If you have never come across Willie Hewes’ work or have never heard of her -here is your chance to learn!
Terry: Boringly predictable and yet, at the very same time, informative question/answer: where and when were you born?
Willie:Early on in the year 1980, in a small town in the Netherlands. I lived in Holland until 2000. Sometimes I go back, and remember how F%&*$ cold it gets there.
Terry: Now, Europe has a much richer comic diversity than the UK has, so when you were younger what were you reading comic-wise and at what age did you start reading comics?
Willie:I was a big fan of Asterix when I could just read well enough to follow the story. My parents had a few of the A4 books and I read them until they fell apart.
They also had some Tin Tin (which I didn’t care for), and Suske en Wiske, which is a kids-on-adventure comic by a Flemish author (translated into English as ‘Spike and Suzy’, apparently). It’s very popular in the Netherlands but I didn’t love it as much as I did Asterix. Oh, and Lucky Luke! I did like Lucky Luke. He’s a laid back, sarcastic, fast-drawing cowboy who beats the bad guys.
For most of my younger years, I also read a magazine about comics. It went through some name changes, but used to be called “Eppo”. It had lots of different comics, mostly funnies or short slapstick stories, but also some more serious stories that were serialised. Most of it by Dutch, Belgian and French authors, I think. I guess I should also mention the glaring omission in my early comic consumption: I never read any of the American superhero stuff. Superman was a movie to me. Spiderman was an animation series. I’d never even seen those comics before I moved to the UK, I don’t think they’re translated into Dutch.
Terry: Were you drawing a lot as a youngster and getting encouragement?
Willie:I always kind of hum and look away when people say things like “I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil” because that’s really not true for me. I was considered a very creative child, and did lots of Blue Peter-style stuff (before you ask, no, Blue Peter doesn’t exist in Holland) but I never considered drawing to be some kind of special talent of mine.
As a teenager, I was more about the writing. I wrote short stories, and have half a novel in a drawer somewhere (it’s awful, don’t ask). I didn’t really start drawing seriously until I was 22-ish. This is why there are 14 year olds who can draw circles around me. Bastards.
Terry: And at what point did you start trying to draw comic strips or did that develop later on in life?
Willie:I did some comic strips when I was… 10? They’re terrible. They look like they were drawn by a 10 year old. Ha ha. Anyway, I started drawing a comic strip when I was in university. I’d been reading some webcomics and thought, hey, I could do that. That was GothBoy, and that’s where my comics history starts.
You can still read it online.
Terry: Now, I can speak for my own generation but it’s interesting to find out how younger creators got on in school if they were drawing comics or even how they talked about comics with their peers -were there comics that were common favourites?
Willie:You know, I’m drawing a blank here. When I was in school, comics of any kind were really just not on the radar. The only thing I can think of is Elfquest, which I read just before I started going to secondary school. A friend of mine had all the books, but then the Pinis quit doing them and we lost interest. I did like Elfquest a lot, and tried to draw some of the characters a couple of times.
I wasn’t even aware of manga until much later. There wasn’t really anything we read, just newspaper funnies or kid’s comics. Sad, huh?
Terry: And can you remember the actual moment when you just thought “I want to draw comics!” -or was it a sneaky, gradual decision?
Willie:It wasn’t really a decision. I started doing it because I had nothing better to do, and I liked it, and it slowly became more serious. Going to events and meeting other people who did their own comics was what got me really interested, that’s what makes it fun. I couldn’t do this if it was just me in my little attic room and I’d never hear from anyone.
Terry: Actually,I like my once-a-year dose of meeting other creators though they all tend to be 20-30 years my junior and all drink alcohol so sad Terry doesn’t get to go drink coffee with people!
The first thing I can remember seeing of yours was AMARANTH no.1 in Travelling Man, Bristol. I saw the cover and thought “Oh. Bloody manga!” However, I can also thinking at the same time that the artwork looked far more attractive than in the other Small Press titles on the shelf. Ever get the feeling this might turn into a loooong story?
Anyhoo, I bought a copy, got home and sat down to read Amaranth. It had a really odd, unique look to it and I thought: “Idiot-this is not Manga!” The tail-end of this over-long question is: was this a style you developed deliberately for the look or did it just happen?
