Interview with Queenie Chan

By David Rasmussen
23rd Oct 05

Good day. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell them a bit about you and your work?

Good day to you too. My name’s Queenie Chan, and I’m currently a manga artist drawing a 3-book series for TokyoPop (though personally I prefer the term “graphic novelist”). The name of the series is The Dreaming, and the first volume will be coming out in December 2005. I’ll elaborate on it later on.

Apart from The Dreaming, I’ve been drawing manga since I was 18. For most of those years I’ve been drawing mostly as a hobby, and it wasn’t until 2002 that I was pushed to take it seriously enough as a job. Thankfully, TokyoPop was soliciting submissions in 2003, so I was lucky in landing a book series with them.

I’m 25 now, so that’s about 7 years of plugging away, the fruits of which can be seen on my website at http://www.queeniechan.com/. Most online manga on my site are short stories, and now that I’ve started working for TokyoPop, I really miss drawing online manga for my site. I also have another horror manga called Block 6 on Wirepop, at http://www.wirepop.com/comic_index.php?id=22.

You're into manga, right? How did you first get into
Anime/Manga and what is your favorite series (and, if possible, has any of your favorite series influenced your work and your style)?

My manga history goes back as long as I can remember. Since I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1980s, I’ve been reading children’s manga since I was a child. My first manga was Doraemon and Urusei Yatsura, though at the time I didn’t know they were Japanese, nor did I really appreciate manga as a story-telling format. It wasn’t until I was ten years old that I bought my first manga volume out of personal interest – and that was DragonBall.

I don’t particularly have a “favourite” manga – I’ve read a lot of stuff, so it can be difficult to choose, not least because of the variety. Do I list things I would consider a great piece of literature, or do I list something that is a guilty pleasure? Or perhaps something that would appeal to as many people as possible? Personally, I tend to follow certain manga artists more than any particular work, because it’s easier to judge the quality of a work and where it’s going by its creator’s past record.

My favourite manga-kas would include Naoki Urusawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys, Pluto), Obata Takeshi (Hikaru no Go), Adatchi Mitsuru (Touch, H2), Rumiko Takahashi (Maison Ikkoku, Ranma ½) and ofcourse my all-time favourite Osamu Tezuka (Buddha, Black Jack, Phoenix). There’s many more, but these are the ever dependable ones.

However, perhaps the only artist that’s truly influenced me was Tezuka. It’s not so much his style, but rather his vision, humanism and maturity of story-telling that inspires me endlessly. Early in my career I tried imitating Watsuki Nobuhiro (Rurouni Kenshin), Adatchi Mitsuru and Rumiko Takahashi in terms of their story-telling style, but was never comfortable with it, and I’ve found my own style of story-telling since. It seems to have been a phase that I had to go through to be where I am now.

When you were a teenager you were enrolled into a four year information systems degree, right? For those of us who never done that what kind of work is in a four year information systems degree? Also what were the reaction of your peers when they found out you were doing manga on the side?

It was a university course, so I was no longer a teenager when I was enrolled in it. A four-year information systems course is a kind of condensed computing and systems analyst course. It’s to instill in you the skills of analyzing work systems, picking them apart, figuring how they work, and then designing a computer system that would fit into that work system while enhancing its efficiency. As you can see, I still retain the ability to write the sort of formal, clinical reports such a degree requires you to write.

I did well in my course, but that’s not the same thing as liking it. University is a good time to discover which shoes fit you and which shoes doesn’t. Taking an information systems course meant that I had less work and more boredom, so I spent my time cultivating a hobby – drawing manga. My friends were all well aware how much I disliked my course, so no one was all that surprised when I graduated and eventually started drawing manga. Ofcourse, the real reason was because I graduated at the height of the dot com bust – the fallout meant that no companies were hiring new graduates, so I was unable to find a job. Hence, the path I ended up taking.

While I never used my information systems degree after graduation, those four years was still a crucial part of my life. I started drawing manga at university out of boredom, and if I wasn’t so bored by my course, I would never have started drawing manga! Life turns out in strange ways sometimes.

Tell us a bit about the web comic you’re known for, Block 6. What kind of series is it, and how does it compare/differ from the present title "The Dreaming"? Also is there any plans to do anything more with Block 6 storywise either online or in print?

Block 6 is a horror story, in lieu of the current batch of J-horror films. It wasn’t influenced by J-horror films, but it’s probably the best way to describe it because there are no zombies, monsters or graphic decapitations in it. It’s about a number of odd-happenings in an apartment block, and like my other horror stories focuses more on the characters than the usual schlock-horror antics. In that aspect, I don’t even like to think of it as horror – it’s more like a suspense-drama with horror elements.

