This week on the War Rocket Ajax podcast, Chris and Matt are joined by Canadian cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks to talk about her journey from webcomics to zombie stories to her latest original graphic novel, Friends With Boys. She gets into her love of The Legend of Korra and how much her comics career was influenced by Joss Whedon, and you can listen to the whole show right here at ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #126: I Don't Have To Be George Lucas, with Faith Erin Hicks

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)


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In this week's episode, Chris gets ready for a weekend trip to Los Angeles for SummerSlam, but Matt is having a much less happy time thanks to some oral surgery. Yikes! Perhaps it's karmic punishment for being a jerky comic shop customer when he was a teenager, as revealed in this issue!

Once Faith joins us, the conversation turns to her debut graphic novel, Zombies Calling:

I wouldn't say I am a hardcore fan of zombie movies. I'm a fan of the genre, I'm a fan of some zombie movies, the good ones. I haven't seen them all, I'm not that much of a fan, but I knew when I did that book that I had to be like, Okay, if I'm going to do a zombie book, all the good zombie movies and zombie stories have something to say, so I need to say something with this. I was newly graduated from college and I was burdened by all these student loans -- which I've just now finished paying off -- and I decided to make a zombie book about student loans of all things.

That was my unique take on the genre, a book about disenchanted university students who were like, "I'm not scared of zombies, because oh my gosh, my student loans will murder me!"


She also tells us a little about her secret origins!

I started out in webcomics. I basically taught myself how to draw by doing my very first webcomic, which was this Buffy the Vampire Slayer ripoff webcomic called Demonology 101. I started doing it in 1999 and finished it in 2004, and by the time I finished doing it it was 700 pages long. That was basically how I learned to draw. You can still read it online if you're willing to slog through some old, ugly artwork.

What can I say? At conventions, I always get one or two people coming up to me, guys and girls, saying, "Oh my gosh, it was the first webcomic I read, it was something I really enjoyed in high school," or junior high. And I always say, "Thank you, thank you so much," but what can I say? It's eight years later and my art skills have improved, so it's hard to go back and look at it, even though I am proud of where I came from.

Plus, find out about how ghosts can totally be jerks in this week's episode!


Matt's Show Notes:


Chris's Rec: Rayman Origins


Matt's Rec: Sex House (NSFW)

Comics Reviewed:

Wonder Woman #12: "This would be super exciting to me, because it's unexpected, it's interesting, it makes you ask a question, it plays out in a different way and ties these characters together in a different way. I would be super-excited about this, if this was the first we were seeing of this section of the DC Universe."

Daredevil #17: "It reads like a fill-in, because it's a flashback." "But it also reads like a fill-in by Mark Waid and Mike Allred." "That's a fill-in I'll take."


Avengers vs. X-Men #10: "This has actually been a series that, as a reader, I thought you could get through without reading tie-ins, until this one. This is the issue that has all kinds of gaps that you have to be reading something else to fill, with fight scenes, the outcome of which you find out in another book."

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