Amaranth #1 now available via lul.com
Willie:The style for Amaranth, especially the early issues, was as much a result of my limitations as of any deliberate stylisation. I had this story, and I could draw different characters and make it look kind of interesting, and I figured that was as much as I needed, so I just got started.
The fingerless paddle hands, the freaky stick bodies, the lack of feet, all that is because it was as well as I knew how to draw. I learned along the way, of course, and for the last Amaranths I’ve had to work to keep it looking “Amaranth”, because I’ve learned how to do things differently.
Looking back I still like the style it has, but I do feel it was too limited to continue in quite the same vein.
Terry: I think it’s interesting that your style could quite easily be read by someone who is well into their Manga and yet is not really Manga. I think, though, that categorising art styles is a baaad idea. In mainstream comics there are so many styles in drawing, say, super heroes or horror -is there really a “super hero art style”? The same applies to Manga -these days it includes Chinese Manhua and Korean Manhwa as well as Japanese Manga -all three full of differing styles!
Willie:Yeah, exactly. It puzzles me when people say all manga looks the same, because it’s just not so.
Terry:So, that said, you have a unique-looking style that can fit in well with Manga -would it make you happy to rank alongside creators like Yishan Li,Sonia Leong and Emma Vieceli -or, do you want MORE?!!
Willie:I would be ecstatic to be ranked alongside Yishan Li, Leong and Vieceli. I think these ladies do some beautiful work, and I’m a total fangirl, as I’m sure they’ve noticed.
Dude, what MORE is there?! But seriously, what I’m hoping for is that sooner rather than later people are going to get over the whole manga vs. non-manga distinction. It doesn’t matter where a comic was made or exactly what kind of style it’s in if it speaks to you.
I hope that the current generation of 13-year old Sasuke fangirls who are reading manga now will branch out — not just to manhwa and OEL manga, but to, like, the stuff made by Doug Tennapel (Creature Tech), or Craig Thompson (Blankets), or Gene Yang (American Born Chinese), to mention some of my recent favourites. That’s not manga by any stretch of the imagination, but it is damned good, and that’s what matters.
Maybe soon we’ll just categorise comics by genre, rather than trying to hold on to this weird East/West divide, which is crumbling as we type.
Terry: Oddly enough, I’d been reading Amaranth and quite by accident I opened up The Bristol Observer of 2nd September, 2005 and there was a half page feature on yourself with Goth Boy and Amaranth art -how did this come about?
Willie:I sent them a press release. No, seriously, that was it. I’d been reading online about press releases, and I thought, hey, I should try this. I was dead nervous, but it worked, and it was pretty cool. I know of a couple of Amaranth readers who found me through the paper. 
Terry: You’ve said that Amaranth is a continuation of your web comic, Goth Boy -can you tell us a little about Goth Boy and is it still going?
Willie:GothBoy is my dead webcomic that just won’t stay down. The idea behind GothBoy was pretty simple, it’s about a group of people vaguely based on my friends, who hung around playing PS2 games and griping about stuff. It ran for a long time, and radically changed direction several times.
There was a big epic story-line for a while, with alternate realities and time travel and dimensional pockets and what not. I was just making stuff up as I went along, which is part of the reason it went on for so long. I have a short attention span, so when I got tired of what I was doing I just changed it into something else!
Terry: So how is Amaranth a continuation of this -perhaps you can tell us more about the concept of Amaranth?
Willie:I ran into a bit of a writer’s block with GothBoy (this happened often) and decided I wanted to drop the three-panel gag format. I wanted to do something big, tell a real story. After chewing on it for a while and trying different concepts in my head I decided to drop the GothBoy characters and situation, their history was so convoluted and strange that it would just be too much baggage for this new project. Some of the Amaranth characters still have some characteristics of the old GothBoy characters, like Ivy, who is a completely different character, but he looks similar and has the same name. The stupid little demon from GothBoy, called Moloch, turned into the very serious demon lord Rosa, but Rosa appears in a later GothBoy as Moloch. And Ricci the vampire turns up in Amaranth #8 as Rick. It’s just little in-jokes, really.
Amaranth is about a girl who feels out of place in the world. She learns about another world, beyond mere mortal ken, but in the end she’s out of place there, too. The themes are pretty similar to GothBoy, actually, but the story’s a lot more serious and more together, because I planned it out beforehand.
