Several weeks back a few friends and I found ourselves trolling the floors of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA for WonderCon 2009. It was my first time attending Wondercon and it was a sheer blast, not to mention a bit overwhelming too; so many sights, sounds and…undesired smells to take in.

For the most part, my first day at Wondercon was spent attending panels and getting a feel for the lay of the land. I had to prepare for day two where I would blow exorbitant amounts of hard earned cash on PVC figures and other miscellaneous spoils of war. It would also present me with the opportunity to thoroughly examine the sea of independent artist booths that blanketed the show floor.

Hit the jump to read about my WonderCon discovery.I recalled walking by one of the booths on my first day on the show floor and seeing a poster of a naked, buxom, red-haired babe mounting a giant piece of meat (something that isn’t easily forgotten) and was later reminded of it again at dinner when a friend of mine whipped out a set of magnets featuring the same vixen. First a poster and now a set of magnets-I had to know more. So I made it my mission to find that very booth upon my return the following day.

I’ll save you the boredom of the first couple of hours I spent trying to locate this mystery booth and fast forward to my discovery.

So after I spent the first couple of hours looking for the booth, I found that it was literally down the only aisle that I somehow seemed to overlook (they all start to look alike after a while).

At last, there she was and there were her parents, Genevieve Tsai and Joseph Wong: creators of the action-fantasy comic, Islands in the Sky.

If her looks don’t kill you…

Endearing fans with their beautiful art style and clever writing, they bore welcoming smiles, ready to field questions, and respond to comments and feedback alike. Unfortunately, I found the booth so late into the day that Genevieve and Joseph had already built up a queue of books to personalize with chibi Kaylis accompanied with witty captions, so I purchased the first issue of IitS, some stickers and the aforementioned poster of IitS’s very seductive heroine, Kayli and was on my merry way only after the exchange of contact information and my sincere compliments.

I was fortunate enough to catch up with Genevieve and Joseph post-show where they were kind enough to set some time aside from their busy schedules to answer some questions I had about Kayli, the meat lover and the world of Islands in the Sky.

David Bruno (DB): First off, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions regarding Islands in the Sky.

Genevieve Tsai (GT): You’re welcome!

Joseph Wong (JW): You’re welcome. Thank you for setting this feature up.

DB: For those unfamiliar with it, what is the basic story behind Islands in the Sky (IitS)?

JW: The story of Islands in the Sky, I guess…in a broad sense, is about survival and discovery. The first issue, specifically, introduces the readers to the heroine and main character to the story, Kayli.

GT: Don’t forget Gordo!

JW: …and how Kayli meets the other star of the story, Gordo. While we were making the book, we had this idea that we really wanted to keep it a secret; who this other character was, as if it was a big deal.

GT: Joe would always refer to him as “The Stranger” in the pages before his identity is revealed.

JW: It’s silly. You figure out really soon that he’s a major character but it we made it a point to try to keep it a mystery.

DB: Can you tell us a little bit about the world of IitS?

GT: You should take this one.

JW: I’m going to try to avoid giving my same twenty second pitch we had at WonderCon (2009). Lessee…the world that the characters inhabit does not have solid ground in the same way we know it. We live in a world where life exists in the very outer crust of a planet. In the world of Islands in the Sky, all solid ground exists only as floating islands. I don’t know if our readers even care yet but we hoped that they would wonder how human beings came to live in a world where they have such obvious disadvantages…such as nearly useless legs and the lack of wings.

GT: That was a lot like your WonderCon pitch.

JW: Yeah, I know. Anyway, the world is divided into three layers. The outermost layer is Overworld, where food, sunlight, and water are abundant. Below that layer is the Central Islands, where our story takes place. It can be best described as the most normal and diverse layer. Below that, in the center of the world, is Coreworld. Life is pretty hard down there. The most dangerous animals dwell down there and when the people of Coreworld aren’t fighting for their lives against these monsters, they’re usually killing each other for resources.

