The Corner Box

Boom! Studios Editor Elizabeth Brei on The Corner Box S2 Ep22

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 22

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Boom! Studios Editor, Elizabeth Brei, joins the show! Elizabeth joins John and David for this Valentine’s Day Special to talk about the gatekeepers of the comics industry, where new comic readers should (and definitely shouldn’t) get started, making comics more accessible, and John and Elizabeth’s shared love of the manga, NANA. Also, David apologizes (once again), and John tries to explain industry BS.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Corner Box vs Elizabeth Brei.

Timestamp Segments

  • [01:24] The first thing John ever said to Elizabeth.
  • [02:07] David apologises.
  • [03:03] Elizabeth discovers the podcast.
  • [04:33] Self-publishing comics.
  • [05:56] Elizabeth’s origin story.
  • [09:35] John’s Diamond story.
  • [12:23] Getting back into comics.
  • [15:42] Why the industry is struggling.
  • [17:27] John explains the BS.
  • [21:07] Elizabeth’s recommendations for starters.
  • [22:42] David’s 3 go-to first comics.
  • [24:08] Which superhero comic would Elizabeth recommend?
  • [26:06] The changing aesthetic of comics.
  • [27:23] Discovering NANA.
  • [28:47] The NANA 101.
  • [34:20] NANA’s popularity.

Notable Quotes

  • “I almost never recommend superhero comics.”
  • “You can have a really emotional response to a comic book.”
  • “NANA is still considered the most popular, the most successful shojo manga of all time.”

Relevant Links

David's Fun Stuff!
Did Someone Say Fun Time? Let's GO!

John is at PugW!
Pug WorldwideCornerbox.club.

Elizabeth Brei is Making Stuff!
Elizabeth Brei

Books Mentioned

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Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential, and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art, and business of comics, and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.


[00:28] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I am one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me, as always, is David Hedgecock. Happy Valentine's Day, David. 


[00:39] David Hedgecock: Hey, thanks. Happy Valentine's Day to you. Thanks for the flowers, buddy.


[00:42] John: It's probably not Valentine's Day, as you're listening to this, but that's when we're recording it. I'm going to lay out the map for how this led here. I thought, “well, what if we talked about romance comics?” Realizing we were going to record on February the 14th, and then also realizing, “wait, that's meaningless, because it's not going to come out on February 14th. So, who cares? You know what my favorite—romance comic is mildly, or whatever—that's not the right word for it. I thought of the manga, NANA, by Ai Yazawa, and then I thought, “wait a minute. I know somebody that wrote a concluding chapter to NANA,” and we both know it, and that is why we have, with us, our special guest, Elizabeth Brei, from Boom! Studios, and other places.


[01:20] Elizabeth Brei: And other places. Mostly Boom! Studios right now.


[01:22] John: Well, we both know you from IDW. Do you remember the first thing I ever said to you when we met?


[01:27] Elizabeth: I don't.


[01:28] John: I think I was interviewing to be Editor-in-Chief, and I was like, “Oh, have you quit yet?” because a lot of people were quitting.


[01:35] Elizabeth: It's funny, since we're talking about it, when I told you, when you were my Editor-in-Chief, that I was quitting, you were just like, “yeah, I assumed that's what this meeting was,” and I thought that was really funny, at the time, that you were just like, “this is it,” but that was almost three years later.


[01:56] David: John knew that once I wasn't there, the writing was on the wall for so many people. So, he was just watching the dominoes fall.


[02:03] John: So, you were there?


[02:04] Elizabeth: No.


[02:05] David: I don’t think I was.


[02:06] John: Sorry, no. You were gone when Elizabeth left, but you were there when I came on.


[02:10] David: I think I hired Elizabeth, I'm pretty sure.


[02:12] John: And me.


[02:13] David: You didn't have anything to do with it.


[02:14] John: You hired me.


[02:15] Elizabeth: And you hired John.


[02:16] David: Oh, I hired you, too. Yeah. I don't know how many more times I need to say I'm sorry about that. I am sorry. I apologize a lot.


[02:24] John: A lot.


[02:25] David: Well, once again, I'm sorry. I apologize, and Elizabeth, also, sorry to you. I apologize to you both for bringing you into this horrible world that we call comic books. It’s awful, and I should have known better, and I am sorry. I'm sending you […].


[02:42] Elizabeth: […] when you start to do a podcast about comics.