Terry: Hey –I feel like that! But I’m not a girl…oh well! Is there a definite “the end” point to Amaranth or will you do more issues in the future -or have you even thought about more in the future?
Willie:There will be one more issue, which I’m finishing now, and then the story’s done. When I started out I planned a different ending, and about 10 issues, but I’m happy with the ending I came to, and after three years of working on the same comic, I’m ready for something new. When it’s done, there might be a book with the collected issues, but I’m not sure about that yet.
Terry: You told me that you wanted to try art styles -would this be within the Amaranth comic?
Willie:No, I’m thinking of doing some short stories when Amaranth is done, and take some drawing lessons. *grin* Short projects are good for trying new things, because if it doesn’t work for you, you can just change it again and you’re not stuck with hand lettering demon-speak for the rest of your days (hellooo Rosa!).
Before I get stuck in another big project, I want to play around and do some smaller stuff, like Hero/Villain.
Terry: I was surprised to find, in Travelling Man, Hero/Villain: A Tale Of Love Beyond Good And Evil! Nifty blue cover [with a sinister triangular shape cut out of one corner!].
Does this fit into the whole Goth Boy-Amaranth Universe -was it all pre-planned or just an idea that sprang to mind and you thought “I’ll publish this!”?
Willie:Whoa, whoa, back up! There is no “GothBoy-Amaranth Universe”. I don’t DO universes, it does my head in to think that all the Marvel or DC characters are supposed to exist in the same reality at the same time. I’m not a fanboy, my head doesn’t work that way. *lol* Amaranth was more of a spiritual successor, and Hero/Villain is entirely unrelated!
Anyway, Hero/Villain was an idea I had for a manga anthology that never happened in the end. I drew the pages, and then when it turned out the anthology had folded, decided to publish them myself.
Terry: I can’t really say much about Hero/Villain without giving the punchline away -how would you sum it up?
Willie:Hero/Villain is a parody of fantasy clichés and a certain kind of fanfiction. I has proven to be popular with fans and haters of fantasy and fanfiction alike, so you pretty much can’t go wrong with it.
Terry: You mention that you’ve been to Japan Ex -was this to sell your comics or simply as an attendee?
Willie: I was at Japan Ex as an attendee. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like so I didn’t get a table, but it was pretty cool. I met up with some people and looked at the pretty dolls. I was bummed out that day though because my bike got hit by a car on the way there. So I bought a load of yaoi to make myself feel better, and didn’t have much money for anything else. Except pocky. There’s always enough money for pocky.
Terry: Being in Bristol I’m wondering whether you’ve attended any of the May International Comic Expoes -what did you think and, again, was this as a person selling their comics or a fan?
Willie:I did have a table at the May Expo in Bristol, and actually did pretty well. It was the first time I sold mugs (hand painted! unique!) alongside my comics, and it did my profit margin a lot of good. *lol* So, I’ll be doing that again. I had a good time at Bristol in general, there were lots of small press people who had cool stuff, many of whom I hadn’t seen before.
Terry: We have the big Manga convention in Bristol this November and you mentioned you hadn’t heard about this until someone at Tokyopop told you -will you be going?
Willie:Nyeah, dude, totally! I’d like to try to get a table if I can, although I’ve run into some budgeting issues recently, so I’ll have to see. Girl’s got to eat, and all that. Did I mention I have an online shop where you can, like, order my stuff? Just saying. 
Terry: For many creators comic creating is a lonely business -do you get much contact with other creators?
Willie:As much as I can. Like I said, I would have given up long ago if I hadn’t found some kindred crazy people. Because it is crazy, drawing comics. I recently gave all of Amaranth to a friend and it took him half an hour to read it all. That’s three years of my life in there! Half an hour! But anyway, yes, there’s various people I e-mail with and meet at events and stuff like that. I’m working together with Karin Rubens (of Dark) at the moment for a contest. She’s doing the art, and me, the writing. So far, things are good. Online I hang out at the Sweatdrop forum, which has a lot of creators and wannabe creators and a very good atmosphere.
Terry:Oh,Karin is still working in the Small Press? I met her and her sister when they were selling DARK 1 & 2 about…3 years ago? Be interesting to see that project! Can I ask if you get any feed-back from your readers -Amaranth certainly seems to sell so I assume some readers must get in touch to let you know what they think?
