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10 years in “Jane’s World”: An interview with Paige Braddock

Paige Braddock is a regular around these parts, even if you don’t immediately recognize her name. She is the Eisner-nominated creator of Jane’s World, the comic which graces AfterEllen.com every Thursday. By sharing the adventures – and misadventures – of lesbian newspaper reporter Jane Wyatt, Braddock gives us a lot of laughs at Jane’s expense and, in doing so, makes us feel a lot better about our own little foibles.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Jane’s World. In celebration, Braddock’s Girl Twirl Comics just released a hardcover edition of Jane’s World: A New Frontier. The lovely book chronicles the history of the series and collects Volume 10 of Jane’s World, in which “Jane gets mistakenly recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.” Yes, it’s a lesbian parody of The Last Starfighter. And it is awesome.

Paige graciously took some time from a day of meetings at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates, where she is Creative Director, to talk to AfterEllen.com.

AfterEllen: Congratulations! Can you believe you’ve been doing Jane’s World for 10 years?

Paige Braddock: No, I really can’t. It seems unreal.

AE: How have things changed for comic strips like Jane’s World over that time period?

PB: A lot of the changes have come from changes in the newspaper industry. So much of it is gone – a lot of East Coast papers we ran in aren’t even around anymore. That’s one reason I switched to a longer narrative; it made more sense to tell longer stories.

AE: You’re still in a few weeklies, though, right?

PB: A few; the largest is the Dallas Voice. We’re part of Universal Press Syndicate, so we run daily on the GoComics site, which requires a PG rating.

AE: Really? You have to be PG at an online site?

PB: Yes. It’s funny, because the lesbian/gay content is OK, but we can’t say “ass.” We’ve had a couple of things edited out and they pulled a shower scene that they felt was too risqué.

AE: Bummer; I’m sorry I missed that. That’s really one thing I like about Jane’s World, though, that sex happens but you leave it to the imagination.

PB: Right. Sex is implied, but not really there. I’m much too bashful for that. Nothing hot and heavy.

AE: Except the shower scene we’ll never see. [Paige says it’s on her blog somewhere. If you find it, send us the link!]

AE: Is Batwoman a sign of more openness to lesbians in comics?

PB: Actually, there’s always been more tolerance for female superheroes to have alternative lifestyles – more so than male characters. That’s not too surprising considering that most comics readers are male and they love reading about lesbians. But I was on a ComicCon panel with Greg Rucka (who wrote Detective Comics featuring Batwoman) talking about writing LGBT comic characters and I think a lot of Batwoman‘s success goes to him. He’s a good guy and a thoughtful writer. J.H Williams III (the current writer) seems to be staying very close to Rucka’s tone, so that’s good.

AE: Will Batwoman‘s success pave the way for more LGBT titles?

PB: It’s hard to say. The bigger challenge is for comics in general. When I started, the comics scene was very robust with gay and independent comics trying to break in. Now, while there’s an openness for indy stories in general, some of which are gay, the industry as a whole is shrinking because of the pressure to go digital.

AE: How do you feel about that?

PB: The problem with digital is how to make money with it. You have to have volume and advertisers, and the industry hasn’t figured out how to make it work yet.

AE: Have you seen a model for it, like comics-on-demand or something?

PB: Universal Press is working on something like that. They have subscribers and sell comics to Yahoo – things like that. They’re trying to work all the angles.

AE: How do you think a black & white comic like Jane’s World will work digitally?

PB: I’m not sure. When I look at my comics on GoComics.com, I think, Wow; it’s totally getting overwhelmed by all these color ads. If I had time, I might do it in color. But I prefer black & white and grayscale – there’s something pure about it.

AE: OK, let’s go back in time. You started doing comic strips in college, right?

PB: I did some in high school and college. They all were sort of precursors to Jane’s World, but the character development wasn’t there – sort of Jane with training wheels. Especially in college. That strip was so gay, but the character wasn’t out.

AE: Did you know Jane was gay when you started Jane’s World?

PB: Well, for Jane to come out, I had to come out; that was the problem. I was living in Atlanta, not far from my parents. Even though Atlanta is pretty gay friendly and I was out at work, I wasn’t writing gay stories. That changed when I moved to California. I’m not sure if it was the distance from family or just being in a place where I was less tethered to my personal history. But I made gay friends right away and having that support and community helped. In Atlanta, I was the only person doing that kind of work, but out here, there’s a bunch of us.

AE: How has Jane’s World changed over the last 10 years?

PB: The characters are much stronger. Each is very well rounded, so now I can put them in a scenario and know how they’re react. They’re like real people and can make references to themselves and their history. They’re old chums.

AE: The characters’ figures are more well rounded, too. I understand Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise) helped you add boobs to the characters.

PB: When I started, I wasn’t focusing on physique at all. Then two or three issues in, I was at a comic convention and realized that it was all boobs and spandex. To have off-the-rack sales, I needed to embellish the figures.

AE: You certainly succeeded. Especially with Chelle.

AE: Jane’s World seems to transcend generations, story-wise. Is that deliberate?

PB: I just got lucky. I’m not going to deconstruct that. But most of my readers are adults. When I started running on AfterEllen, I got some younger readers, I think. College age students and women in their twenties I meet at conventions now say they read me on AfterEllen.

AE: Do lesbians give you grief over not being more serious and PC?

PB: Actually, what happens is that when I get serious, they don’t like it. In Volume 9, for example, I had a truck with a Sarah Palin bumper sticker on it and a story arc about a group of rogue Republicans. It was just a joke, clearly not politically motivated, but some people in Log Cabin Republicans got annoyed. They don’t think I should be topical at all. You know, like when you’re a funny comic, you never have a serious moment.