[02:44] David: Have you listened to the podcast, at all? You haven't, obviously.


[02:48] Elizabeth: Yeah, I'm not a big podcast listener, to be honest.


[02:52] David: The good news is, you only have to listen to our podcast, and then you've listened to the best comic book podcasts in existence. We’ve saved you a lot of time, just by you hanging out with us.


[03:02] Elizabeth: That's fair. What's annoying, to me, is, I didn't know you guys had a podcast, until John messaged me, which is extra annoying, because Megan Brown has been on this podcast. When I told her I was coming on it, she told me she used to co-host it, and I was like, “Megan, we talk almost every day. Why did you never mention that you were hosting a podcast?”


[03:24] David: I have lots of questions. I don't even know where to go with that.


[03:28] Elizabeth: She was working at Oni for, I think, two months before she told me she was working at Oni. I knew already, because Chase told me, because she had told Chase […], but then I just never brought it up, because I was just waiting for her to bring it up, and she finally did, one day, in a really awkward way. She was like, “hey, I have life news. I've been working at Oni for a couple of months,” and I was like, “Megan, I know. First of all, you have other friends that you did tell. Second, it was news.”


[04:01] John: Yeah. That’s what I was going to say.


[04:06] David: There was literally a press release about this. I adore Megan. I adore her, but I'll text her, occasionally, and get these—I don't know how somebody can be awkward over text, but somehow, she's able to accomplish that, and it's very Megan.


[04:19] Elizabeth: It is. The most charming person in comics.


[04:22] David: She's great. So, John, you set us up for a discussion about a really fantastic manga, and then we completely walked all over that.


[04:33] John: Sorry. So, Elizabeth, after IDW, you were working at Boom! But also, one of the things that I think is interesting is that you frequently table at conventions, and do Kickstarters, and you've released a lot of comics that you've written.


[04:50] Elizabeth: Yeah.


[04:51] John: Of various genres.


[04:52] Elizabeth: They're mostly comics about girls, and that girls would like, mostly, and that's the only thing they have in common with each other. When I started editing comics, I got interested in writing them, because it's a weird way to write, and I've been a prose writer for a long time. So, I just started doing it for fun. I still don't really consider myself a comics writer. I don’t really have a lot of interest in doing it, for real. I like self-publishing my comics, going to tables. I hate the idea of trying to pitch one, or working on a monthly schedule to make one, or anything, but yeah, one of the ones I did was, if NANA ended my way, but also, it's totally bootleg NANA, where all the characters have different names, it takes place in the US. It has been really fun tabling with that one, because so many people recognize it and just look at it, and say, “that looks like NANA.” I'm like, “cool. I’m glad. That's what I'm ripping off.”


[05:56] David: Well, John, should we set the table with Elizabeth’s career and then talk about NANA, or should we talk about NANA and then talk about Elizabeth’s career? I feel like we should set the table, right?


[06:06] John: I didn't know that was the order of events, that you started editing comics and then started writing them.


[06:11] Elizabeth: Yeah.


[06:13] David: I don't know that, either.


[06:14] John: Yeah, you were already there when I met you. What is your origin? What was the thing that inspired you to want to be in comics, and then inspired you to read comics, and then, what made you want to do this stuff?


[06:24] Elizabeth: Yeah. So, this actually all dovetails really nicely. I actually think I told you this, John, the first time we talked about NANA—years ago, obviously. So, it's okay if you don't remember it. I think, like a lot of women my age, being a kid in the 90s, and interested in weird stuff that wasn't super mainstream, comics wasn't even a thing, really, on my radar, because American comics wasn't the most hospitable place for girls. So, really, my first foray into comics was manga, watching the Sailor Moon anime, and realizing that that was a comic first, and then getting into other comics like it—in the mid-aughts, figuring out that there were more like it, that were for older people, and then I found NANA. I have no idea how. By accident, for sure. So, in the Wild West days of YouTube, before it was owned by Google, and there seemed to be no rules for the Internet, because no one realized they could make money from it, yet, people used to post whole anime series on YouTube—entire runs, and I stumbled across Paradise Kiss, and watched it all in one night. It was 12 episodes. I didn't know they made anime like this, and I didn't know that people told stories like this, as cartoons, and I had to find out if there was more like it. That's how I came across NANA, which is also—Paradise Kiss is by Ai Yazawa, and so is NANA.