And that’s about all Block 6 has in common with The Dreaming. Not the structure, not the story and not the characters. Block 6 has interlocked stories about people who have not yet met each other (in part 1 anyway), whereas The Dreaming is about a pair of twin sisters at an isolated boarding school where many schoolgirls have disappeared in the past. Block 6, like J-horror, has a scratchy, dirty feel to the art; whereas The Dreaming is meant to be an elegant, atmospheric ghost-story. Hence, the art in The Dreaming is much better than Block 6.

Block 6 is going to continue running on Wirepop, since I have the whole series more or less mapped out. I doubt you’ll see it in print though – when it’s finished I’ll probably put it on my site with all my other online manga. I submitted it to TokyoPop before The Dreaming happened, so it’s got a definite beginning and ending. The story is divided into 2 parts, and we’re currently on the second-last chapter of part 1. I wish I could draw it faster, if it weren’t for my other work.

Before Block 6 was there any other mangas you did that nobody knows about (Either on the web, fan publications, private works, etc)?

Well, if you go to my website, you’ll be able to see that I’ve had a long history of online manga work! I started off wanting to self-publish my stories (this was in 2000), but never actually self-published because I saw better potential on the Internet instead. I started drawing short stories because I thought it would be a good way to train myself to write, and I must say the hard work paid off pretty well.

Right now I have about 9 short stories up, and a few longer ones (including Block 6). I’ve also got some works that were failed pitches to TokyoPop. It’s unfortunate I’ve been unable to work on my short stories more, because The Dreaming comes first, but I miss the experimentation with my short stories. I can experiment with different genres, with different drawing styles, different story-telling methods… And I also want get to go back to completely black and white art (no toning), which I miss so much.

Either way, please come on by http://www.queeniechan.com/ for a look at my short stories.

The Dreaming. Tell us a bit about it, and what readers can expect when they pick up the first Volume.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Dreaming is a suspense-drama with horror elements, set in the Australian bush. It was my intention to have some Australian themes, not least because it would be interesting to non-Australians, but because it’s something that has not yet been done before.

The story is about a pair of twin sisters arriving at an isolated private boarding school deep in the New South Wales bush. They discover that the school has a long history of schoolgirls disappearing there, and begin having strange dreams every night – hence the title The Dreaming. I can’t give the plot away too much, but it’s an elegant and atmospheric setting, and I had the most fun drawing the school. It’s probably the best art I’ve done yet – I’ve always enjoyed drawing backgrounds to contain my characters in, and with the school’s Victorian architecture, it looks very beautiful. The story gives me a lot of opportunities to draw great set pieces too – more so in the second and third volume than the first – though crucial plot points happen in the first book which will lead on in the other volumes.

So, all in all, when readers pick up the first volume they can expect a beautifully-drawn story with a spooky and mysterious edge to it. The first third of one, anyway.

If you had to narrow it down, what influenced you towards the creation of The Dreaming? How did the story come about and why this story?

It’s actually very easy to chart the process by which The Dreaming was created, because it’s so well documented on my website! The Dreaming is actually an amalgamation of Block 6 and TwinSide (found at http://www.queeniechan.com/twinside/ts-main.html), which itself was inspired from another older short story I did, called Twins. In fact, the two leads of The Dreaming, Amber and Jeanie, were the main leads in Twins. Yes, my characters often have long histories.

It happens that I had submitted these 2 stories to TokyoPop and was rejected. My then-editor had then suggested that I merge them together and make something set in a haunted school – which became The Dreaming. Needless to say I was caught completely off-guard at first, but I very quickly got some good ideas which TokyoPop liked. From a conceptual point of view, it was the chance to add an Australian dimension which I liked best.

That’s not, however, to say there are any similarities between Block 6, TwinSide or The Dreaming. All of these stories are radically different – TwinSide is a teenage romantic comedy – but The Dreaming has taken on a life of its own. It’s a haunted school story, and I’ve never done a haunted school story – so for me it was a chance to do my own personal twist on the haunted school sub-genre. I doubt I’ll ever do another story like The Dreaming again, since there are so many other genres and settings to work through.

In your opinion why do you think the horror genre has such an
appeal to audiences? What is it about horror that attracts people so?

Some people just want the good occasional scare, in my opinion, while others are looking for something deeper and more visceral. I’m not sure whether horror has as wide an appeal as you say, despite the recent trends in horror films, but the really good, timeless horror stories all draw on the deepest fears of their audiences. For example, stories like The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining… are all stories of suspicion; about loved ones being possessed by something otherworldly, frightening and inexplicable. Then there are those about malevolent monsters stalking us, whether they are serial killers or something else.

Naturally, recent horror movies like The Ring and all the other J-horror films build upon that too. Horror, basically, is a genre of guilt, pain and fear. It delves in the deepest, darkest and most inexplicable parts of the world and shows us what’s there. There in lies the attraction to ordinary people – it’s like throwing open the dark side of human nature. It’s something we all want to know more about, but which few have the desire to experience themselves. Hence the attraction of horror stories.

