Angela Wu is herself a comic book character; barely five feet tall, a head of shockingly bleached blonde hair, and perpetually dressed in black, she resembles an emo forest witch dwarved by her adopted familiar, Rohan, a gentle giant of a black dog.
In an interview with Angela, we talk about the challenges of working in the arts industry and her first comic book Tengu, set to be released later this year. In the vein of Avatar the Last Airbender meets Princess Mononoke, Tengu is a dark telling of a war-torn, yokai-infested, ancient Japan, featuring Kohn, his dog Rohan and their spider yokai hostage Mi on a dangerous mystic quest to undo a terrible curse placed upon them by a Tengu.
I know you are working on several different projects at the moment, including your comic book Tengu. I’m interested to know how you came to be involved in them.
Tengu is the main project I am actively working on at the moment, it’s where all my focus is on right now. It's a passion project I’ve been developing for years that finally got greenlit. But being me, I also have two side projects, which is an X-Men fashion zine in collaboration with other artists from all over the world and my Etsy store, where I sell stickers and prints of franchises I really like i.e Batman Beyond and Howl’s Moving Castle.
Tengu is a mythical creature that translates to "Heavenly Dog" in Japanese. What inspired the story for Tengu?
Tengu took me 2 years to formalise into a full story. At that time, I had just graduated from uni and was feeling very lost on what I wanted to do. I was stuck in a job I didn’t particularly like. Feeling bored I challenged myself to work on a story pitched to me by another writer. It was about a knight who fought dragons and demons, set in Medieval Europe. Initially I turned it down because it was—no shade to him—the concept felt kind of overproduced. He was very focused on the high concept, high fantasy aspects and it felt very similar to a lot of existing manga and comic book properties—the big, unstoppable swordsman, clearly the most powerful person in the room, very male fantasy-ish.
I wanted to try writing something more introspective and personal. To take a character trope like that and flip it on its head.
I’m a really big believer of “write what you know” so I used my mental state at the time as a base for the main character Kohn. He’s a ronin (“drifter” or “wanderer”) who's disillusioned and angry with the world, because a Tengu had cursed him. I had also just gotten my dog Rohan at that time, who was meant to be my "emotional support animal". I loved him so much that I included a dog named Rohan into the story to serve the same function for Kohn. Basically the whole story revolves around this dynamic of a bitter man and his cheerful dog trying their best against otherworldly forces, because if there was a theme for Tengu it would be the hardships of overcoming trauma.
Lastly, I’m a big mythology nerd but I think Western mythology is an oversaturated market. As an Asian person, I wanted to craft a story set in Asia. On my grad trip to Japan, I found Yoshitoshi's collection of woodblock prints One Hundred Aspects of the Moon and it inspired the setting and atmosphere of Tengu.
Why an X-Men “Fashion Through The Decades” Zine?
I really wanted to do this [project] because I personally really love the X-Men. They were my favourite title back in the day and I’m really worried about them being phased out of comics because of the whole studio conflicts surrounding rights belonging to Fox or Marvel etc. I always had found them to be more culturally “relevant” than the Avengers because they are one of the most diverse groups of superheroes ever. They’re also outsiders who deal with issues like racism and bigotry, something I can really relate to.
The fashion zine idea came about because I wanted to create something that celebrated the X-Men and I thought fashion was the perfect medium to do it. It was really important to me to invite international artists to work on this because I wanted to show how different cultures have different fashion sensibilities and different fashion trends that could happen concurrently and also influence one another. Basically that it brings people together and yet celebrates diversity, something I think reflects the core ethos of the X-Men.
How many artists/creators are involved in your X-Men zine project? How do you coordinate with artists/creators from all over the world?
I have 17 artists working on hand, and everyone does two pages, so in total the zine will be about 40 pages long.
As for recruiting them, that was really stressful actually. I was originally doing this with 4 or 5 friends, spread out between Singapore and Australia, but then this pretty well-known Canadian artist/illustrator Alice M. (@itsbabypears on Instagram) jumped on board.
Since we already had such a well-known artist involved, I decided to be ambitious and reach out to more established artists I admired. I basically just e-mailed or dm-ed them on Instagram, just like, “Hi, you don’t know me, but would you like to work with me?” It was really scary because some of them were really big artists and I’m a pretty small creator but everything’s a no until you try right. I think the important part is to be polite, be professional and more importantly be gracious. And even though I got a lot of rejections, I think in the end it paid off. Everyone who has been working on this zine has been super nice and everyone has been producing some amazing work. I’m really excited for it and I’m gunning for it to be released in October.
What made you decide to create Howl's Moving Castle and Batman Beyond merchandise for your Etsy store?
I started an Etsy store as a way to cope after I was dropped from a publishing job for no reason and more importantly to make some side money.
Etsy was interesting because it forced me to think more like a business rather than an artist. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of being inauthentic, trying to reproduce trends or what's popular this season. When it comes to Etsy, I want to make profitable things but also things that I care about, you know?
