Roller Derby has always been something I’ve liked hearing about but never really got. While I still don’t really get it after talking with V and Tatiana, I certainly have a much greater fondness for this wacky, wild and ever changing sport. I think you will too. You’ll certainly come out wanting to read more about Mina and her induction into the paranormal version of the sport in “Blood City Rollers,” out right now!
Thanks to V.P. Anderson, and Tatiana Hill for sitting down and chatting with me and for all their insight into a sport that my fragile bones could not handle.
So you’re both very much in the derby community.
Tatiana Hill: I would say roller skate world. I don’t play derby. So I’m definitely just on the roller skate side. And then V is our Derby person.
Our Derby expert?
TH: I would say so yes.
V. P. Anderson: If that’s even a thing that anyone can be. The rules are costly changing. Also, this is paranormal roller derby, which I made up. Very loosely, very loosely based on the human rules of roller derby and one of the jokes that’s running in this series is like the rules are constantly changing – And let’s be real here – because we forgot or, like, I forgot that I made up a rule.
I also have wicked ADHD so the rules of paranormal roller derby…I like to think of it as like, in real life, if monsters were trying to create a sport that had rules, regulations, penalties, etc. it would be shifty, right? It would be extremely shady. So that’s exactly what we’re doing here. There is technically a governing body that no one knows really what they’re up to but like, we’re all just kind of running amok here and that’s the whole point of roller derby. Running amok with the veneer of rules.
That was actually gonna be my next question. Like, how close to real rules, if there is a set of rules, or is it more like calvinball?
VPA: In real roller derby we always say: this is not your mom’s or your grandma’s roller derby and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way because grandma’s roller derby was lit, right? Like fishnets, they didn’t wear any protective gear, they were punching each other in the face. It was intense. Whip It kind of brought the bank track roller derby to the world, where anyone watching that movie is gonna be like, “Oh, is this child friendly?” I’m not really sure because lot’s going on, there’s double entendres and it’s kind of sexy, you know? Stuff going on.
A lot of dudes fetishizing the players is very classic but now with flat track roller derby, it can be played anywhere so it’s very accessible. Like Mexico roller derby plays under an underpass under a freeway. I highly recommend if you haven’t gone on tic tok and just looked at all the roller derby leagues and their practice places because one of ’em plays out of an airplane hangar; our practices for my first leak was an abandoned mall, which is what this setting for this book is and Tatiana, literally when I told her what the vibe was, like it’s kinda a Mall Rats vibe, it’s sorta hard to describe, and then I just sent her a bunch of pictures of the literal dead mall that we played in with its single working toilet and its Burger King with the sign falling off and the creepy abandoned playground with all of the weird plastic clowns in it and stuff and she’s like, this is what we’re gonna do and thne we basically elevated it to this kind of neon, punk thing, but it very much is anti-capitalism, play wherever you can, maybe pay rent under the table but probably not.
Like, there are some leagues that are playing in parking lots that I’m pretty sure they don’t have any kind of permission to play in. I think that the similarities are that same feeling of make it work, find a way to make it work with whatever resources you have, bring people together in the community. You know, we give each other old gear so they don’t have to buy new stuff. It’s very punk and almost like borderline socialist the way that modern roller derby operates. It’s like guerrilla sports.
Continued belowI think the rules are meant to keep us safe, basically. The only rule that can’t be bent is the safety ones. I mean, heads will pop off but they’ll come back on because you’re, you know, immortal so it’s fine.
It’s fine.
VPA: It’s fine. She’ll walk it off, roll it off, it’s fine.
That actually seems to fit well with the paranormal and supernatural elements of the series. This underground, grunge, do it yourself kind of approach.
Stepping back to the book, when and how did this project start? Was it always paranormal Roller Derby? Was it originally something else? Where did the elements kind of start to come together?
