Lea Hernandez's NAN Grant

Lea Hernandez

By Leigh Dragoon
August 1, 2006

Multiple-Eisner nominated comics artist Lea Hernandez is a well-known (some would say infamous) personality in the comics industry. An early creator of American manga, Lea has had a prolific career, with work ranging from such companies as Disney Comics, Marvel, DC and Oni, to name a few. Always outspoken and a passionate advocate for women comics artists and writers, Lea's blog entries often serve as a flash-point for discussion and debate. True to form, Lea recently created quite a stir in the comics community with the announcement of the NAN Grant, which she is offering to budding female comics creators. The NAN Grant will award a year of free hosting to the winning artist on WebComicsNation.com, the parent site of Girl-A-Matic.com, a site created by Lea to promote girl-friendly web comics, and heavily favoring female creators.

Sequential Tart: First off, for people who don't know, would you mind explaining the signifigance of the phrase, "I'm hurting comics?"

Lea Hernandez: I got tired of two things: 1) comics jingoism circa 2001-2002 Warren Ellis Forum, where people were writing these substance-free ra-ra speeches about "comics are teh awesome," and 2) being told many times that criticizing the business was "hurting comics", and 3) being patronized and antagonized (mainly by men who couldn't stand me having an opinion).

It all got summed up in the "I'm Hurting Comics" rantifesto at the former The Great Curve.

ST: You have had a lengthy career in comics. What prompted your decision to leave the mainstream comics industry?

LH: Cumulative misery. I was tired of seeing things not get noticeably better in twenty years. A locker-room attitude and culture is still the norm. So is "go along to get along." It hurts a woman to put up with that for a couple years, let alone twenty. It harms her psyche. It harms her health. And this attitude is aided and abetted by the largest concerns in the comics business. They ought to be ashamed of their dirty work.

I found something else I could do to make money (3-D polymer clay portraits). While that business is still growing, just unclenching myself mentally and emotionally and accepting that I was desperately miserable and needed to get out, then letting go of the misery, opened my world up, and I've been pretty steadily busy with illustration work and polymer commissions.

I decided last November I would go to no cons but CAPE! and Anime Iowa, as they were previous commitments to cons that have been good to me. I turned down invitations to several comics events, which was really hard, like pushing away the bottle. I decided not to go to San Diego or APE, which was also really hard. As I type this, San Diego is going on without me.

I'm missing seeing my friends, but then I remind myself I see most of them for like six minutes, like we're speed-socializing and we've got until the air-horn honks to catch up on a year or two.

I also really needed to give more time to my kids and husband, who I am crazy about. I wanted back that 1-2 months a year that going to just four conventions sucks up.

Don't believe me? 2 day con + 5 day con + 1 day con + 3 day con = 10 days. Add two days per con for travel, 4 x 2 = 8. Add another day per con for recovery, 4 x 1 = 4. Add another 2 days per con for packing, prep, cleaning, 4 x 2 = 8. That's thirty days under optimal conditions! One whole month! And that's not even accounting for work time lost at a con, both mine and my husband's.

I am not a man with a wife who can herd kids at con or stay home with them, nor am I blessed with friends or relatives who love being with my kids. I'm a woman whose husband has a job on top of his dad job. Making it all work so I could leave for four days or so four times a year was difficult and stressful. This is the reality for a lot of working women with kids. So, for that stress, a con has to be really worth it. A lot of cons aren't.

In January, the thing that tipped me over into publicly saying "I quit!" was that fucking script for that fucking awful Frank Miller All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. It so perfectly encapsulated everything that was wrong with mainstream comics and comics in general: reduction of smart women to sluts, reduction of women to parts, poor art, "hurr hurr hurrr" script. That did not make me quit, but that was the straw that broke the quiet camel's back: I realized I could stand up and say, "GOD, THIS IS SHIT!" and absolutely nothing would happen to me, because I'd placed myself beyond other people's reach. No one could hurt me any more with threats or censure or tongue-clucking.

Before all that, there were several bad conventions (on top of nineteen other years of them), having my breasts groped at dinner in San Diego and having everyone involved I tried to talk to the next day just look at me like chickens and go "Whuuut?"

ST: As most people know, you were the creator and original editor of GirlAMatic.com. However, I understand that you were one of the first people to see the Internet's potential for comics creators. Describe your first foray into webcomics.