It had just started serializing in the tankōbons in the States, at the time. I think only two volumes were out. I read NANA as it became available in English. So, I was there, in real time—I can't believe this became a NANA story—Anyway, I was there in real time in 2009, when we were like, “hey, where's the next one?” And it turned out, there wasn't a next one, but yeah, I got into college as MCU was starting, in earnest, and I didn't have any interest in, or knowledge about, superhero comics before that, and I was interested enough in the crazy idea of the MCU that it made me interested in reading the comics, in general, and I remember, there was a comic shop in Normal, IL where I went to college, that I went into, and had the worst time. It was one of those where the guys took one look at me, and were like, “this person doesn't belong here,” and that comic shop, I'm not going to name it—went out of business.


[09:06] David: I'm shocked.


[09:07] Elizabeth: Shortly before the pandemic, even. So, they can't even say that it was a pandemic-related closure. I was really smug about it when they went out of business.


[09:18] David: I hate hearing that, and just so you know, John feels the same way about Diamond going out of business. He went into the Diamond distribution warehouse one time, and they were like, “you don't belong here,” and ever since then, he's been very angry at Diamond.


[09:35] John: You know my Diamond story, right? So, way back when Brendan Cahill and I made a comic together—there's a back story about that—but he’s a later-on Transformers artist, drawn some other stuff. I think everybody on the podcast knows him, at least a little bit. So, he and I were roommates, at the time. We made a comic together, and we submitted it to Diamond to self-publish it, and then a package was sent from Diamond, to me, presumably the package that they send new publishers when you're coming one. At the time, I lived in an apartment, and it was impossible for it to get delivered. It was always going to be delivered at a time when I was going to be at work. They wouldn’t leave it there. So, I had to drive to Chula Vista, to the FedEx warehouse, or whatever, pick up this package welcoming me to Diamond. I get back to my car, open it up, and it's a rejection, and they've sent back all of the material I sent them. Not only did they reject it—they paid money to not have everything I sent them with them. I'm, I don't know, 22, or something, at this point. I am devastated by this. I come back home, and my now-wife—then-girlfriend—had bought a cake that she’d had inscribed, on the top of it, “Fuck Diamond.”


[10:57] Elizabeth: I didn't realize that Diamond was a publisher. To reject material.


[11:01] John: When you’re a publisher, and you submit, it’s like if you're trying to have PRH distribute you now.


[11:10] Elizabeth: It's weird that--

[11:11] David: Diamond as the monopoly, I mean, there were good aspects of it, but if Diamond didn't like you, that was it. That was the end of your comics. You just had to sit around and hope that they would go out of business, the way John had to do. Coming this year, John and Brendan Cahill’s new project.


[11:30] John: What am I doing right now? I'm lightening the background on something, so I can include an NHL illegal line on something. Who had the last laugh, huh, Diamond?


[11:42] David: You showed them with that super stellar, interesting, fantastic, amazing career you’ve got going. So, Elizabeth, you got bounced from the comic bookstore, which—one more time, just to be really clear, that enrages me in a way that I can't even describe. I’ve said this so many times. Comics are a party, and everyone's invited. It drives me nuts when I hear that kind of story, and I've heard it far too often. It's so frustrating, and I'm so thankful, and all of the comics community should be thankful that you found a way to persevere, because you've contributed so much to the medium, and what a way to start. Anyway, continue your story.


[12:23] Elizabeth: It was interesting, too, because when I was in there, this woman came in—she was probably grandmother age, young grandmother, and she said, “my grandson is getting into Batman, and I want to buy him some Batman comics. Where can I find Batman comics?” And they were like, “well, you have to be a little more specific.” Anyway, I gave up, momentarily, on American comics, and then I actually had a friend that I told this story to, who was in a creative writing class with me, and he was like, “can I just give you some comics to read?” And I was like, “yeah, sure.” So, I actually think that this was an act of violence, in hindsight, but the first one he gave me was We3.


[13:12] John: Oh, man.


[13:13] David: Oh, geez.