VPA: For my part, and I definitely want Tatiana to talk about her perspective, because her perspective is a lot more like the main character in this book, I feel, where she just got kind of taken, like, against her will. Like “recruited,” but very much it was like…
My very short, like, 10 second story. I was playing for two leagues simultaneously in upstate New York because I’m insane and I just can’t get enough. So I was literally driving an hour and a half to one league to play with this league and then another league. Having the time of my life. Living my best Derby life Then the pandemic hit. We’d had one bout that season and then shut down. So it was literally going from having my entire community and all my friends and basically, like, everyone I hang out with on a daily basis in this community and for the first time in memory, it was like, oh, what happens when you can’t skate together and you can’t play together.
I got really depressed for a couple months. And I sat down and I was like – I need to write about this.
I’ve always been a huge fan of horror, especially horror-comedy and the juxtaposition of creepy situations. I think there’s a lot of allegories and direct connections to be made with trauma, especially childhood trauma. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of people with a lot of childhood trauma really find horror as their comfort genre, so it was literally a no-brainer for me.
I was like, I want to do a ParaNorman/Scooby-Doo kind of vibe of monsters that are actually kind of hilarious and adorable. Then I thought to myself, if this is gonna be a graphic novel…which it has to be, because how do you explain roller derby non-visually. It’s very difficult. I have multiple friends that have written Derby books, and it’s like, how do you explain a whip, what it looks like? If you pick up your jammer and yeet them across the track? Like, you can imagine it but if you’ve never seen roller derby, it’s harder, right? So we needed to get an illustrator and it was like the perfect Kismat of aligning stars and planets where my roller derby lead was doing a fundraiser during the pandemic for shops/small businesses and there was this Etsy shop with this tarot deck that someone [points at Tatina] had made and it was a roller derby tarot deck.
Every single card in this roller deck is exactly what I was imagining this world and the players to look like and so I literally just went to Etsy. DM’d Tatiana and was like, “Hey. This is maybe a little weird. Have you ever – I love your art – Have you ever considered illustrating a graphic novel?” And she was like, literally no. I just got out of animation school.
I think you should take over the story at this point, because it’s way funnier from your perspective. Like, who is this person and why are they doing this?
TH: Yeah, definitely. Backpacking off of that, during the pandemic – similar vibes: the world shut down, can’t skate anymore. I wanted to create something that could still tie me to my roller skating community and I came up with a tarot deck: 78 cards, it was funded through Kickstarter and very grateful to the community. Then out of nowhere, I get this message from V asking, “Hey. I came up with this story. I think your art would fit the vibe. Have you ever considered doing a graphic novel?” And I was like, Oh my gosh, no. But sure. Like, I’m not gonna say no to this opportunity.
Continued belowHearing the story and seeing how my art can tie into it, I was actually feeling like Mina: plucked into this world and publishing. I was plugged into the world of Derby, seeing it from an outsider’s perspective, knowing some Derby players but never officially going to a game. I feel like Veronica brought the paranormal and the spooky and I’m the one that’s just into this world and we meshed really well.
So what is is your experience with rollerblading and roller skating before this? I’m curious about the contrast.
TH: I got my first pair of roller skates in 2016 and I’ve been skating on and off ever since. 2018 was the year I decided to skate every single day for a year. I recorded that progress on Instagram and you literally saw me stumbling all the way to where I got comfortable. Now, I roller skate recreationally; I go to the roller rink; I also roller skate at the skate park, which is a thing that not many people know is possible. I think they think of blades and they don’t think of the quad skating at a skate park but that is something that I do as well. Through that I’ve come to know a lot of roller derby players. They actually do like to skate at the skate park as a way of training and exercise. It was through them that I got to learn more about the derby world and then through Veronica where it really took off.
VPA: Definitely Google “Chicks in Bowls” if you haven’t. It’s very much a movement. It’s way too cool for me, like that scene in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the original, where it’s the Foot Clan and their hangout and they’re all just doing like sick bowl tricks and ramp tricks. That’s Chicks in Bowls.
I tried it once and I almost died so I’m just supporting from the sidelines. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s cool as hell.
Yeah, I could never do that. I’ve tried skating. I’ve tried blading. I’ve fallen on my face every time.
