Today we continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic. Tomorrow, Tana Ford and Colleen AF Venable will talk all things feline, as cats take center stage, and we’re happy to present a preview of their conversation.
Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series that brings graphic novel creators to the Boston area. Each conversation explores a specific topic, ranging from the fun and exciting to the strange or serious — like demon possession or monsters. Produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for the unique form of expression that is the comics medium.
Tana Ford is a Hugo and Eisner award–winning artist. She has illustrated comics for Marvel, Dark Horse, Vertigo and IDW. You can find her work on LaGuardia, Silk, The Amazing Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, New Warriors, Jem and the Holograms, Star Trek and Black Panther: Long Live the King. Tana is a recipient of the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She lives in a seaside cottage in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she is presently obsessed with birds.
Colleen AF Venable is the author of the National Book Award-longlisted Kiss Number 8, a graphic novel co-created with Ellen T. Crenshaw. Her other books include the Katie the Catsitter series with Stephanie Yue, Mervin the Sloth is About to Do the Best Thing in The World with Ruth Chan, The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom with Lian Cho, and the Guinea Pig, Pet Shop Private Eye series, also with Stephanie Yue and nominated for the Best Publication for Kids Eisner. Previously Colleen was the sole designer for hundreds of First Second Books, worked as a Creative Director for Workman and Macmillan, and the Director for Epic! Kids. Now she writes full-time and splits her time between North Adams, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.
And now, let’s hear what they have to say about cats …
How did you become interested in cats?
Tana: Cats are interesting little guys. These creatures with personalities and intelligent eyes come and live at your house and it’s very cool.
Colleen: Probably the first time I smushed my face into my neighbor’s cat when I was a very little kid. When I was around 4, my older sister and I found a stray cat and carried him home. Somehow my parents let us keep him and I was given the honor of naming him. Kitty…okay okay not the most original name, but I loved him!…lived for 17 more years. No idea how old he was when we found him, so I like to believe he would have been Guinness Book records level if we actually knew.
Why did you start making comics about cats?
Tana: Nnedi (Okorafor, my writer) has an otherworldly blue-eyed cat named Periwinkle, who is the star of the show in The Space Cat. He has featured in lots of comics she and I have made together (I usually tuck him into the background as a little Easter Egg/secret detail) but this time we wanted to make a story that had Periwinkle front and center.
Colleen: Now don’t get me wrong, I love all animals. I’ve had dogs and fish, and currently have two litter-trained bunnies, but cats are something special. They are completely unpredictable. They can be begging for belly pets and 10 seconds later decide they want to eat your arm instead. And cats are so smart! There are many studies that show that cats DO know their names, they just don’t come when you call them. That’s some main character energy right there!
How are cats integrated into your work?
Tana: I have always loved hiding little pets and beloved creatures into the backgrounds of my stories.
For awhile at Marvel, we were hiding secret Pokémon into the pages of Silk (Silk is a Spider-Man comic book series I worked on from 2015-2018).
Colleen: I’ve had cats in nearly all of my published books, from my first series Guinea Pig Pet Shop Private Eye, where a cat lived in the bookstore next door, to working on Cat Ninja and then creating the spin-off Kitten Ninja. My most cat-ful work—that’s a word right?—is Katie the Catsitter, a series about a girl who agrees to pet sit for her neighbors cats, only to find out she has 217 of them and they might be genius cats working for a supervillain.
What’s your favorite thing about cats?
Tana: How funny they are. How soft they are. I love a good PURR.
Colleen: Cats have twice as many back discs as we have, so I adore all the weird ways cats sleep. I swear there is nothing cuter or more surreal than the odd positions that cats can nap. Also I adore watching them parkour and the times they just suddenly STOP and stare at a corner of a room, eyes WIDE, watching ghosts I assume.
What’s your least favorite thing about cats?
Tana: When they use their sharp claws on me.
Colleen: When they decide your feet under a blanket are THE ENEMY. Also, Kitty used to also wake me up for high school by laying on my chest and licking my nose with his scratch tongue. Terr. I. FYING way to wake up, that close to a cat’s teeth.
What misconceptions have you found people have about cats?
Tana: Our world is full of terrible misconceptions about cats — that they are shapeshifters, that they represent evil, that they cause bad luck or can curse someone.
I think misconceptions that can lead to people harming animals should be unpacked, debunked and dismissed.
We’ve got to stop harming animals.
Colleen: That if you are allergic you are doomed to a life of cat-lessness. I took allergy shots for years so I can now smush my face in every cat I see, and it’s the best decision I ever made.
Are there other media about cats that have inspired your work?
Tana: The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar was an inspiration for us on The Space Cat. I also enjoyed Tony Fleecs (pronounced “Fleece”) comic series Feral, which is about zombie cats.
Colleen: I loved the Disney movie The Aristocrats as a kid and still get “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” in my head from time to time. I also think every time I watched a Batman show or film with Catwoman, I was so disappointed that she didn’t have hundreds of trained genius cats doing all her dirty work. So in that case the LACK of cats lead to me adding over 200 to my “villain” roster.
If you could recommend one other graphic novel about cats to people who love your work, what would it be, and why?
Tana: The Rabbi’s Cat! It’s a wonderful wild little story.
They even made it into an animated movie in 2011 (Which may not be suitable for young children.)
Colleen: Only one?! I’m not sure if I can do that, but I can name a bunch! For kids, Binky the Spacecat by Ashley Spires is painfully cute and a great exploration of imagination. And I love the graphic novel adaptations of Erin Hunter’s The Warriors by Sara Goetter and Natalie Riess, epic adventures that explore themes of war and politics and draaaaama all with cats at the helm.
For adults, my two current favorites are Gamer + Cat, a manga series by Wataru Nadatani about a young woman whose life gets so much more rewarding when she adopts a cat and “levels up” her friendship with it. And a must read is Junji Ito’s Cat Diary Yon & Mu. The world’s greatest horror writer turns his skills to explaining what it’s like to fall in love with cats, and it’s surprisingly heartfelt and hysterical.