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" I was going to be a storybook illustrator or an editorial illustrator. I ended up in a comics class by mistake because all the others were full, so I was like 'I'll stay for one class, and then I'll go take something else, because I don't care about comics.' I got pulled in really fast; I discovered I had a voice in comics that I didn't know I had. "

Noelle Stevenson

Mistake

Care

" 'Nimona' is about identity and if who you are is defined by what you look like. It's not a book about body image at all, but I would be lying if I said that wasn't in there even at the conception of it. "

" I'm very lucky to have been given a lot of freedom in my career, but it's also fun to play in other people's playgrounds! "

" Not long after I started posting the first 'Nimona' pages online, a literary agent reached out to me, and I ended up signing with him before I returned to school for my senior year. "

" Some comics are made to be displayed digitally, and it doesn't degrade them. "

" It's not hard to figure out when you're not welcome. "

" I always have a tendency to take on too many things. "

" The reason I wanted to do a webcomic was that I could be my own boss, and I could call the shots myself. "

" I feel that kids are smart, and I feel that kids will understand things even if they don't understand them from personal experience. "

" Social media is basically the entire reason I have a career right now. Like everything, my readership for 'Nimona' came because I was active on Tumblr. "

" It's easy to feel like you don't have any control over yourself or your life or your body as a teen - everything is changing so fast, and a lot of it feels so outside of your power. I think that's why a lot of teens form really strong attachments to fictional characters or celebrities, draw their own characters or write themselves into fan fiction. "

" I personally always have a hard time relating to queer characters in media because I didn't really see myself in them. They were kind of pigeonholed early on as the gay character, and they would naturally end up with the other gay character who would emerge at some point as their love interest. "

" It seems like everyone in my peer group has more 'Pokemon' knowledge than I do. "

" I was a junior at school, and I had just taken my first comics class, and we were doing an exercise for this other class where we had to create our own characters,and 'Nimona' just kind of came out of that. I decided that I liked her so much that I wanted to do a comic with her. "

" I kind of understood inherently - and I wasn't really conflicted about this - that comics were not for me or by people who looked like me. That was just something that I accepted about the world. "

" I really want to see normalization of queer sexuality - as well as the lack of sexuality. "

" I don't think naturally I tend toward anything that's really distinctly branded as adult. I feel like I sort of write for myself as I would've been at 12 or 13 years old. "

Noelle Stevenson

Feel

Myself

" I know that when I was a kid, and I was reading whatever I could get my hands on, I didn't associate myself with the girl characters. "

" I've always had a lot of story ideas rattling around in my head, but 'Nimona' felt very tangible very early. I knew the ending. So I just started making more and more pages, and then I made it a webcomic, like, 'OK, I'm really gonna do this.' "

" Fantasy is usually considered an escape, but it's also a way to deal with weighty real-world issues from a safe distance and in a context where you usually have some kind of power that you don't have in real life. "

" I swear slightly more when there aren't children around, but not that much. "

" I went to Maryland Institute College of Art, and I studied illustration there. "

" The first time I shopped at a comic shop, it was because I had been published in a comic book. As I became more involved in comics, I started going more and more, usually to support my friends or lady-friendly comics. "

" It was not until Web comics that I saw stories about women and stories by women and things that were aimed specifically at female readership. It was just kind of this free-for-all that was achieving something amazing with creativity. That was where I got my start. "

" I didn't get into comics until college, and it was sort of an accident. "

" I think my lack of 'Pokemon' knowledge and complete confusion at the descriptions makes people think I'm adorable, like a lost baby duckling or your grandmother trying to use an iPad. "

" There's a whole world of people out here whose experiences are not being reflected in the media that they're reading. And that does affect the way we view ourselves... and the people we think we can be. "

" 'Nimona' was originally a vague idea I had when I was in high school, when I was just getting into shapeshifting characters. It was a straightforward superhero story at the time. Nimona was named Nightshade, and she had an eyepatch for some reason. There was nothing really special about it, though. "

" I am very interested in female characters and bringing a new perspective to mediums where not necessarily that's been valued at all. "

" 'Runaways' was exciting because it was something brand-new and fresh, and I'm hoping to be able to bend the rules in my own way of what a Marvel superhero story can be. "