VPA: It’s better to fall on your face. Honestly. The four-point fall is the first skill any skater needs. There’s literally a panel in the first book where we show how to fall safely. The first skill any skater needs is you’re gonna fall either on purpose, by accident, or someone’s going to hit you and you’re gonna fall. Learning how to kind of tuck and roll your way out of it was what I spent my whole first six months playing.
I went down to my basement and my partner, they could just hear like brumbadumbadum brumbadumbadum brrrrrrum as I would fall over and over and then eventually it was like kchhhhhhhhhhhh because I would learn how to do the slide ball. That was when I started actually being able to play without being in mortal fear of wrecking myself, because I’m not a young buck anymore. Gotta be careful of ma bones.
You gotta protect the digits.
VPA: Gotta protect the digits, yeah. Supportive safety gear? Very important. Helmets. Wrist guards. Always.
Who’s one of your favorite characters from…let’s go with the vamp team.
VPA: There’s some ship wars, I think, that are going to be happening. We definitely have some friend crushes. My favorite is going to be Val, because Val – the captain, Valhalla – is loosely based on an actual skater.
My first ever bout I played, there was this frickin Viking goddess, seven feet tall, long blonde braid just flowing down the back, and she just cut through our pack like it was butter. Like she didn’t slow down. She looked like an ice skater doing a routine. Normally you have to get down to hit people in roller derby but she was fully upright, just slicing. I have a video of it on my phone from all those years ago.
I remember everyone on the team was just stopping in their tracks going, “who is this goddess?” So I tried to kind of encompass that as a 14 year old vampire, who everyone kind of worships and is also terrified of, which every team has, by the way. Every team has at least one person that’s like, do I want to be her, date her, create a religion and worship her? It’s very queer. But yeah, that’s roller derby.
Continued belowI don’t know if I’ve ever asked you, Tati, what your favorite character is.
TH: My favorite characters are actually a duo. It’s hard for me to separate them: Imp and Go.
VPA: Of course.
TH: I really like how they banter off of each other. They’re definitely the two within the team that are the most lighthearted and the most, I would say, not human, but they express themselves more aligned to what Mina is in, like, their humor, in their jokes, in the way they carry themselves. I don’t know. They just remind me of that comedic duo that’s always up to shenanigans, but without them everything would quite literally fall apart. I would say those two as one cohesive unit are my favorite.
VPA: What about you? Do you have a favorite?
I don’t know. I try not to pick favorites.
VPA: If I were you, I’d go with a ghost refs because the ghost refs are hilarious.
The ghost refs are hilarious.
TH: They are.
VPA: Dead pirate Robert classic.
I very much appreciate how everyone’s name is a pun. That was great.
VPA: We love puns.
Did you spend a lot of time working on those or did they just come like naturally?
VPA: I don’t spend a lot of time working on anything if being I’m honest. I’m a very impulsive person. If you ever find a typo just know that it was my fault. 100%. Any mistakes made, it was me. I did it.
I actually Googled a list of classic vampires initially when I was it putting together. There’s a lot of players on a team and so the whole Blood City League, every vampire skater pretty much has a loosely inspired by, or a throwback, or a callback name. Bella Ghostly is a Bela Lugosi reference, like the most obvious one, but there’s some really niche ones, like Count Bracy. Count Basey was a famous big band player, really niche and like, you didn’t need to know that, but bracing is a thing you do in roller derby. So Bracy is the derivation of that.
But I mean, real Derby names are hilarious. I have so many teammates that get so creative with theirs. I would like to say that I had like a really intense process, but it was literally just like, how can I turn this into a pun/weird niche throwback to one of my favorite comics or old movies or whatever. Tatiana is helping name a lot of the ones in the next book, which I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about that or not.
Accidental exclusive!
I mean, it ends with a “To Be Continued.”
VPA: Oh, sweet. So we’re definitely getting a book two. We’re very excited about it, but we won’t talk about the details yet.