I chose Howl’s Moving Castle because I personally love the movie. I also noticed that many people watched or re-watched it during Covid and it's become like a global comfort movie and I could really leverage that comeback. As for Batman Beyond, I’m just very nostalgic for this show, and I know a lot of people are too, but it doesn’t have a lot of merch, so why not make some affordable ones. That's my ethos basically, I only want to make merchandise that I would want to own.
What happened with the publishing job?
It’s a really common thing that happens. This well-known publisher in Singapore reached out to me to do a job for them for a partnership with a Ministry, basically little comic strips about what the Ministry does to make Singaporeans’ lives better. They said they needed it before Chinese New Year and gave me this very elaborate brief on what they wanted. The whole thing was 8 panels long and I sent them 4 panels to consider.
The whole thing was very stressful because the project required a lot of research on my part and I had to put a lot of stuff on hold because of the tight deadline given to me. Like I personally went to the landmark the comic strips were based on to take reference photos and I worked all nighters over my CNY break just to finish everything on time.
But in the end, they "ghosted" me. It wasn’t until I gunned them down two weeks later that they told me they had found a cheaper artist. This was really disappointing because while waiting for them I had to tell my other paying patrons that I couldn’t take on more work. I wasn’t mad about the rejection, more that they didn’t even bother to tell me when I have wasted so much of my time and lost money.
I also found it very exploitative, the way the deciding factor came down to a cheaper artist, because this was a very reputable local publisher and a lot of kids my age would want to work with them. There’s always new artists who are willing to prove themselves, so they'll always be willing to settle for a lower pay for exposure and this is how companies collectively bring down prices. Rejection is a very common thing but this was very disappointing, especially when this was a publisher that claimed to be for artists by artists. When they commit the malpractice they preach against, you’re kind of like, “I trusted you to be the change but I guess not”.
There are so many horror stories I heard with regards to this publisher too. One of my friends was contracted by them to do illustration for two months, 30-ish pages for very low pay. My friend was like, “Okay, but what share of the rights do I get?”, and basically she wouldn't get any. This publisher would’ve locked her into a ridiculously long contract as well. Another artist was commissioned 100 pages for $1000, which sounds like a lot, but it’s a year's worth of work.
How can industry practices be improved?
Ok for starters, If you don’t want us for the job and found someone else, just straight up tell us, or you are just wasting everyone’s time. Also when contracting an artist, clients should give us a brief of what they want, not just five lines of description. That’s very vague to me. Just be upfront, it's things as simple as, "Do you want it in colour?" Send reference images, tell us exactly what you want, and where you’d like us to experiment. Most importantly, state your budget. It's a better experience for both parties to work around limitations rather than argue about discrepancies in payment later on.
To be fair though, I feel like the average employer wouldn’t know about [the do's and don'ts of contracting art] because the average person wouldn’t view art as a job. Most artists don’t even know each other’s rates because most artists are kind of solitary in nature, so we don’t really know how to negotiate fair pay for ourselves. I definitely didn’t.
Are there any formal or informal systems in place for artists to seek fair payment?
No such thing exists at the moment. Apparently it’s a little bit better in Western countries. There’s a movement on twitter where people have been sharing how much they took for their jobs and they compile base prices for companies, which is helpful for young artists who are trying to find jobs.
Like Glassdoor?
Yes, like Glassdoor! But this is an industry and societal problem. The way artists are commissioned hasn’t changed much since the past, it’s still the patronage system. The world will never run out of artists, and the advent of photography has also pretty much rendered art obsolete, like why commission a portrait when I can just take a selfie.
Do you have any strategies for getting paid for your art?
For something like Etsy, I try to make things that have a lot of nostalgic value but no existing merch, like Batman Beyond. I take an existing property and filter it, if you know what I mean. I like very niche things, so I wouldn’t say that I have a bigger buying base but I do have a more loyal base.
In general, I try to be multidisciplinary. If comics aren't working out for me, I will take a side job in animation or voice acting. I try to create as many avenues of revenue for me. You have to do everything to get a bit of anything. Even for Tengu, I wrote the whole thing, I’m drawing the whole thing, and I’m inking the whole thing, so I don’t have to split my payment three ways.
There is an assumption that comic books / manga are very male-dominated genres. Do you agree with that assumption, based on your experience?
I know it is. I mean, I would like to say it's getting better. For example, Marvel made a recent push to become more socially aware, like they have been trying to hire more female or queer BIPOC creators. But that also kind of backfired as well. Western comic books have always been very gatekeep-y. Something called "Comics Gate'' sprung up in response to Marvel’s recent push because some male fans are very unhappy with this business move and they make it known everywhere (conventions, Youtube, Twitter), so yeah, it's still quite a male dominated genre.
Where do you think that resistance comes from?
