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.

Nothing I've worked on has been asked this much of me to put it on the page [like Paper Girls].

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.

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.

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.

[Paper Girls] is very much is about how we are thinking about our past and growing up.

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.