Yeah, I don’t think bring Random House would be too appreciative of that. I mean, they probably love the free press but…
VPA: They know we’re gonna go rogue. That’s just who we are.
It’s very much the vibe of the book.
VPA: You can’t expect us to behave ourselves. Look at the canon. Come on!
Earlier, you were mentioning kind of the marriage of horror and comedy and that’s a through line in here. I was more surprised whenever there were very much pure horror, like leaning completely into that. And I wondered, is that contrast there on purpose? And will that be looked at more than the next book now that we’ve established everything? Or are you hoping to kind of really keep that balance? And the horror stuff kind of in the background? Maybe not the horror stuff, but the darker implications of, you know, how did the vampires feed? What did happen to those four Dashers?
VPA: What about the pizza boy?! Was the pizza boy OK? Yeah, exactly, exactly. We do have one that we bring back later because it’s kind of a running joke.
I actually want to talk about the art because we talked about this a lot in the beginning, like color theory and how we can invoke that kind of feeling of it’s all this fun, poppy, neon colors, and all of a sudden there’s a panel that’s dark, black greens, and you’re like, oh, no. We also use a device we call meme-o-vision, which is… Mina very much is a neurodivergent child and on the outside, a lot of neurodivergent kids look totally fine. Like, they’re fine but on the inside, it’s like, panic! You know, the KC-Green “This is Fine” dog-on-fire meme. She has a very deep, inner world where she’s imagining the horrible things that might happen to her and then like, “Well, let’s give it a try anyway” because she’s very traumatized like a lot of kids today.
Continued belowI think the world we live in now, I’m surprised at how much we got away with in this book. There are things that we are doing in the next book to very much bring out that feeling that every kid in the world is living through right now. The peril and the Gen Z sense of humor, which is things are on fire but they’re flossing. That vibe is intentional. The art is really what pulled it off for us, in my opinion. Tatiana’s approach was 100% the right tone that we were trying to strike and if it was another illustrator or someone that didn’t understand color theory as well as she does, I don’t think it would have worked.
TH: To add to that, I really do think when you flip through the book, even if you’re not reading anything, you can tell the moments that are more comedy – neon punk – and then you’ll immediately get that, “Oh, my gosh, wait. There’s something important happening over here. And it’s kind of creepy. And there’s a weird undertone here.” So I really feel like that’s something that I would like to keep exploring visually, because I think it adds so much to the story.
Even when you think outside of what’s actually happening, Mina’s life is just thrown into this chaos. At first we’re like, oh, yeah, no, it’s fine. She’s doing great. But then you’re like, wait a minute, she literally got kidnapped by monsters and there is a monster society. What is going on? Having that be reflected in the story and the art ties into the “there’s more going on.” Like it’s not all surface level fun and games. There’s definitely more to tell and I’m excited to show that and tell that as well.
Could you talk a little bit more about the choices of colors? Like were there any touchstones that you were hoping to evoke? Or was it mostly vibes? That kind of stuff.
TH: Pretty much every setting has its own color palette. When we’re in her home kitchen, it’s very neutral, very warm. When we’re in her room, it’s kind of muted and stale. It isn’t until we get to the abandoned mall and where they practice that you get the vibrant, neon colors. Specifically in the cabin, where they practice, there’s graffiti on the wall; it’s bright purple; there’s pink; there’s neons. Then you’re like, wait, this is really cool. It isn’t until you figure out where they’re playing that you get that creepy, ominous, fluorescent light blue-green of the abandoned mall.
Showing how she navigates each of these spaces through color evokes the tone of what we’re playing at, what she’s feeling, the people around her, and then we get into more of the horror elements where I’ll get rid of all color except for maybe two. Then you have these really stark images of things going down, people being attacked, like what’s going on?! I really enjoy having that contrast where we can have these vibrant illustrations and then when things start to hit the wall, color’s almost completely gone and you just have that really stark contrast like in horror movies, like in black and white except we’re throwing red in there because we are vampires. Let’s make it a little spooky.
