Since Sailor Moon, the magical girl sub-genre of manga and anime has captured audiences all over the world. American audiences took to the tropes and images and in recent years we’ve seen the evolution of the sub genre crop up in comic books and the upcoming Black Mask title “Jade Street Protection Services” looks to do something new with it. I had the chance to chat with writer Katy Rex and artist Fabian Lelay about their upcoming series, which launches next month.
I’ve had a chance to read the script for “Jade Street Protection Services” but for our readers, what is the premise of the series?
Katy Rex: This is a book about teen witches becoming conscious actors in their world. It’s a lot about growing up, and discovering the concepts (and misconceptions) one had unquestionably held about one’s environment, and what it’s like to discover a world outside of one’s comfort zone. It’s also very much about the inherent unfairness that takes place in high school, I tapped into several of my own memories for that, and about negotiating injustice as a newly autonomous person. When we’re kids, we often don’t get a full picture of the world’s injustices, because no matter what our situation, there’s almost always a grown up trying to make things work better for us in some way– especially for the girls in this book, who had extremely privileged upbringings, belonging to their world’s elite class. But when one’s teen years start, one starts to get a real picture of life without that mediating influence. I think that’s what’s so special about the “teen rebellion” trope (and the teen rebellion instinct); it’s so often mocked by adults but it comes from such a real and angry place, and such an earnest place, too.
I think I got a little off track there, but basically it’s about a group of girls who get semi-randomly stuck together, and they’re skipping school, fighting injustice, and navigating adulthood.
What were some inspirations behind the creation of the series?
KR: The series came, I think, from a food court-themed anime marathon kick Fabian had been on. He came to me with an idea about a Chinese food market and a protection gang formed in it, but as it developed, we moved more and more away from that, incorporating a speculative world, magnifying and developing flaws we saw in our own surroundings, and tapping into our own high school experiences as well as our high school nostalgia. I think we owe a lot to Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which did so much work deconstructing the magical girl (and I recognize it wasn’t the first, but it was a monument in my own personal media consumption) that we had a lot of new and exciting ways to access the genre.
Fabian Lelay: I was inspired by Hong Kong movies with the street community aspect. And a lot of anime. Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura and the like. Specially when it came to the concept of action.
This series relies heavily on the relationships between women, more importantly, friendships. Could you talk about this a bit?
KR: I don’t think we set out deliberately to make a book about lady-friendships. It all sort of came together pretty organically, starting with our cast and our conflict, and as it developed, it became really clear to me that the most compelling part of this story is the way the main cast leans on one another, and provide scaffolding for all of them to grow together. And it’s completely impossible to form a support system like this without becoming very very close, in terms of relationships. We’re definitely still playing with the way some girls are “mean girls” in high school, the way some girls are socialized to treat other girls as fundamentally different or less-than their male counterparts. But I think a lot of totally redeemable adult women have gone through a time in which they bought into the damaging socialization that this behavior is rooted in, so I’m primarily interested in examining it, calling it out, and working past it with these characters. Also, though, in a way that doesn’t directly engage with gender dynamics, I think that the best narratives are driven by multidimensional and complex characters, and so I’d prefer our narrative be the best.
Continued belowFabian, from an art perspective, what have been some of your personal inspirations as you work on the series? What has the process been like from the first day on the book to now?
FL: Well the inspiration for the art is pretty much pulled from a lot of places. I tend to adapt a lot of styles and techniques from various sources as time goes. So they’re have been times that the style and treatment for the original concepts to now are totally different. I mean the girls originally looked very Shinjuku street rat compared to the diverse cast we have now. The story we wanted to tell also affected a lot of that. For the costumes of the girls, I pulled a lot of very memorable pieces from a lot of magical girl anime and tried to incorporate it into our book with what I used to design in fashion school.
Do you have a favorite character to draw?
FL: I love all of them really. But if you ask me which one of the girls gets the most requests, it’s Definitely Kai. Majority of the creative team is in love with her.
KR: No, seriously, you don’t understand. Literally every member of the creative team has spent way too much time discussing how, when we were 15, we would have literally committed murder for Kai. Whether we would have wanted to date her or be her varies (and sometimes it’s both tbh).
Katy, you’re probably most known for being a comic critic. You had your own site, wrote for some others and hosted podcasts. What was it like making the decision to jump to becoming a creator?
KR: Honestly, I feel a little like a hypocrite! I went into comics journalism intending to only be in it to talk about comics; I felt like (and still feel like) there’s an important line between reviewing and creating, and if you do both things in the same industry there are a lot of murky ethical questions. But the more I read, the more I wanted to write my own ideas. It was hard for me to make the decision to transition, and especially since I reviewed so many AMAZING books by people clearly more talented than me, but I have to get these stories out or I think I might explode. And I did definitely stop reviewing as soon as I decided I wanted to be a creator– if you look back at my reviews, and see me saying things about certain publishers, it just seemed like a conflict to be applying to work with those publishers at the same time. And that’s a balance I still work on. I think as I get more confident in my own abilities, I may want to go back to podcasting sometimes, so we’ll see if I manage to do that in a cool and/or nonbiased way.
With such a diverse slate, Black Mask looks to be making some major moves in the industry. What drew you to pitch to Black Mask and what do you hope to see in the comic book industry in the coming years?
KR: My introduction to Black Mask was I think almost entirely through Matt Miner. I started reading his books, “Toe Tag Riot” and “Liberator” (and later “Critical Hit”), and I was really invested in the sensibility there that I would find extended to a lot of other books Black Mask had picked up. I think I can honestly say I have been a Black Mask Studios fan from when 60% of the people associated with the label were named Matt. Seriously, there are a lot of people there named Matt. I had a few places in mind that I thought “Jade Street” might fit, but Black Mask was the best fit and my first choice, and I’m just really proud & excited that they wanted to be with JSPS as much as JSPS wanted to be with them.
“Jade Street Protection Services” #1 is in stores June 29th.