AE: Was The Last Starfighter parody lost on your younger readers?

PB: Some people checked out the movie because of the references, but for tons of people, that is a favorite movie. They were happy, but I’m sure it was lost on some people.

AE: How much of Paige is in Jane?

PB: A lot. Mostly, Jane embodies my philosophy of life, like “everything is better with donuts” and “life is too short to worry about caloric intake.” The work ethic, too — a lot of the material about her at work is a throwback to when I was in journalism, as sort of a tribute.

AE: Tell me about your partner Evelyn.

PB: Evelyn is a holistic esthetician. When we met three-and-a-half years ago I didn’t know what that meant — I thought she cut hair. We met through a set-up by mutual friends.

AE: Did she know who you were?

PB: She was a Jane’s World fan, but not in a creepy way. During one of our first dates, I didn’t know if she even read comics or the strip. She told me that she kept Jane’s World close by at night and if she woke up and felt bad, she’d read it for awhile and it would make her feel better, then she’d go back to sleep. That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

AE: I love that! Is Evelyn in Jane’s World?

PB: Looks-wise, she is. She looks like Skye. But she’s not a vegetarian. Nobody calls her a “vegan menace.”

AE: I have a feeling some of Jane’s experiences are from your lives, though. The dog and cat peace summit was just too true.

PB: Yes, Evelyn had two cats and I had two dogs – and my wiener dogs were smaller than her cats. Her cat that sent both dogs to the hospital was Mr. Fluffy incarnate.

AE: Do you two plan to get married?

PB: We got married in July 2009, our first anniversary. It was right after Prop. 8 – we were so close. But California has very robust domestic partnership laws so we are a legal couple, just not technically married.

AE: Will Jane even find true love?

PB: I don’t know if she should. I mean, I want her to, but one of the unwritten rules of comedy is that if everything is going well, it’s not nearly as humorous. Jane’s romantic success is not nearly as funny as when she’s screwing up.

AE: Who are your comic influences?

PB: Well, Terry Moore, of course, even though his work is a lot more serious than mine. I love his dialog and how he handles female characters, especially in Strangers in Paradise. In terms of comic strips, Charles Schulz has been a role model since I was a kid.

AE: How did you meet Charles Schulz?

PB: We met at a comics convention. Our paths had crossed previously – I worked with his editor in college – but whenever he was around, he was surrounded by people, so I never got to talk to him. But I arrived early to a convention and was walking around the hotel grounds looking for a good place to sit and draw, and I saw Schulz and his wife throwing a baseball. I sat down nearby on the steps – and the sprinkler system went off. He came and sat down with me and we got to talk.

AE: Thank you, sprinklers. Did he know about your sexual orientation?

PB: Yes. We didn’t talk about it, but when I got the job working for him, some people were pretty ticked off and jealous. One of them called to tell him I was gay, hoping to get me fired. That was pretty low. He was like, “Yeah, so?” One of his stepdaughters is gay and he was really good friends with Billie Jean King, so he has no issue with it. He was socially moderate.

AE: Is the company open as well?

PB: Yes. I was an island of gayness for a while, but now there are more of us.

AE: What do you do as Creative Director for the Schultz studio?

PB: We have an office in New York for licensing and contracts and we manage creative projects here. Any product with Peanuts characters on it comes through here. In some cases, I actually ink the characters, like for a line of comic books we’re doing for Kaboom! right now.

I was actually hired as an artist and would take charge of the studio when Mr. Schulz retired. But when he got sick, the timeline was moved up. I still do a lot of hands on drawing of Peanuts characters.

AE: That must be intimidating.

PB: Very. The characters are deceptively simple. At first I thought, “Oh, I can do that.” But the less there is, the harder it gets.

AE: What’s next for you? Jane’s World forever?

PB: You know, I took a little break from Jane’s World and really missed the characters. But now I’m approaching the strip differently, drawing it in modules and paying attention to how it looks online. It’s kind of complicated; I have to do a grid of three, three-panel strips to use according to what the publication or site has room for.

AE: Do you have Jane’s end in sight?

PB: No, and I think that means she’s not ready to be finished. Terry and Jeff Smith (Bone) both saw the end of their series long before they stopped.

AE: As a creator, what are your plans? Will you do another series?

PB: I’m still doing art for The Martian Confederacy [written by Jason McNamara], but each volume is a self-contained graphic novel so that’s a little different. Two volumes are out and we’re talking now about whether to release it first digitally or in print.

I also have an idea for an all-ages story. The main characters are rabbits – it was inspired by that story arc where Jane went through a vortex and became a rabbit. I liked how the rabbit looked and started thinking about it. But I don’t have it figured out yet.

AE: What about the comic industry itself? Do you see it getting even more open over the next decade? Do gender and sexual orientation still matter?

PB: Ten years ago, I didn’t think it was important to let gender and sexual orientation show, but now I wish I’d been braver. I think it’s important for people to see lesbians of all kinds represented in every medium. So, my answer now is different than it would’ve been 10 years ago. It’s important to embody who you are, whether you’re writing gay stories or not. But the best thing that can happen to me is if a kid in Idaho says, “I read your comic online and I feel less alone.” That’s better than any paycheck.

I got an email once from a mother whose daughter had come out and she was really upset. But then she started reading Jane’s World and said she was much less worried about her. That’s the kind of thing I love.

AE: And that’s a great closing thought. Thanks so much, Paige. (And personal thanks for letting me use Jane’s Chucks as my icon for all these years!)

Order your copy of Jane’s World: A New Frontier at janescomics.com or other online retailers. Better yet, go into a comic store and ask for it — you might find something else you like, too. And be sure to read Jane’s World each Thursday here at AfterEllen.com.

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