Map overview and one of the many Central Islands

DB: What is your primary role in relation to the production of IitS?

JW: I am co-creator and writer.

GT: I’m the artist.

JW: She is the artist, co-creator, and “boob maestro”.

GT: I don’t even know what that means.

JW: She’s great at drawing boobs. Let’s move on.

DB: What inspired you to create IitS?

JW: That one’s easy. We hated our day jobs.

GT: Don’t say that! I don’t hate my job!

JW: I hated my job. I mean, it was a good job, except the ability to be creative was far more limited than I hoped for. I mean, you’d think that as a video game designer for seven years, I had the perfect job but the truth of it is, most people in the industry are just cogs. In any case, I’m not bitter.

GT: You’re so bitter.

JW: I’m not. Anyway, we wanted to stretch our wings a bit…create our own world and characters and just not be limited by anything. I wanted the story to open with our main character naked in bed…POOF! It happened. Like magic.

GT: It’s not like magic. I do all the hard work.

JW: Okay, after many long nights of Genevieve’s struggles and tears…POOF! It happened!

DB: How long has IitS been in production? When and where would you say the concept was first birthed?

JW: That’s a hard question to answer because Islands in the Sky is the evolution of the biggest, most important idea that I currently dream about. So it really goes back pretty far, however, if I had to nail it down to a year…maybe 2004 or 2005. That’s around the time it evolved into something that most resembles its current form.

DB: How did you and Genevieve/Joseph (depending on who is responding to the questions) meet? Did you know one another before working on IitS?

JW: I had started on the original concept before we knew each other. We met through our jobs and after we had become friends, we started on the project uh…

GT: I always thought it was around 2007.

JW: I get it mixed up but yeah, you probably started collaborating with me on the idea in late 2006 or early 2007.

DB: What challenges did you face creating a self-published comic?

JW: You take this one.

GT: What?

JW: I’m responding all the time and not giving you a chance so you take this one.

GT: Why this question?

JW: Just go.

GT: I think the single most difficult aspect of working on a self published comic is working a 10 hour day at your day job and then coming home to put in a few more hours on the comic.

JW: Well, there is the fact that you have to consider every aspect of the business. Aside from the art and writing, which is already a huge list of tasks, you have to do all your own editing. Printing companies are generally not interested in doing any editing for you and if they are, they’re going to charge you a lot of money to do it…so the book has to be totally ready to go. On top of the creative side, you have to market the whole thing yourself, get your own website up, make business cards, register the business,copyright your work, and scour the internet for shows you can promote your book at. It goes on and on.
Back to the creative side, planning is always a problem. What you originally plan is often not what you end up with. For instance, our book still stands as incomplete but we decided that what we have in the “preview edition” we’re currently offering is good enough to generate interest as we continue work on the book…finishing the backgrounds, fixing slight errors, coloring the book etc.

GT: You responded for me again.

JW: It’s okay, I’m the brains of this operation.

GT: Whatever.

Sometimes you just can’t get comfortable

DB: How did you come about creating such a-dare I say-ditzy and buxom heroine like Kayli?

GT: She’s not ditzy!

JW: It’s okay, she sort of is. The buxom part is easy, I loves me some boobs. I mean, everyone loves boobs. Men love boobs. Women love boobs. We’re just giving people what they want. Boobs.

GT: I don’t like where this is going.

JW: Where was I? Boob tangent, right. Sorry. Without giving away too much of the story for those who haven’t read it yet, her “ditzy” behavior can be explained by the fact that she just woke up. As the story in the first issue moves along, it becomes clear that she isn’t completely guileless.

GT: We wanted a character that could break the mold of your average busty, fan service girl. Kayli drives the story, she’s not just eye candy. She is strong, funny, sexy, and…um…

JW: Hair brained. I think that’s a better way to describe her than “ditzy”. She’s the kind of person that actually believes things like “It’s so crazy, it just might WORK!” So she’s comically impulsive, not stupid.