LH: I was a contributor to a Japanese CD-Rom comics anthology, ComicON. It was started by Orange Road creator Izumi Matsumoto. I put up pages from my story, "Monster Friday", on my first web site, which was called Pink Radio. It was the most efficient way to promote the project here. I had planned on putting my first graphic novel, Cathedral Child, on the web as a serial if it didn't sell the last time I pitched it, which was at the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con International. I'd been pitching it since 1990, and I was sick of getting turned down. It clicked with Image, so I put up ten-page previews of it and Clockwork Angels.

I left Image before the last issue of my series with them, Rumble Girls, was published. I was really unhappy with their marketing guy at the time, who had said some really dumb things (like the famous, "I don't understand Rumble Girls. Maybe your husband could help you write it so it makes sense"), and the cumulative annoyance of his silly mouth and other problems made me not want to be there any more. I started serializing the entirety of Rumble Girls on the web, starting from the first issue, in early 2003 and finished the story in late 2004. I don't think I was the first print comic to move to the web, but I was one of the first. RG on the web certainly predates Girl Genius on the web, for example.

ST: What influenced your decision to create the NAN Grant?

LH: I was inspired by ModestNeeds.org, and the Xeric grant. Both of the organizations grant small amounts to give people a leg up. MN helps people with one-time expenses that would otherwise devastate them. The Xeric, which was started by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird, gives grants from $1000-5,000 USD for comics creators to self-publish.

I love the idea of something to help someone economically lower-middle-class. No poor, definitely not rich, but to whom a year's worth of hosting is a real gift.

ST: Since your announcment of the grant, you have fielded a lot of criticism. What is the most common complaint you've received?

LH: The field doesn't need it, things are great, look how many women are working, things are changing.

ST: What are your feelings about this argument?

LH: That only someone who is horrifyingly ignorant or in a state of denial believes that's true.

ST: Has there also been a rallying of support?

LH: A wonderful one! Three of the four NAN Grants were sponsored with unsolicited anonymous donations. It's been linked like crazy by people who love it. There's far mroe support than criticism, but that doesn't mean there's no need for it.

ST: Marvel Comics' Editor in Chief, Joe Quesada, was quoted in a Newsarama interview as saying, "To think that the industry, Marvel, DC, or any publisher isn't hospitable to female creators is ridiculous". What are your feelings regarding his statement?

LH: That he is completely full of crap, which is a really unproductive statement, I know. It'd be nice if he cared about at least Marvel making more money, but clearly he does not, to flatly dismiss a very real problem, and to try to dilute blame and take credit by wrapping himself in the flags of publishers that are female-friendly, like Oni.

I know Oni, Joe.

I've worked for Oni.

Marvel, sirrah, is no Oni, and you are no Jamie S. Rich.

ST: What are your plans for the future? Any projects waiting in the wings?

LH: To work on my own comics, of course! The third Texas Steampunk, Ironclad Petal, will be published by Cyberosia next year and will be serialized on GirlAMatic.com, too, of course. The fourth planned Texas Steampunk is Invincible Summer.

There's also Rumble Girls: Runaway Lightning Ohmry to get done.

ST: Lastly, is there something in particular you would like the NAN Grant's critics to consider? A parting shot, as it were?

LH: I love the self-examination of cartoonist Mike Dean in the comments section of my recent interview at Gigca: "I'll have to admit, my first thought was much like grotesque mole-man? why should others be bathed in light as I stew in obscurity, but listening to the podcast really plunged some insight on an otherwise unknown world to me (that being the world of pro comics). While I sympathize with the initial feeling of exclusion, I have to applaud the effort as any attempt to promote egalitarian practices between men and women is a good thing".

"I think the most exciting part of The NAN Grant is the potential fusion between profession practices and the widely amateur driven styles of web comics."

That's some insight we could all learn from, and it takes chutzpah to share like that. Mike also allows he gained insight. It'd be great if more people whose knee-jerk reaction to charges of sexism and inequity in comics is "everything is fine" would ask themselves, "If everything's so awesome, why are so many people saying it's not?"

NAN Grant Information:

WOMEN WEBCOMICKER GRANT NAN

PURPOSE

In order to foster women publishing independently, with economy, and as owners of what they create, I will award FOUR grants annually, of a year's free hosting at WebComicsNation.com, to women making a regularly-updating new or existing webcomic of any genre or style.