Was there anything from Random House where they were like “Tone this back. You can’t really do that because it’s kind of aimed at the middle grade audience?”
TH: Honestly, I didn’t get any pushback with the art, which I’m honestly shocked about, because I definitely pulled from a lot of dark imagery. So far, fingers crossed. I keep getting away with what I’m getting away with.
VPA: I feel like Tatiana and I are that What We Do In The Shadows line where it’s like, “His name was Mike, because I’ll always tell you everything.” I will say one thing that I think is very important to me personally, and the only pushback I think we got…not pushback but the only kind of thing that we received early on was we got a lot of comments to the effect of isn’t the main character scared? Like, aren’t they homesick? Don’t they want to get home? Like, isn’t she worried she’s hanging out with these like awesome vampires doing the coolest thing she’s ever done in her life and living in an abandoned mall? No homework. No school. Nothing she has to worry about. And a lot of adults were saying things to the effect of: doesn’t she want to go home?
Continued belowI thought to myself as a young child, who was one of those kids that was angry, like physically angry, when the kids wanted to come back from Narnia for example or any of those shows and movies where you’re like, “Okay, we went on this magical adventure. And now it’s time to go home to our humdrum lives, do our homework, and like, pay our taxes and bills.” And I remember being so, like, WHY?! I’m so mad! (as a child.)
This is written for kids so we basically did a device, which you might remember, where I finally had to explain why our parents aren’t worried about her, why she’s not there, and we were like, You know what? Let’s use paranormal rules. That’s my favorite Get Out of Jail Free card. We’ll just have a vampire take care of the situation and there’s one panel, literally, that explains once and for all, we’re addressing this, and we’re not gonna worry about it ever again after this. Like, yes, these kids are probably in danger and they shouldn’t be running around like this but they are so let’s move on from that.
And it is a great panel. It is a great set of panels.
VPA: It worked for us. We got away with it. That’s all that matters.
Exactly. You do what you gotta do. I don’t want to ask too many spoilers…I keep looking at the cover behind you. I love the eyes and the teeth. Like, it’s been painted over luminescence.
VPA: Yes.
It’s great. Oh, what’s up with Bruise Wayne?
VPA: Nobody knows, man. Nobody knows. What is he? That’s up in the air still. What is he, that’s my one of my favorite bits actually. We brought in the thing that Mina needed, basically. Think of every Pixar movie, right? There’s always a little helper or a little friend. And we thought it’d be really funny when she’s at her darkest, most lonely moment, she gets a little friend and she’s like, Oh, good! I’m kind of feeling bullied by this other character and life is…I don’t know what I’m doing. And then it’s like – little adorable! And one of my favorite tropes of the 80s and 90s horror movies, specifically Gremlins, is, it’s a cute little friend but also, possibly, extremely dangerous. But it’s your friend. So it’s probably fine. You’re probably safe. Maybe.
Just don’t just don’t poke the teeth.
VPA: Don’t put your hand in its mouth.
TH: Funnily enough, Veronica just wrote that in because she was looking through my portfolio and I had this bat character design and they were like, Oh my gosh, I really love this. Let’s give her a bat-dog-creature thing. And I was like, okay, cool. So we literally just wrote him in.
VPA: And we’re like, what do you name a bat-dog? Bruise Wayne. Obviously. It’s not even a question.
It’s gonna be a fun evolution. It’s kind of a hint toward the bigger story, the overarching themes, if we end up getting as many books as we can, which honestly? We could probably go forever if we wanted to, because we’re really enjoying ourselves.
That’s what do you want to hear.Yeah. I have more questions of a roller derby rules, but I feel like none of them actually matter.
VPA: That’s what I keep telling the editors, if I’m being honest with you. They’re like, why doesn’t this rule work on one of them? And I’m like shhhh. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.
A common thing in roller derby is if the ref didn’t see it, did it happen? Last night in a bout we were playing, there are multiple times where another skater on the track would be like, Oh, that was a trap cut or oh, that was a backlock, which is when you run into someone’s back at full speed, which is unsafe. That’s why it’s the rule.