DB: Would you say that Kayli is a hunter, scavenger, explorer, pirate, or perhaps…something else?

JW: Kayli is a hunter/explorer…but that more or less describes most people that live in the Central Islands. Due to the nomadic nature of these people, it’s not always feasible to buy food from a settlement because dense populations of people are often far apart, so everyone hunts. Also, the nature of the world and the way the islands are always in motion, everyone is also exploring all the time. So Kayli is really a pretty average inhabitant of Central. Except for her boobs. Those are above average.

GT: She’s also a “gear-head”.

JW: That’s right, we didn’t get a chance to explore that yet.

GT: She loves to tinker with her glider and as far as hunters go, she’s exceptional. She is really good at it.

Damn girl, where you going with all of that?

DB: How did she fall into this role/occupation?

JW: A lot of people from the Central Islands layer are solitary, especially during some of the prime years of their life. They leave their family at a very young age and it’s just the way of things. Naturally, if you’re alone, you need to be able to fend for yourself…so hunting is just part of life. You hunt to survive, not for sport.

DB: What’s the deal with Kayli’s tattoo’s? Is there a story behind them, similar to that of the pendant that Lonestar wears around his neck in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs?

JW: The tattoos, I think…weren’t they your idea?

GT: I think so. Early on, while we were designing her, I think I just started using body paint and Joe liked it and started to create a story around it.

JW: The term tattoo is a bit misleading. Like Genevieve said, “body paint” is probably more accurate in the sense that the tattoos aren’t permanent. Or at least, they are semi permanent. We’re going to do a feature on them, a “Field Guide” as we refer to them as, on our site eventually so I can’t give away too much here. I’ll just say that she sees a specialist in the art form, a master tattooist, and gets a custom pattern made specifically for her in a sort of ritual. It’s like a religion of sorts in the Central layer.

GT: It gives her powers!

JW: Shhhh!

DB: At times Kayli seems to enjoy letting it all hang out; takes pleasure in feeling the air roll over her naked self. Would you call her a naturist or a nudist of sorts?

JW: I think it’s fair to say she’s quite comfortable with her body image. We’re glad you brought up the nudity though, because it’s come up recently. For the record, just as we stated in the back of the book…

GT: Which no one read…unfortunately.

DB: I did.

JW: For the record, though…we meant to censor the entire book except for the bare butts in the initial few pages. We ran out of time because we had to go to press with what we had to make WonderCon 2009. A few people have told us that the nudity cheapens our work but these people dismiss anything that is good about our story just because of a few bare boobs…which I think is absurd and unfair. The nudity is sexy, not sexual. If anyone thought it was gratuitous, congratulations on your brilliant powers of observation.
It probably seems bad because we had to cut a lot of pages of story to be able to make our print date. I mean, she’s clothed for the rest of the book but those pages didn’t make it into what we put out for WonderCon. We think that when we are able to finish the censoring and add the final pages of the story to the end, the balance of nude Kayli to clothed Kayli will work itself out and no one will really think it’s a big deal.
In the end, 99.9% people who bought our book so far got exactly what they were looking for and honestly, they were our intended audience. The .1% of people who were offended? Not our audience. We talked about it with some friends who we knew could be honest and objective about our work. I think our friend, Frenton, summed up that .1% of people best. What was it that he said?

GT: “F*ck them.”

JW: Ah yes, that was it.

DB: So I have to ask, what is Kayli’s fascination with meat(s)?

JW: Girl gets hungry. It’s not much more complicated than that.

GT: Don’t get between Kayli and her meats.

JW: It’s like a momma bear and her cubs. She might kill you.

Kayli practices her hypnotism spell-it stunned me too Gordo

DB: While Kayli is sound asleep, dreaming of succulent meats she is woken up by Gordo. What can you tell us about Gordo?

GT: I love Gordo!

JW: Yes, thank you. Now be quiet. Gordo is, as a device of the storytelling, the guy you can relate to. He’s got the more “realistic” personality. He behaves in a manner you’d expect normal people to behave and this allows us to better define both characters.

