In this episode Natasha Alterici stops by to talk about her journey into comics!

Topics include getting into comic books at a later age, flipping the Norse mythology script, heading to Kickstarter, the entire process from beginning to end, what’s coming next, and also what she’s reading.

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Transcription:

Matt: Welcome back everyone to the ComiXology Conversations Podcast. Kara, welcome back.

Kara: Thanks Matt.

Matt: We’re here in Artists Alley. We’re interviewing one of our favorite Submit Creators right now, “Heathen,” we talked about on the show before.

Kara: A legendary comic.

Matt: Well, it is legendary in our office and hopefully the world soon. Natasha Alterici, welcome to the show.

Natasha: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Matt: Anytime. So “Heathen,” we talked about a few weeks previous, and it’s great that we’re doing a variant for the convention. I was reading about how you got started into comics, and you started later. Like I grew up with comics at eight years old. Kara did not. You started later with “Teen Titans.”

Kara: Yeah, on a weekly basis, yeah, with the floppies. That was later.

Matt: What was your story in getting into comics?

Natasha: Well, yeah, I had a similar … I didn’t grow up with comics. Comics were always a boys thing. There was never any titles that I found in the bookstores that were interesting. Everybody was superheroes and latex and giant muscles and things.

Matt: Yeah, big butts.

Natasha: Right.

Matt: Man butts.

Natasha: Everything looked intimidating and not in my wheelhouse. But in college, I took an English class, obviously, and they made us read “Maus,” which is the legendary Art Spiegelman … about the Holocaust. It was a totally different kind of comic than I had ever seen before. It got me thinking that, hey, this is just another art form, and there’s got to be some out there that would interest me. So I started investigating and looked at the various graphic novels, the big ones, the “Watchmen” and “Persepolis” and those kind of things. That’s kind of where I got started.

Kara: “Heathen” is unlike other books. I just love that there’s so much … mythology is part of it. You got the female protagonist, kicked out of her village, decides, “Eh, I guess I’ll go on a quest. I guess I’ll save this Valkyrie that’s been cast down to earth.” It goes from just your standard, typical mission quest to something a little deeper, but always going back to that Norse mythology. What kind of research did you for this?

Natasha: When it first began, working on the book, I was just going off of this costume design that I made. I was going to go to the Renaissance Faire with some friends, and they were like, “We’re all dressing up.”

Matt: Get a turkey leg.

Natasha: Yeah, we’re going to get turkey leg and funnel cake and things. Everybody was dressing up with their dresses and things. I wanted to be a warrior, so I made up a costume for myself. I designed it. Then I just kept sketching that design over and over again, so I started researching Norse mythology. I didn’t really know much before I started writing the story. The one story that I found in this mythology that really appealed to me was the story of Brynhild being cursed by Odin and being trapped in the fire. She has to be released by some man jumping through the fire. It was just such a bizarre thing for me to hear about this woman that was this powerful, kind of terrifying creature, this legend amongst the Norse warriors. Then she gets knocked down to this … she has to be somebody’s wife, some mortal man’s wife, and that’s her life now. It really, really appealed to me as an interesting story, like commenting on the patriarchy and those kind of things. I was like, let’s make a woman save her this time and see how that changes things.

Matt: I remember when we were reading the first issue, I saw the not like the trophy man saves woman, and I was like, “Oh man, this is really interesting.” You get to see this younger woman try something totally different in terms of her circles. This is going to blow minds. I can’t wait to keep reading to see how it blows their minds, like it was going to be so great.

Kara: Well, we talked about this on the podcast before, and I was saying how I really enjoyed when our heroine confronts Brynhildr. She’s just like, “Well, I mean, now you’re free so go do what you want. I don’t really feel like you should be obligated to marry me or anything.

Natasha: Right, yeah. I never really had the intention of our hero marrying her because she thinks it’s weird too, but that’s the setup of the situation. It’s like, "I’m going to let you go. Just go be free for a while. Then I don’t know what happens now, but here you go.”

Kara: I really enjoyed how they’re both just like, “This is kind of weird. How did we get here?”

Matt: This book started on Kickstarter, which I had no idea when I read it]. What was the process for you once you started doing the designs, you’re like, “Maybe I have something here,” to then go to the next step?

