Recently I got to speak with Amy Chu about her publication and partnership with Georgia Lee in establishing Alpha Girl Comics. It was exciting to get to know what Alpha Girl Comics stood for and what goals the two of them had for their publication. I found it inspiring that these two well educated and talented women chose to make comics because, “upon seeing a distinct lack of female voices in this medium they decided to take action and start publishing their own stories.” Come see what Alpha Girl Comics is all about on today’s Artists’ Spotlight!
You both have diverse and accomplished backgrounds. Why did you both choose comics a professional outlet?
Making comics satisfies a creative need that can be much more difficult in other professions like film where you need to raise millions of dollars to see professional output. At first it was fun, but well, now’s it’s kind of an obsession…
What inspired Alpha Girl Comics? Do you have any goals or aspirations for your publication?
We’re doing it to have fun and to get our stories out there to a wide audience. We also want to make it known that women can and do want to write, and comics are not just for BOYS. I would consider it to be a success if we can inspire more girls and young women to read comics and to start making their own.
What can you tell us about making your own publication from the ground up? What would you say has been your biggest milestone so far?
Making your own comic is the most satisfying experience ever. It’s a learning curve – and project management and people skills are important. I’m not sure about one big milestone- there have been a bunch of great little milestones. Certainly, there is no greater feeling than to see your comic fully illustrated, colored and lettered for the first time. We just signed a sales rep, Tony Shenton, and brought on an intern and PR/marketing coordinator, but there’s so much more to do…
Do you hope to expand the talent within your publication? From a hiring perspective, what sort of attributes would you look at in new talent? Are there any you place emphasis on or view as essential?
Absolutely! That’s a little farther down the road but we’ve been talking with some very talented and published writers about their ideas and always looking at artists. We don’t have the bandwidth to handle solicitations but [we] are keeping an eye out for new talent who show they can execute a full script or sequential art well.
Do you plan to publish works through both paper and digital or have you considered publishing some strictly digital work? What’s your take on digital publication?
We’re trying to make our stuff accessible to as wide of an audience as possible, so digital is important. I am working on a webcomic just to experiment more with the medium. There are certain things you can do digitally that you can’t do on paper that makes it very interesting from a storytelling perspective. Having said that, Georgia and I are both old school. It’s a different experience reading on paper, and so as long as we can afford to print and it works with the format, we will try.