The recipients will have unlimited data storage and bandwidth, the ability to choose to support their work with ads, and a storefront for selling merchandise.

The name of the grant is "NAN", after the "digital person" Nan 11 from Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie. In RG, Nan agitates, comments on, and works behind the scenes to help the heroine, Raven, come to the understanding that being her own girl is the key to her strength.

I believe the Web already has what women wanting to make comics need, and that it has and continues to transform American comics from a work-for-hire Boy's Club to a stage for everyone to perform on and be seen. The Web is living up to its promise, and comics can, too.

DEADLINE

Submissions are now open. Deadline for submissions is FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2006, 6PM Central.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF GRANTS

NAN Grant recipients will be notified WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2006, via email. A press release will be sent out concurrently. (Because, dadgum, we all need good news by Wednesday.)

ELIGIBILITY

1. Persons applying MUST be female. You will have to provide me with a document such as a driver's license, birth certificate, military I.D., etc. stating you are female. In the case of team comics (no more than three persons on a team), the entire team MUST be female, and remain so for the period of the grant.
2. Applicants must be 18 years old.
3. The work submitted must be free of contractural obligation for web publication, must be the property of the applicant(s), must not infringe on other's rights, nor be libelous or slanderous.
4. I am kindly disposed towards manga and Oni-like comics, but good comics most of all.
5. Previous experience a plus, but not neccessary.
6. The NAN Grant is open to ALL female webcomickers, regardless of experience. This includes young, brand-new comickers, older brand-new comickers, experienced comickers now paying a success tax for bandwidth use, professionals from other fields. You have to either already be making a comic that needs hosting, or want to host a new one.
7. Applicant bears sole responsibility for following these guidelines. Failure to comply with items 1.-3. will result in revocation of awarded grant.

RIGHTS

1. Applicants retain ALL rights to their work. Submissions are the sole property of their creator(s), period.
2. Comics published with a NAN Grant that are later collected for print are requested to add "Originally published in (year) on Webcomicsnation.com, with the aid of Women Webcomicker Grant Nan" to their indicia.
3. I reserve the right to use applicant's names and representative art to publicize NAN without further compensation. (This means I will tell people who's applied, who's won, and point the inquiring to their work.)
4. NAN Grant recipients are encouraged to crow as soon as they recieve notification emails.

GUIDELINES

1. Ideally, BEFORE YOU SEND ME YOUR PROPOSAL, BUY or BORROW and READ "How To Write a Book Proposal" by Michael Larsen. (Amazon Link) While it is geared towards non-fiction proposals, it does teach everything you need to know about crafting a readable proposal. What I do not want to see is your entire story written out in a single-spaced block in email. Have mercy.

2. Show me you already know how to put a comic/images online. I want to see clean presentation (which means learning how to use an image editing program to take out grays from scans), good lettering (many decent free fonts available at blambot.com, so there's no excuse for lettering in Times New Roman), and basic HTML (which will greatly enhance your experience in hosting with WebComicsNation.com).

Excellent proposals by Lynn Lau and Leigh Dragoon that won their creators contracts at GirlAMatic.com can be found here:
http://tentative.net/jupiter/
And here: http://www.spidric.com/proposal/default.asp

3. Email me at nanoneone@gmail.com, subject line "NAN: (title)", otherwise my spam filters will eat it. To this address, send me the URL of your submission, and attach a scan of a document that verifies your gender. Don't tell me it isn't your best work. If it's not, why should I look at it? If you do things like use "u" for "you", "4" for "four" and "LOL" for punctuation, don't when you write me. I expect to see a command of conventional English. Also, sell yourself without resorting to emoticons. They're for casual correspondence, which a proposal is not, at least not to me.

4. It's okay to be disappointed if I feel your comic isn't right for NAN Grant, because no one enjoys rejection. I regret I will be unable to provide detailed guidance or critiques of submitted material. I hope you will submit again.

5. I am grateful to you for submitting, no matter what my answer is.

Lea Hernandez
Atelier Original Keepsakes and Commemoratives
Creator: Rumble Girls (NBM/rumblegirls.com)
Texas Steampunk I, II III (Cyberosia/GirlAMatic.com)
Author: Manga Secrets, Impact Books

Lea Hernandez's LiveJournal
Lea's Site @ WebComicsNation.com
Joe Quesada Newsarama Interview