Natasha: Well, the first issue I was just working on in my free time. I had all these other projects that I was doing, commission work and covers and things. I just started working on “Heathen” in my free time, just like a page a day or a week or something. It took a long, long time to finish the first issue. I sent it off to Charles Martin who runs Literati Press, which is a local publisher in Oklahoma City. He really enjoyed it. He thought it was great, and he say let’s put it in print. So I finished the rest of the book, and we printed the first issue. There was such a huge response from it even at our local level that I decided let’s try to do the rest of it, so we brought it to Kickstarter. I wrote out the rest of the issues for … Well, wrote out a plot line, a treatment for it. What I wanted to do was sketch some of the characters and stuff. Took it to Kickstarter and said, “Let’s just try. Let’s just see how people respond,” and they responded really, really well. I was surprised.

Kara: It is such a gorgeous book. What’s your process like for turning your script into the reality of the page?

Natasha: The first issue was kind of trial and error. It was the first time I did a whole comic book digitally. I do all my thumbnails with pencil, but then I scan them, and I take the rest digitally. It’s a much faster process for completing pages since I have to do all the inking and the penciling and the lettering and all that stuff. It’s just my sketching style. I don’t know. I want to keep it very simple. I keep it very monotone pretty much. I don’t know. It’s just how I draw.

Kara: How did you come up with the color palette for the world of “Heathen,” because, I don’t know, it just jumped out to me as just working so well tonally?

Natasha: My teacher in college always used to say, “If you get the values right, you can do whatever you want with color.” I’ve always been the person who doesn’t like to do a lot with color. I’ll finish a whole page just in values, just black and white, and then I lay another layer on top that’s just the color. It’s just a warm tone and a cool tone. It plays off the values that are already there, and it works from there. It’s really a simple color palette. I like that I keep it simple that way. It’s much easier for me.

Matt: The success we’ve seen with “Heathen,” what do you want in the near future for you with comic books? Would you want to continue writing and drawing your own stuff? Would you want to try different things?

Natasha: I’d absolutely love to keep working on my own stories. I have a bunch of other ideas. I have more than I want to do it for “Heathen.” I have another volume that I’d like to put out. I’m probably going to try to Kickstart that later in the spring hopefully. But then I have a bunch of projects that I’ve been talking to other collaborators with, some other writers and artists, and potentially collaborate on some things. We’re not ready to announce anything …

Matt: Of course.

Natasha: … but it’s exciting. I’d like to start doing this full-time because it’s definitely my passion.

Matt: What do you read in your free time? What do you seek out, or what is maybe outside of the big stuff that started with you in comics? What have you sought out after the fact?

Natasha: I’m looking for titles that feature women, because it was a rare thing for me to find, whenever I was first interested in comics. It was all men. It was all men writers and artists and stuff. I used to walk into comic book shops and just ask the people that work there, it’s like, “Okay, what books can you recommend where there’s a writer that’s a woman, or an artist that’s a woman, or maybe the lead character’s a woman?” They would just have these blank stares on their faces. There was nothing. It kind of blew my mind. I was like, “Well, I guess this isn’t the thing for me.” Then I stumbled on “Saga #1” when it was first coming out, and I picked it up. I saw the name Fiona, Fiona Staples, and I was like, “I’m going to read that one.” Knew nothing about it. Knew nothing else about comics. Nowadays, yeah, Fiona Staples’ work on “Saga” is phenomenal. She continues to get awards, and it’s always such an inspiration. Then I’ve been reading books like “Lumberjanes,” and “Bitch Planet.” “Paper Girls” just debuted yesterday.

Matt: Did you read that yet?

Natasha: It was amazing.

Matt: Amazing.

Natasha: Everybody was raving on Twitter. I was like, “I have to see what this book is about.”

Matt: Yeah.

Natasha: It was really, really good.

Matt: I was really shocked when I read it. We were talking on the podcast this week about where it went. I didn’t know anything about the plot, and then I saw the Monster Squad poster in their room in the first couple pages. I was like, “All right. Let’s see what’s happening here.” It was great. It was a fantastic first issue.

Natasha: It’s really good. Just four girls and they’re just kicking ass. I loved it.

Kara: Yeah, I love it when there are books with ensemble casts that are mostly women. You just listed my top four books.

Natasha: They’re the best.

Kara: Yeah, and your book is up there too.

Natasha: Well, thank you very much.

Kara: Got to be honest.

Natasha: I appreciate it.

Matt: Well, we appreciate you making the book. We love it. We love sharing the word of “Heathen.” I can’t wait to get the variant cover that we have here …

Natasha: Oh, yeah.

Matt: … for my desk.

Natasha: It’s beautiful. There’s only a few, so come and get them people.

Matt: Thanks again.

Natasha: Thank you very much.

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