[13:14] Elizabeth: He didn't want me to start with superhero comics. He was like, “I want you to read indie comics.” I was like, “okay.” That's the rudest thing anybody's ever done. Just straight up, mean, but he followed up with Saga, and again, Saga was one of those where I was like, “I didn't know people made comics like this. I didn't know you could make a comic like this,” and from there, I just dived in, and the MCU did help. I got to a point where I was like, “Marvel comics seem cool.” My first Marvel comic that I ever read was—this is funny in hindsight, but I didn't realize how events worked in superhero comics—So, I got the collection of Fear Itself, which didn't make a lick of sense to me, because it didn't have any of the tie-in comics. So, I was like, “I don't understand why anyone's doing anything that they're doing in this,” but I followed it up with, because I loved The Winter Soldier movie, I read The Winter Soldier, and that—again, I didn't know superhero comics could be like this. So, I went and got an MFA in Creative Writing, and while there, figured out that editing was probably it, what I wanted to do, in general. I'd already been doing that for my college newspaper and the literary magazine at my school. Then I lived here in San Diego. This is also a little bit of a weird series of coincidences, but my partner, Danny, used to do a lot of bar trivia, and he did it at the Whistle Stop. So, the guy who ran the trivia, at the time, was Robert […], and his wife, Sarah Gaydos, worked at IDW. So when an assistant editor position opened, I used a little bit of connect to get in, to at least see if comics might be as fun for me to make as they were getting to read. Oh, and then David didn't hire me, that time. He hired Peter, and then hired Chase, and then hired me. Not salty about it, at all.


[15:21] John: Third choice is pretty good. There's nothing wrong with a bronze. I worked at Marvel for several years. I know Matt Fraction enough that when we see each other, we'll stop and say hi, and I had the exact same experience reading Fear Itself, as you did. I bought the paperback and had no clue what was happening.


[15:42] David: I just want to pause here, for the listener. I want to recount, for the listener—not everybody, I think, that listens to our podcast, necessarily, is deep diving comic books, and I just want to—what we got, John, was an experience that I think is far too common. Somebody who showed an interest—thanks to manga and the MCU, shows an interest in comics, goes in the store, gets completely snubbed, which is just inexcusable, then perseveres, somehow—now, that would have been the end for a lot of people. That's it. You go in once, you’re like “that's the end. I'm not doing this. These guys are assholes. I don’t want to be part of a community like this,” and that's it, but somehow, she's pulled back in, through a friend, and then, when she goes to make her own decisions on what to buy next, because she's like, “hey, I'm going to try American comics,” she gets the most impenetrable, most difficult thing that you could possibly read, because it has all the characters she recognizes from the movies, and she's excited to consume that thing, and it is completely unintelligible. You wonder why the comic book industry is struggling. This is a perfect example of why. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I am so frustrated, because I know, there's so many people that don't get the second and third opportunities, who don't find the Brian K. Vaughan book to wow them, and just pull them completely in, and give them the ability to basically forgive all the BS. Why is there BS, John?


[17:29] Elizabeth: John, explain.


[17:31] John: This isn't an excuse, or anything, but one thing that's funny about it, all the publishers, at least at the time, were in New York or LA, and I'm not saying that that can't happen in New York and LA, but that's not what a general comic bookstore in Manhattan is like. A basic comic bookstore in Manhattan has a ton of employees, a zillion people of all walks of life coming through. So, you have the publishers that, I think you lose track of that. You lose track that most people are going into comic bookstores that are made by comic fans who, like us, are not inherently good at running businesses. You are, David, but I mean, like me, but what I mean is, you forget that these stores aren't super professional, the way Forbidden Planet is.


[18:20] David: But it's a failure on both sides.


[18:22] John: Yeah, and then you wind up with an event that is about deconstructing an event that is still trying to function as an event. Even if you did understand it, if that was your first comic book event, that was going to be weirdly disappointing when characters that died come back […], and all this stuff. When those things start getting written too much, or created too much for the people making them, it can get so impenetrable, and the one I always think about was when Final Crisis was coming out at the same time as Secret Invasion, and I think, hands down, I like Final Crisis more than I like Secret Invasion. I go through all the things that I think went wrong with Secret Invasion, and the things I think are fascinating about Final Crisis, but that summer, when they were up to each other, there was a DC event that was about something that nobody at DC knew, because they hadn't seen past the first script, and the basic premise was that the bad guys won, which is the setup for every story, and the Marvel story was, there are shape-changing aliens, and the superheroes have to stop them. Crystal clear. I mean, maybe stuff didn't pay off, or didn't work, but you know exactly what it is, you know exactly what you're getting, and it makes sense. That’s the trap to fall into, though, because like I said, if I'm going to sit down and read one of them today, I'm going to read Final Crisis. I just think that that comic’s fascinating. I mean, Fear Itself was, I think, very inspired by Final Crisis. It was a deconstruction of an event. So, the crossovers are either integral or irrelevant, and there's made-up crossovers that didn't exist, because that's what they were doing, and it's going to be impenetrable, at a certain level.