Willie:Yeah, sure. I love getting feedback, so of course I always want more, but plenty of people have written or talked to me to let me know they like it. People seem to dig the dark, gothy atmosphere, and the various mysteries. I am also not the only one who thinks Lord Rosa is kinda sexy, so that’s OK then. (Is it pervy to think your own creations are hot? I’m not sure…)
Terry: Well,might be. I think a good psychotherapist might help though –any out there?
Willie,Once Amaranth ends, have you specific project ideas you want to develop and can you tell us about them or are you going to be secretive??
Willie:Yes, speaking of hot… I’m working on some short comics with a more mature audience in mind (or possibly immature, depending how you look at it). It will be a bit like anti-yaoi, in that it’s in reaction to how, in yaoi manga, the sex is always really clean and easy and romantic and wonderful, whereas in real life, sex is messy and awkward and confusing and kinda icky, but fun and hot at the same time.
That’s sort of what it’s about. It won’t be pornographic, but it will be about real sex, and I probably won’t be able to host it on Web Comics Nation. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, or how many I’ll be doing. Um, or maybe I’ll end up doing something completely different, I don’t know yet. But that’s my current plan.
Terry: I actually have to say that I was sent downloads by someone who ‘knew’ of my interest in comics and that I was looking at Manga. “Hentai”..sounded quite harmless…oh my gods! [in case there are any innocents out there Hentai is extreme Manga porn!] Perhaps too much info.
Something I had to ask eventually is, how do you see your comic work developing in the future? You aren’t currently earning a living through comics but would you like to in future?
Willie:I would like to make a living doing comics, but I’m not sure how attainable that is. I think the stuff I do is interesting to a relatively small number of people, and the comics industry isn’t that big to begin with. I think about pitching ideas to people every now and then, but I always end up with something that either the publisher would never go for in a million years, or that I would not really enjoy drawing all that much. :/
I guess I just haven’t really found my place yet. I think I’ll keep doing what I do for a while yet, publishing online and on paper and changing direction whenever I get bored.
Maybe in a couple of years, when I have more of a sense of where I am and where I’m going, I’ll think more seriously about how to make it profitable. Until then I’ll just keep pushing paper for the civil service. It’s boring, but it’s a certainty.
Terry: Alright, Willie, this is the time for you to really sell your comics to the curious out there -can they buy back issues? What will they get out of reading Amaranth, Hero/Villain or visiting your web site?
Willie:Ah, yes! All back issues of everything I have ever done are available to order online, so you can get the full Amaranth drama sent to you in one go. If you visit my website you can read several short comics I’ve done and get a taste of Amaranth, too.
If you are, or used to be, a goth, or if you ever feel like you’re not from this planet, or if you hate slash fiction, or you have a thing for bishies or you have a gay agenda or you just want to look at the pretty pitchures you should totally visit my site! It has lots of content, so have a look.
And buy Amaranth, because it’s quirky and different, it presents a unique vision of the beautiful city of Bristol, and it’s full of mystery and spookiness that will haunt you for the rest of your life!… or at least until I publish the final issue. So yeah. Buy it, dammit, I need the money, the Council’s not F*&%ing around anymore!
Terry: Willie, when you get to be one of those big comic book stars will you still be cycling into cars and making political statements by not paying your Council Tax, or will you sell out to fame and fortune?
Willie:Well, I hope to cut down on the whole “cycling into cars” thing. I don’t feel that that’s really “me”, it wasn’t a lifestyle choice so much as an accidental thing. Same for the Council tax, really.
Would I sell out? Hell, yeah. I don’t think of it as selling out though, more like, cashing in. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Selling out is doing something you always said you’d never do for sake of the money, so I try not to go around saying I’ll never do something or other. That way, I can never sell out.
Terry: Best of luck with all the future projects and, please, keep us up-dated and thanks for taking the time to answer silly questions!
Willie:Thank you for giving me an opportunity to blather on and on about comics! Most people would have told me to shut up already ages ago! Seriously, thanks for the interview, and I’ll drop you a line when I got something new going on.
Terry:Thank you,Willie.
And if there is any proof as to how Willie is developing as an artist I’d like to show here four incredible pages I just love –they can be seen on Willie’s site and there is info there as to how it all came about. THE TOLL