Well, comics have "canon", right? ["Canon" refers to material accepted as officially part of the story in an individual universe of a story.] Some comics have existed back since the 1940s. For example, Spiderman has always been Peter Parker since the '60s. But Marvel’s new Spiderman is Miles Morales, who is African American / Puerto Rican. So some fans are like, "We don’t want this new Black Spiderman, we want our White Spiderman." I think it's human nature to resist change, we like familiar things. Although this isn’t the first time Marvel has done this, I think the backlash just seems more intense because of social media.
As a female comic book artist, how has that affected your entry into the industry?
Okay so, knowing that all of this exists, it makes me very self-conscious because I know for a fact that my presence isn’t exactly welcomed. So I have tried to conform and fly under the radar with the goal of— If someone saw my art, I didn’t want them to be able to tell that I was a female comic artist. Just a comic artist. So when I was trying to break in, I really emulated Jim Lee—he was like an idol of mine—and adopted a hypermasculine art style and I only drew superhero comics.
But at New York Comic Con, I got the chance to actually meet Jim Lee’s editor Scott Dunbier, who hated my superhero samples but loved my Tengu concepts. He basically said to me, “Why are you forcing yourself to draw like other people when you could be drawing like yourself? DRAW THIS! (And he pointed to Tengu.)” That was like a wake up call. After that, I just drew comics that I wanted to make, in my own style, and that's when I started getting work.
What made you decide to pursue a career in the arts?
I always knew I wanted to pursue a career in the arts but my artistic journey was quite a chaotic one, to be honest.
When I was young, I was also always flipping through comics and watching a lot of cartoons and drawing in spare time, but what I really wanted to be was a musical actress so I did theatre in SOTA [School of the Arts Singapore] and ended up getting a diploma for acting. SOTA played a pretty big part in my journey because it’s like a talent echo chamber. You’re constantly re-evaluating yourself because you’re always working with people equally if not more skilled than you. I was living in this headspace of constant awe and competitiveness and I think I tied my self-worth to stuff like castings. Once, I was cast in this school play as the second main character, which felt like a huge milestone to me, but my director worked me so hard just to score me so low, and I think it kind of made me realise that maybe acting wasn’t for me.
I decided to switch lanes to animation because the way I see it, animators are basically actors through a pencil, so I decided to study that at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for four years. I wanted to be a Disney animator, but realised I was way better at storyboarding scenes then animating them and turned to comic books in the end instead.
It took me ten years to realise that my speciality was storytelling. Like acting, animating, comic book illustrating, they were all vehicles that served to tell a story and I feel really lucky that I got to learn and master these different mediums before I distilled them down to what I wanted to do exactly. I’m not at the end of my journey though. I want to be able to do anything and everything.
How do you work? What’s your artistic process like, if you have one?
I would always write out the concept of a project first, whether it was for the comic or the zine. This is probably a mindset from my acting days, but for Tengu, when I need to get into the headspace of a character or need the vibe or a location, I would immerse myself in the music/movies of that time period. So I watch a lot of Kurosawa movies in the background, listen to Japanese orchestral pieces, and read a lot of books pertaining to Japanese mythology. I love researching for my projects basically.
But to be honest, I’m a fickle, fickle creature with no attention span. Sometimes I’ll go down a rabbit hole during my research process, so much so that when it's time to get started on the project I’m too exhausted to start. Either that or I get bored in the middle of the project and start on something else entirely. Like my Etsy store, it was meant to be a fun little side project but it became a full-time job.
That’s the problem of being an artist, if everything to you is fun and you have no chill like me, you end up with no work-life balance.
In April, you raised USD100 for StopAsianHate’s GoFundMe page using proceeds from your Proxy and HellCat T-shirt sales. Why was this an important cause for you and how did your art connect with these political issues?
When I was studying abroad in Australia, I had people be very racist to me. It’s a shitty feeling, and it really affects you. When I see people attacking Asian elders, I feel very angry. Us as Asians, we are always taught not to make a fuss about anything. But I just felt very compelled to join in and do something. Visibility [about recent anti-Asian hate crimes] barely exists because we don’t make a fuss about it.
Art is also first and foremost born from passion, at least to me. As long as an artist is passionate about something, they would make it the subject of their art.
Did you face any challenges as an artist during Covid-19?
There were a lot of inconveniences. 2020 was the year I wanted to take my art seriously. I was going to sign up to do a lot of conventions but that didn't work out. I was also dropped by my original publisher for Tengu. It was really just up to me to get the work done and luckily I found my current publisher in time. I also tried to take advantage of the pandemic to teach myself new skills like colouring and traditional sketching.
What advice do you have for other young people who are aspiring towards a career in the arts in Singapore?
In terms of the more practical stuff, always ask for a contract. Also, know your rates. Always try to charge as high as possible, because you can bring your prices down but you can’t bring them up.
In general, pick your battles. Focus on something tangible and commit to it. I always get this question from young artists, if they should stop doing art for a while and then come back to it. I think it's very easy to lose yourself in an office job. I’ve seen so many friends drop art and never come back to it. I know monetary income is important, but you shouldn’t prioritise it over what you are passionate about.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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