GT: No one cares about that. Gordo is awesome. That’s all you need to know.

JW: He’s got a past that we don’t want to get into yet but there is a very, very, very subtle hint to it in the book. In any case, Gordo is an average hunter but a pretty exceptional craftsman. However, it’s a role that he is fairly new to, he just happens to have a knack for it. In the original short story I wrote, which is the basis for the plot of the comic, Gordo and Kayli form a natural relationship because she is able to provide him with the raw materials (gathered from animals) that he uses in his business of crafting armor and other sorts of gear.

DB: Can readers expect to see a budding romantic relationship form between Kayli and Gordo?

GT: Yes!

JW: We’ve developed the back story for the world better than we’ve developed the story of Kayli and Gordo. So we have a great setting that we want to expand on but in regards to the characters…well, while we have their individual stories worked out a bit, we haven’t made any hard choices on where their relationship will go. So I think it’s fair to say that anything is possible.

GT: Its fun when we just get together to dream of funny stories and adventures that Kayli and Gordo get into. It’s great to have this level of control over something you love to do and just bounce ideas off each other. We have control over their lives and whenever we imagine one character doing or saying something, we already know how the other character will react.

Lesson #1: Keep your eyes on Kayli at all times

DB: Any advice for aspiring artists looking to create a print comic?

JW: Don’t do it.

GT: Don’t do it.

JW: Seriously though, it’s hard work…so be prepared for it and then don’t be surprised that it was even harder than what anyone told you. If you’re working alone, you have to kick start yourself. If you’re working with someone, make sure you inspire each other and trust each other.

GT: Don’t do it.

JW: Shhh. Decide on a size format that works best for you…don’t start work till you’re happy with it. Do your pre-production work…if you have character design sheets and concepts to go on, it’ll make the final pages so much better and easier to do. Create a mini-booklet of the rough storyboards early…make sure it reads well and the panels make sense from page to page. Don’t kill yourself trying to perfect the dialogue in one go…get it on paper and go back to it in a few days, it’ll improve each time you work on it. Know your own work habits and don’t over schedule or under schedule yourself. Giving yourself impossible deadlines just makes you frustrated. Giving yourself too little work doesn’t challenge you enough. You want to try to do something within a year or two or you might lose interest in it. Do your homework on companies that can print your final book for you. Make smart investments, like a good scanner and printer. Try to keep expenses down however you can; all the little things add up and eventually and you’ll find it really hard to just break even when you get around to selling your book. Finally, have a website ready and have a memorable business card or postcard with your website’s address on it.

GT: Whew!

DB: Aside from the IitS website (www.iits-comic.blogspot.com) is there anywhere else readers can pick up IiTS and/or any of the cool swag you’ve created to promote the comic (stickers, posters, magnets)?

JW: The specific address to our store is: http://iits-store.blogspot.com. The two sites have links to each other.

GT: We’ll put up new merchandise from time to time which we’ll probably introduce at the different shows we attend.

JW: We have three events in May 2009 but until we have the concrete details, we won’t announce them just yet. Please keep an eye on our site…we’ll announce the events there.

GT: Please, check out what we have so far on the site, there is a decent amount of content and we’ll try to put up even more as we work on the book. Thanks!

DB: Well, I can’t wait to read more. Thank you very much for your time.

GT: You’re welcome. Thank you!

JW: Yes. Thanks for your help in promoting us, David.

Well there you have it folks, the answers to just about all of the questions that you or I could possibly want to know regarding this very-promising first issue of Islands in the Sky. Be sure to check out their website and pick up your copy of the book before someone else beats you to it and you’re left empty handed. And while you’re at it you might as well snag a poster, some stickers and a set of magnets (complete with “modesty meats”) for the ‘ol fridge. Just don’t let your mother see them. Not only will she be very confused as she stares at you with raised eyebrow, but she may just disown you; they are that risqué.

-David “KidKobun” Bruno