some of my favorite actresses on Instagram and have their support! They were so excited to be in a comic book, it was a hoot.
Any advice for young cartoonists, some of whom might want to launch a webcomic slash graphic novel someday?
Sure! I’d say: work on the story you love and want to tell, not the story you think you should tell. Your passion for a project will shine through and make the work better, and especially for self-driven projects that may not make money you should at least be paying yourself in self-indulgence!
Also (and perhaps more importantly): be kind and empathetic as a creator. Storytelling is a powerful force for good, but it also has the ability to do great harm– it’s possible you will make mistakes with your work at some point, and regrettably even hurt people, but it costs nothing to apologize, be empathetic, and listen. Trustworthy friends will both support you and point out your shortcomings.
What are you trying to get all your friends into now?
Oh here we go…
Verse by Sam Beck – it’s a beautiful and poignant webcomic and I yell about it constantly
Sayonara Wild Hearts – I love motorcycle lesbians and you should too
Barbarous by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh – monster boyfriend is good
Fantasy Sports by Sam Bosma – in my opinion this is the perfect comic and Sam is a legend
Nancy by Olivia Jaimes – the revival is amazing and will teach you a ton about comics
Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin and Nina Vakueva – a great nostalgic and queer girl power comic
Old City Blues by Giannis Milonogiannis– if you like sci fi and mechs this comic is for you
Witchy by Ariel Slamet Ries– a gorgeous webcomic set in a fantasy world with great characters
Birds of Prey – please watch it, it was SO fun!!!
Anything else you’d like to mention? Upcoming projects, people you’d like to shout out, things I really should have asked but didn’t think to…?
Well, definitely keep an eye out for Cosmoknights Book 2– like I said, I’ll have more info soon but it’s well underway and will resume as a webcomic in the near future! And I’m actually working on another book that isn’t a secret but I haven’t officially announced– it’s a comic biography of Patricia Highsmith, the author of Carol (attention fellow lesbians). I’m working on it with the inimitable Grace Ellis and it will be out in the future from Surely Books (Abrams queer graphic novel imprint)! (Reader, I gasped.)
Quick shout out to Mey Rude who does great work consulting on Cosmoknights but more importantly has become one of my closest friends while working on this project! And then a general shout out to every Animal Crossing player– I do not play the game but I love you and wish you many DIYs and good villagers.
Thank you SO much for your time, this has been a blast!!
THANK YOU GALE!!!!
Go read Cosmoknights, everybody!!