In this, of course, everyone’s immortal except for the jammers. There’s a whole website, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, evilonwheels.org, which we created based on the fictional shadowy organization that makes the rules in the first place. Feel free to go there. We have a training and recruitment video. It’s live, it’s public, feel free. Go nuts.
Continued belowAmazing.
VPA: Yeah! But basically, they’re like, “we are Evil on Wheels and we make the rules.” And sometimes they’ll just arbitrarily change them. But in the 80s, the background history is, it used to be played with all monsters, but that wasn’t very fun, because they’re all strong, a lot of them are immortal; they don’t get killed as easily. So they thought it’d be really entertaining if they forced every team to have a single human jammer. And the fun part of the game is that they’re half-hockey puck, half…they’re a teammate but also you’re yeeting them from player to player trying to keep them from getting et or whatever on the track or whatever might happen to them.
It’s actually similar to the vibe of being in roller derby and having little tiny skinny, you know, tiny jammers that are very jukie and very fast and agile, but if they get hit, they’re hitting rocks. As a blocker and pivot, that’s my favorite thing. Sometimes I’ll literally pick up my tiny jammer and just yeet them out of harm’s way.
I thought it would be funny to see a bunch of vampires sweating, not because they’re worried about themselves, but because they’re trying to keep this little tiny human jammer. That’s the impetus of the rest of the rules of paranormal roller derby. They’re are all about how to keep your human alive while also trying to knock the other human jammer out. It’s a melee, basically, everything is a melee, so just like real life.
You’re not wrong.
VPA: But if you’re a fan of TTRPGs at all, there’s a lot of commonalities with that. Like, I won’t go into it, there’s another project I’m working on that has the juxtaposition of Dimension 20-style play and paranormal roller derby and it very surprisingly translates really well. That’s a little tidbit for the nerds.
I think the nerds will appreciate it. Tatiana, when you were working on translating the roller derby aspects, both to the paranormal and just to the page? What were some of the references that you used? Were they the same tik-tok channels that you were talking about earlier V, or was it, you know, any books and movies? Just real life experience? Just description?
TH: When it comes to a lot of what’s in the script, I’m very grateful that Veronica explains to me what’s happening, especially for the more specific moves. Like I didn’t know what a line of blockers looked like. There are a few more terms that Veronica used and I was like, oh, I don’t even know how to Google this. She actually had little stick figures in her original layout and she would send those over to me and I’m like, thank you so much. I know where everybody’s standing. I know what they’re doing.
Outside of that, though, I would watch Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby Association championship videos. They’re like hour long videos, if not more, and I would nitpick and study their placement, how they maneuver through the pack. So a lot of it comes from video. Some of it is just regular references on Pinterest. Some of it’s the stick figures that Veronica helped me visualize better. I’m taking a lot from real roller derby because the posing of everything’s really important, the way they block is important, and making sure that they’re not going against any of the rules of elbowing people, it’s just very, very solid posing that they all do that I want to make sure translates well. It’s a little bit of everything, but definitely grounded in real roller derby I would say.
Back to the coloring, I noticed a distinct difference between the fairytale/flashback sequences and the rest of it. When you were showing me the tarot cards, I also noticed that the coloring was very similar to those, at least from what I can see on my nice pixelated screen. What is your process for those?
TH: What was really exciting about the flashback sequence is it’s thrown into the middle of the story and it’s juxtaposed against this beautiful, not sunset, but a beautiful pink sky. I wanted to completely change the style or at least the coloring style so it looked more of a picture book, especially because Val’s story takes place during an era of Vikings. I didn’t want it to look like the same art style with the heavy line art and that punk rock feel. I did want it to just feel like a fairy tale.
Continued belowBut again on the twist end, this isn’t a fairy tale. Something happened to young Val.
VPA: Surprise! It’s horror again.
