#wsbfpodcast

Biggest comics inspiration for The Goddess of Drought is Annie Mok, whose comics are incredible at illustrating trauma and its echoes. I come back to Body Language, Shadow Manifesto, and especially Swim Thru Fire (illustrated by Sophia Foster-Dimino) again and again. She depicts characters with kindness even as they go through unkind times in a way that I aspire to. I'm really looking forward to her memoirs, to be illustrated by Carta Monir. Other snippets: Noelle Stevenson's diary comic, about how society can reward traumatic weight loss and forced femininity. G. E. Gogarty's "Times I Made My Ex-Bf Cry" (pts 1 & 2) covers similar topics to The Goddess of Drought in a nearly opposite (= super funny) tone. I think about the careful vignettes and twisty narrative of Whit Taylor's Ghost a lot. Along with Annie Mok, Wendy Xu, Yumi Sakugawa, Aatmaja Pandya, and MariNaomi are inspirational Asian-American women in comics. I wouldn't have found many of these cartoonists without the We Should Be Friends podcast, so thank you. I also would not have known how to layout or print my comic without the sage advice in the Dirty Old Ladies podcast -- C. Spike Trotman's writing and Amanda Lafrenais's gorgeous screentones were a constant inspiration. Lastly, Scott Pilgrim by Bryan O'Malley and Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran (which just ended after a decade!) have been storytelling touchstones for me since I started making comics. Thank you.