Blog-It Llama!

By Papa Llama - October 9, 2009

In May we talked with cartoonist Adam Atherton about his 8-page entry in Zuda Comics’ monthly competition. At the end of the month, Adam’s creation, Lily of the Valley, beat nine other webcomics to win a contract to continue his story in DC Comics’ Zuda line. Adam won! And now, with summer having come and gone, Adam’s Lily of the Valley series launches today. So we revisited Adam to check up with him before the launch.

Zuda winner Adam Atherton

Rocket Llama: You won Zuda’s May competition. Why did they wait until October to start the ongoing series?

Adam Atherton: Lily of the Valley won in Zuda’s May competition. The general time from competition to launch is about 3 months, give or take. Lily of the Valley will go live on Friday October 9th, approximately 4 months since winning. The only reason for the slight delay was just a mix up with the address the contract was mailed to. So I received and signed it later than usual. I used the extra time to work on the script and get a head start on the pages so all is good!

Rocket Llama: So what have you been doing for the last four months?

Adam Atherton: For the last four months I’ve really just been working on getting a head start on the comic. Right now I’m pretty far ahead of the page updating schedule, and working on page 19 at the moment. I’m quite happy with the introductory sequence and I’m looking forward to the feedback from readers. One thing I’ve missed since winning is the immediate feedback. I have so many finished pages that I can’t share at the moment which is difficult. I really love feedback. Also since May I was granted with an opportunity to meet a personal hero of mine and an influence on all creative output including Lily of the Valley – the legendary Nick Cave. A friend of mine informed me of a book signing he was doing here in Toronto, for his new novel The Death of Bunny Munro, just the night before so I made sure I was there. It really was an inspirational experience for me to meet this person who’s music and writing has had such an impact on me.

Rocket Llama: Have any of your plans for Lily changed now that it’s becoming a reality?

Adam Atherton: A little bit. I’ve always had the whole picture in mind. I’ve always known how it would end and certain elements I wanted to include. I’ve focused more on how to get to those points while writing, so it’s all much more thought out now. One thing that did change though since May was my decision to display Lily’s motives a little more at first. I’ve always known and understood her motives very well, but I decided to include a few scenes that will illustrate to readers her world perspective and I attempted to make it understandable. I want her to be a sympathetic character despite all her monstrous traits.

Rocket Llama: If you had to relive the whole experience from the beginning but went back knowing what you know now, what might you do differently?

Adam Atherton: If I had to relive the whole experience again knowing what I know now, I would have completed the entire comic before entering so I wouldn’t have to worry about deadlines. But then I suppose there is the risk of losing and having a finished comic formatted for Zuda and nothing to do with it… but then you’ve given yourself real motivation and incentive to win, right? You wouldn’t be out at your cousin’s birthday party drinking and standing in the corner wishing you had the balls to talk to the adorable girl in the pink dress, if you’ve got 60 finished pages and half a year’s worth of finished work on the line. You’d be promoting your comic as intensely as possible and taking every chance you can think of to find votes. Compete like everything is on the line and you’ll likely win. When the whole world’s on the line, 200 or so more votes really doesn’t seem that big an obstacle. You might even take your chances asking the girl in pink dress to vote and get a date in the process.

Rocket Llama: What advice would you give future Zuda hopefuls?

Adam Atherton: My advice is to find an awesome girlfriend who will keep you on track. I think after every page of my submission that I finished I was ready to crumple the page and start over. Luiza, who helps me with the script, was always there to assure me the pages weren’t complete garbage and fetch them out of the trash bin. In hind sight I think I would have been crazy to throw out any of the pages at all cause I’m very happy with the final 8 pages I submitted. I’d advise any Zuda hopefuls to be patient and forgiving with themselves when putting a submission together. Take as long as it takes and don’t be too hard on yourself. Finish the 8 pages. Then go back and make changes you think need to be made. I usually go back and make frequent changes to pages. This is where deadlines scare the crap out of me because they’re so final. You submit the page and that’s it, it’s up on Zuda in front of the readers the next day, or whatever the time period is. I like the security in knowing you can go back and fix any mistakes anytime. It’s one of my favourite aspects of the process really. When it’s all finished I love to go back through and enhance details, tweak dialogue and just add all the little things that make it special. You know, like George Lucas does with Star Wars…

Rocket Llama: When you’re reading Zuda entries, what kind of entries do the best job of grabbing your attention?

Adam Atherton: Anything extremely original stands out to me. I think the really original stuff usually comes from the solo creators. The story and art are all uniform in their vision. I’ve always been inspired by solo creators and loved the originality and vision that comes from them. Creators like Mike Mignola, Jeff Smith, and Paul Pope, who do it all, are inspiring to me and that type of work stands out a lot to my eyes. There’s no one genre that really grabs my attention though. As long as I can see a sense of the creator’s personality and worldview shining through then I’m interested. Anything that takes you into the creator’s mind, be it through a horror story, love story, or whatever. One of my main goals with Lily of the Valley is really to just express myself and my perspective of the world and hopefully connect to some people reading it.

Rocket Llama: Because many of the same people vote at Zuda every month, there’s the potential for the same kind of comics to win every time. What would you like to see more of among the Zuda comics?

Adam Atherton: Looking at Zuda as a whole, I’m most interested in seeing Zuda host a wide range of diverse comics in all different genres and mediums. I think right at the moment the genre that is most lacking in Zuda’s lineup of ongoing series is humor comics. So I’d like to see another humor story win soon. I think an important thing to realize when competing is that the goal isn’t to make a comic that will appeal to the audience that already exists on Zuda, but to make whatever comic you most want to make and then find your comic’s audience and bring it to Zuda.

Rocket Llama: What can readers expect coming up now in Lily of the Valley?

Adam Atherton: Readers can expect emotional turbulence and heartache. Coming up first is an 8 page sequence I’m really excited about sharing. I’ve really attempted to put the reader into Lily’s mindset. I want readers to connect to her, understand her, and even relate to her. I’m dedicating the opening 8 page sequence to anyone who has ever been picked on, ridiculed, or made to feel inadequate by others because of their differences. And to all the kids eating alone in high school cafeterias around the world worried to death about fitting in. May this comic point out to them the absurdity of belonging and encourage them to embrace their existence on the periphery with me. If all of us on the outskirts of society united we would have a death grip on the mainstream. Lily of the Valley is more than a comic to me, it is an outsider’s manifesto.

Categories: Interviews, Zuda
Tags: Adam Atherton, art, artist, comic, Comics, competition, contest, creative process, creator, DC, DC comics, Facebook, George Lucas, Interviews, Jeff Smith, Lily of the Valley, Mike Mignola, Nick Cave, Paul Pope, serial killer, Star Wars, Survivor, The Death of Bunny Munro, Toronto, twitter, webcomic, webcomics, writer, Zuda, Zuda Comics