TH: It’s still the charm of the fairy tale aspects but it still transitions into horror through the color because this bloodmoon happens and the fairy tale turns from this pastel story into a very dark, red, vibrant, “what happened to Val” aspect. I thought it was fun to have that break immediately and then we change the style and then we revert back to that style when Nina has this dream/flashback sequence something(?) of her and Val also in that same time period. So yeah, the callback was also very fun. I got to do that style again.
What’s the experience of making your first graphic novels been like? Like going from your other projects to making this together?
VPA: For my part, I’ve always loved writing scripts and screenplays and things when I was a kid. I got really into that in college and I’ve made a bunch of indie films. I also write books but it’s not my favorite way to…I’m a very visual person, so it’s not my favorite way to communicate. My drawing style, if you’ve seen it, is definitely not…It’s more like “Cyanide and Happiness” style stick figures. Very, very minimalist and not in a fun way.
So I knew I was gonna find an illustrator for this that really fit the style. It was also really important to me to find an illustrator that was in the skating community at least, and someone who represents the type of person that you see in a typical roller derby space. It’s not probably hard to find illustrators in roller skating but it was really important to me that someone at least kind of understood the vibe, not just the ability to draw roller skates, the ability to kind of draw from that feeling of euphoria that you get when you’re wearing them and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m amazing.”
I literally went out and bought online those things they make for children that are blank comic books. I taught myself how panels work, here’s how much text I can fit in a panel, which, turns out, I way overshot the first time. Now we have a new process for that. So I was making really terrible stick figure panels, using it to map out in storyboard what I wanted to do. And then, inevitably, I’d kept that to myself, thinking no one want to see it and at some point, Tatiana was like, “Can you describe this?” I was like, well, here’s like 500 screenshots of the worst panels you’ve ever seen in your life. I just started sending her pictures of it. They didn’t have faces, you know? Just like body. And she’s like, “this is actually really great. Thank you.” I was like, Oh, cool.
So if anyone wants to start out and has never thought of, you know, designing a comic book before and isn’t good illustrator like me, you can start there and then find the friend who’s really artsy and be like, see, this is what I mean. And they’re like, “Oh, I can do that but 1000 times better than you.” Like, that’s the perfect team.
TH: My process coming from an animation background was pretty much the storyboard route. Instead of actually animating anything, we’re still trying to tell a story and tell movement, just through panels, different shots, things like that. It was pretty easy to translate that, and definitely a lot less steps. I didn’t have to animate anything. But one of the biggest things I wanted to keep in mind – I keep talking about color. To me, it’s something that’s very important because even if you take an animated film, or a live action film, and you broke up all the frames, you can tell the story beats just by color. I wanted this story to do the same thing and I wanted for it to feel like this could also be something that’s animated in the future? That’d be amazing. And overall, I just think that when it comes to something that has to be read, and something that has visuals, there needs to be a balance. And luckily Veronica and I were able to find that balance because it’s not just something you’re watching, you have to read and see what’s happening together on the page.
Continued belowVPA: If it’s not already obvious, like painfully obvious, Tatiana is very much the MVP of this team. This series would not be able to have the exact tone that we wanted it to have without her specific point of view, which is why I think it’s so important. If you’re a writer to find a partnership, that’s a true partnership with someone who will be like hey, you know, there’s a better way of doing this, right? You could do this with one panel of art instead of 10 pages of dialogue. If you wanted to, you could. I’m like, Great, let’s do that.
More Derby. More Queer.
VPA: More Derby. More Queer. Yes, exactly. Also, speaking of queerness, if you notice a lot of the colors are pulled directly out of pride flags.
Do they correspond to when characters are showing up or is it purely just visuals?
VPA: Some of them do, like a trans character that has the socks with the trans pride flag the whole time and it’s just very obvious. Everyone has their pronouns, just like we do in real life roller derby.
It’s really, really important to us to showcase how inclusive the most queer inclusive, and also the most trans and non-binary inclusive sport in the entire world is. We’re trying to make more progress and be even better but honestly, I’m really proud to be a part of the sport that is so, not just inclusive, but actively takes steps to keep the sport safe and available for a variety from people from different backgrounds
