I want her to be powerful on these covers, and sometimes that's a quiet power and other times it's a more bombastic power. But when you're going to have a book out there that's called Wonder Woman and she's on it, you have a responsibility to put out a certain kind of image.

Back then, as a kid, you could really just do whatever you wanted until your parents got home.

It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.

Matt Wilson, the colorist, has this great palate [in Paper Girls] that brings up all these emotions and this feel of the '80s without being actually as kind of as bright and primary as it could have been.

We wanted the book [Paper Girls] to feel to evoke the '80s, but not necessarily feel that it was drawn then.

I don't think I've ever worked on a project [Paper Girls] that is this personal. We draw so much on our memories of growing and we're putting so much of our present day into it as well.

One of my favorite comics is Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers. They do such a wonderful job of showing you how the character of Maggie ages and really doesn't present that with any kind of judgment.