[20:05] Elizabeth: Right. It’s funny because I picked up Fear Itself, because, I think, the collection maybe had Thor on the cover, or had […] on the cover, and I’d just watched the Thor movie, and I was like, “I know that guy,” and then everything that happens with Thor in that story is so weird that I was just like, “where am I?” Bucky is Captain America in Fear Itself, which was so confusing to me, a person who had not yet seen The Winter Soldier, or read The Winter Soldier. It was just like, “Captain America just died over there. How is Steve Rogers over here?” Anyway, it was a treat. It was a hell of a way to get into Marvel Comics. I actually couldn't ask for anything more than what I got out of that. I've since reread it, with more of the tie-ins, and stuff, and with more knowledge about comics, and I think it's interesting.


[20:59] John: No, it's clever.


[21:01] Elizabeth: I will never forget that experience.


[21:07] David: Elizabeth, with that experience in mind, what do you recommend to people, because you’re working in comics now—that stuff comes up in conversations at parties, and over dinner, and things—what is it that you recommend, or what is the book that you put in people’s hands?


[21:22] Elizabeth: I almost never recommend superhero comics. I don't read a lot of them anymore, anyway, but honestly--


[21:29] David: I don’t think you're supposed to admit that.


[21:31] Elizabeth: I read a lot of comics. I don’t read a lot of superhero comics. Actually, my go-to is Scott Pilgrim, mostly because it's a name people recognize, because of the movie, and also, I might as well tell everyone now—I also like pro wrestling. Much like pro wrestling, I think a really easy way to get somebody into comics is to show them the funny, smart, clever ones, because I think wrestling is opaque, in the same way that comics is, and it also has long histories, and long storylines, but if you show somebody a joke match of a Japanese guy fighting a blow-up doll, or something, they're going to get that that’s funny, even if they don't really understand wrestling storytelling, and I think something like Scott Pilgrim, which plays on superhero tropes, is so accessible, and it's not very long. So, it's not a huge commitment. I think that's where I like to start people, if I can. I have personally put that comic in people's hands. This is my actual thing where I'm like, “you haven't read any comics. Read this one,” and I give them my copy. That’s my go-to.


[22:41] David: That's a good one. I like that one. I have three. My three go-to’s are Good-bye, Chunky Rice, which is just the saddest freaking book. The way that book evokes emotion in me is so—it evokes emotion in everybody that reads it. So, I just want people to know, “you can have a really emotional response to a comic book.” So, Good-bye, Chunky Rice is one of them. Maus is also right up there. I mean, how do you go wrong with a Pulitzer Prize-winning book?


[23:12] Elizabeth: You don't want anyone to have a good time.


[23:16] David: Oh, God. Let's not do that, and then the third one is March. I think March is such an important book, and it is entertaining. It's a revelation to read about this guy's life. Those are usually my three, but I think Scott Pilgrim, that's a great idea. Pull them in with a little bit of humor. Adding that to my list.


[23:35] John: I remember an era where so many people that were coming in and working, either as interns, or coming in as new editors, and stuff, that Saga was the thing that got them into comics. That was the first comic that they read, and the thing that got them into it.


[23:48] Elizabeth: That's true. Yeah, it was one of my first American comics. So, yeah, that one was really game-changing, for me. I know it's still ongoing, but I'm not caught up, or anything.


[23:58] John: No, me, too. Same thing. I missed an issue, and then didn't come back to it, and then it went on hiatus for a while, and then all of a sudden, I'm five years behind on it, or whatever.


[24:09] Elizabeth: I think, if I had to choose a superhero comic, I would put Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Young Avengers in anyone's hands. You don’t even have to have read the first Young Avengers to really dive into that one. You just need to know a little bit about the tropes that they're playing with, the characters that they're mirroring, with the […] characters, and it's so accessible, and I think if you like it, it's so easy to branch off into similar kinds of Marvel Comics, with those kinds of characters.


[24:39] John: That's a good one, yeah.


[24:40] Elizabeth: I think a lot of people get intimidated by the idea of comics, because they think superhero comics first, and then think you have to read it all.


[24:48] John: You're right, because not only do you not really need to have read the first Young Avengers—It's probably worse if you have, because if you don't know the—I mean, I like that series, but that first one relies on you being surprised that it turns out, “this character is that character, in reality,” and there's so much of that going on. Kieron does this, in general, that he creates these closed systems that maybe refer to other things, but you don't need to know that stuff, and he'll give you everything you need in those stories, in an emotional sense—you get emotionally involved in the characters without having to have some previous tie to them, which I don't think everybody does, and then Jamie just draws it. It's funny, because he's so much better now than he was then, but he was so good then.


[25:31] Elizabeth: I think there's a lot to be said about that, too. I was a kid in the 90s, when all comics looked a certain way that I wouldn't have liked as a kid, and don't like as an adult. I think the cartooning of Young Avengers, and I guess Scott Pilgrim, is also so successful, where we're not trying to be hyper-realistic. We don't need to use so much black ink in the coloring. We can have a little bit of fun.


[26:06] John: In the early 2000s, we had an art class come in from, I don't know, one of the New York art schools. I forget.


[26:12] David: This is when you were at Marvel, John?


[26:14] John: Yeah, early 2000s, when I was at Marvel, and then almost everybody in the class was a woman, and almost everybody wanted to get into comics because of Sonic the Hedgehog. You had this really specific time where the manga boom hadn't quite happened when they were the right age for that to have been the thing that really impacted them. It was going right on the second wave of the circa-2000 manga wave, = manga boom was starting up right then. You could either go down the road of—Okay, sorry—Niel Gaiman’s Sandman, back when Sandman was something I didn't have an iPad in front of, so you couldn't see that I've got the Absolute Sandman books behind me. That sort of stuff, or if you were reading X-Men in the 70s, it was strong female characters. If you were reading X-Men in the 90s, it was Psylocke in a leather bikini.


[27:00] Elizabeth: Yeah.


[27:01] John: There is a turn off there, depending on what you’re looking for, I guess.


[27:04] Elizabeth: Also, very wrestling-mirrored there, where in the 70s and 80s, women wrestlers were wrestling, and then in 90s, they were having bra-and-panty matches. So, yeah. They’re very tied-together for me, in my brain.


[27:23] John: When that manga boom did happen, one of the things that came out was a comic called NANA.


[27:27] Elizabeth: Yes, we swung around. We got here. We came back. I don't know if John remembers when we first discovered that we both liked NANA.


[27:34] John: I remember discovering it. I can't remember the exact moment. I remember talking to you about it, though.


[27:37] Elizabeth: It was when you used to do those—


[27:40] John: Oh, right.


[27:41] Elizabeth: --Classes for editors, and we did one on first pages and what makes a first page successful, and you had examples, and you put the first page of NANA on the screen, and I was like, “oh, my god, NANA,” and you were like, “what?” and I was like, “NANA,” and you were very surprised, because you'd never actually met anyone else who liked NANA.


[28:04] John: That’s not quite true, because I stole the DVD of the movie from a receptionist at IDW. She let me borrow it, and then she left. That was about 15 years ago. I still haven't had a chance to watch it, yet.


[28:15] Elizabeth: I don't know if they've ever put a real one, for the movie.


[28:18] John: Oh, that's even worse, if it's hard to find.


[28:22] Elizabeth: Well, they're actually putting out an official one this year, because it’s the 25th anniversary of NANA.


[28:26] John: That's horrifying.


[28:28] Elizabeth: Which makes it even better to be talking about.


[28:30] John: Yeah, that's right. That’s why we did this. N25. You’ve got to name this one.


[28:36] Elizabeth: Perfect.


[28:36] John: Everybody will know what that means.


[28:37] Elizabeth: I told you then, too, that I work in comics because of NANA.


[28:48] David: I don't have any idea what NANA is. So, I would love to get the NANA 101. What is this thing that's launched comic book careers?


[28:57] Elizabeth: This is going to be the wildest breakdown. I'm not going to give everything, because again, this manga ran for nine years before it went on a hiatus that we're still waiting on Ai Yazawa to come back from. So, the basic premise of this story is that there are two young women, they’re both named Nana, who are from different small towns in Japan, and they meet, by chance, because they sit next to each other on a train to Tokyo, and through a series of coincidences and happenstances, they end up as roommates, and one of them is—I'm going to call them Nana and Hachi for ease—for those who don't know any Japanese, Nana means “7”, Hachi means “8”. So, that's how they differentiate, in the story, too. Nana is going to Tokyo, because she wants to be the singer in a punk band, and she's going to make that happen. She's not even in a band, at that time. She's just like, “I have to go to Tokyo to make it work,” and Hachi is going to Tokyo, because her boyfriend, who is a year older than her, went to Tokyo for college, and told her she couldn't come with him until she figured out what she was going to do when she got there. So, now she feels that she's done it, she's figured that out, and of course, we find out, right away, that she has no idea what she's going to do when she gets there.

Hachi is our POV character and our narrator, and they're totally different women, and their relationship and their devotion to each other is extraordinary, and from there, we just watch them live in Tokyo and try to make their dreams come true, amid so much drama. It's funny, because the things that happen in NANA, I think, if you just listed them out, it's like, “Oh, my God. This is just soap opera-level drama, but it all works so well, because all of the characters are so incredibly well-sketched, and she knows exactly where everything's going in this story. A big part of it is that Hachi is narrating this story from the future. We don’t know how long in the future. We know it's been, at least, several years since the start, and we know that Nana is gone. She's not in their lives anymore. They don't know where she is. She's just not around, and we don't know why she left, where she went, when she went—We just know where the rest of the characters are, and that's mostly together, and that's the big mystery of this—how all of this, all of the things that happened to them, dovetail into her finally just leaving them, and we never get an answer, because the manga is not over.


[31:37] David: That is brutal. That is brutal. Oh, my God.


[31:41] Elizabeth: On top of all that, Ai Yazawa was really interested in music and fashion, and all of the characters are so distinctly designed. I think, sometimes with manga—probably with any comics—if you took a character's clothes off, and maybe covered their hair, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. I don't think that's true of any characters in that. They're all so well-designed and cool to look at. Everyone's so stylish. I know all of that sounded really dramatic. This manga is extremely funny. It has such a weird sense of humor. I love good cartooning, and Ai Yazawa’s cartooning, just the way she uses exaggerated facial expressions and absurd body types, and motions, to make visual jokes on the page, are so cool, especially juxtaposed against how cool they all look all the time. They're all walking around, like fashion models, in Tokyo, and then sometimes, they're little gremlins. I love this manga. Like many mangaka who do long running series, Ai Yazawa did eventually get to a point where she was exhausted. She had to take a break, and she just never came back. So, she did this manga for nine years, and stopped in 2009, and we're still waiting for her to finish it.


[33:09] David: Go on to do other stuff?


[33:11] Elizabeth: She has not done another comic, but she does a lot of design work with fashion brands. She does NANA-inspired design stuff for makeup brands, clothing brands, stuff like that, but no, she hasn't drawn another manga since. She periodically says she's working on NANA, which is mean. Every three years, she’s like, “I’m drawing,” and we’re like, “okay.” So, my hope, my dream, is that she's planning to just finish it, and it'll just come out when it's done. I don't know if we'll ever get an official end of NANA.


[33:50] John: I think it would be awesome if she and George RR Martin swapped, and everybody that bought the last Game of Thrones books was like, “who are these Japanese girls?” Didn't she get sick? Wasn’t that the initial thing? It wasn't just exhaustion.


[34:04] Elizabeth: Yeah, it was an undisclosed illness, but I think a lot of people just assumed that it's “my body is broken from 9 years of having to put out a chapter a week of this manga as it's serializing.” I also think, important context, too, I think is that NANA is still considered the most popular, the most successful shojo manga of all time, and that’s in a world where Sailor Moon exists. That's how extremely popular NANA is in Japan, and again, we haven't had any of it in, what, 16 years? There has been no new content.


[34:44] David: The popularity continues to ride high, even after so many years. Interesting.


[34:49] Elizabeth: Yeah. It's been really interesting, for me, as somebody who's loved it, since I could read it in English, to watch the ebb and flow of its popularity in the States, too. The anime, recently, in the last couple of years, dropped on Hulu, and lots of people watched it, and it was their first experience of NANA, and it had this weird resurgence, I think, especially among the kinds of comics creators I know and follow. Everyone was talking about it for a while, and that was a really weird experience, for me, a person who's talking about it all the time.


[35:29] John: Speaking of time, that's one thing we're out of—at least, this time, but we'll be back next time, with more time that we'll spend talking with Elizabeth about NANA. So, don't miss The Corner Box, next time. Thanks a lot for being here. See you soon. Bye.


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