If you were approached by one of the major studios concerning
turning The Dreaming into a major motion picture would you be interested?
If so, and you had full control of the project, how would you go about crafting the manga into a visual story? How would you set the mood and the music that compliments that mood? And who would you cast in the starring roles?

I will be all for it. I must say that even if such a thing happens, the chances of gaining even a portion of creative control will be unlikely. As for crafting the manga into a movie – that’ll be a profoundly different process. First of all, the books will have to be completely re-adapted, but apart from the script, I would put most of my effort into production design. Crafting an atmospheric film and creating a self-contained, enclosed kind of world will be a top priority. This will likely be challenging, but it’s a great setting to play with – an isolated, Victorian-era school with a spooky past.

As for the casting or the music, I have no idea. Personally, I think in movies where there are dark rooms and long corridors, silence is a particularly effective form of “music”. But then you only score the film when the film’s been completed, so it’s difficult to say what will work until there IS a completed film to look at.

The recent trend of so-called "Dead Wet Girl" movies (phrase
coined by National Public Radio‘s news dept., not me just so you know) seems to be dying down in interest according to NPR. Movies like The Ring, Dark Water and so forth…is interest really waning in your opinion? If so, what do you think will be the next big thing in horror from Japan to look out for?

Horror films tend to come in cycles – and I believe NPR is right when they say the “Dead Wet Girl” type of horror is getting old. It’s been around long enough and is coming to the end of its product life cycle. Much like the avalanche of masked-serial-killer-with-a-knife movies that came out after Scream – none of them were any good, and they were originally inspired by a single hit movie that had a new twist on an old story. These movies all inevitably fell back upon the loud noises in the cinema for their scares, so it gets predictable very quickly. The Scream clones made serial-killers-of-teenagers a cliché, and The Ring clones made vengeful female ghosts with hair like seaweed a cliché.

As for the next big thing in horror from Japan – I have NO idea. Perhaps there will be a revival of older work, especially that of Kazuo Umezu… but what’s more likely is that horror is going to go-of-season and a genre, and then make a comeback in 2010.

What’s the next genre for you? Since you said that you’d probably never do another story like in the ‘haunted school’ genre, where to next? Magical Girl? Drama? Romance? Mecha? Action?

First of all, I don’t really consider Drama, Romance or Action as “genres”. They’re more like the building blocks of any good story. Action and Romance can be genres unto themselves itself, but both action and romance (and even comedy) is meaningless without some degree of drama. Either way, it all depends on how you define “genres”. I do really want to do an action-adventure story in the future though.

Perhaps it may be easier if I classify “genres” according to the trappings, gimmicks and settings a particular genre brings with it. For example, Magical Girl and Mecha are genres, as are Westerns, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Historical Epics, Noir, Murder Mysteries and Blaxploitation stories. This is how I’m primarily motivated when I talk about doing things in “different” genres – I’m taking a world that has well-established traditions, and using the trappings of that to create a story that’ll know what the clichés of the genre is, but not fall victim to them.

Probably the best example of this would be the anime series Evangelion. Whether you love or hate this series, it’s an example of something that takes an existing genre (Mecha), and side-steps what you’ll normally expect in a Mecha story. No Gundam-storylines about 15 year-olds magically gaining control of an amazing giant robot and then kicking ass [insert romantic sideplot here]. This is the sort of things I’d like to do with my favourite genres.

Are you working on anything now that you can tell us about?
What’s your next big project after The Dreaming?

I’m always working on something… I have a backlog of short stories I need to make real, for example. In terms of longer works, The Dreaming was created as a 3-book work, and doing short works is what I’d like to continue doing for the time being. Short series is a good way to build up your skills and your fanbase, and I must say the next few series I am going to do was especially created for that 3 or 4-book format. After that, I’d like to get the longer series out of my head, most of which has been there longer than any of the 3 or 4-book series stories have.

After The Dreaming, I’m intending to do a historical epic based in Macau. It’s still untitled, but I’m really excited about this one since it’s a romance-drama that spans about 40 years in its entirety. After the historical epic, I’m planning a story called Kandahar, which is a sci-fi story inspired by Isaac Asimov’s stories as well as all the cyberpunk manga I’ve been reading. If I have time, I’ll do the “sister” story to that too, called Deep Space, which is inspired by the 2001:A Space Odyssey side of science fiction. When Kandahar is finished, there’s also a fantasy project lined up, still untitled too, about… it’s a bit hard to describe, but it’s about a giant junkyard… but not any junkyard that exists on our earth – it’s more like a abstract one. I can’t give it away, but that’s the plan.

Then I’ll probably do my longer series, starting with the shortest of those – the story that A Girl Called Marian (http://www.queeniechan.com/nsew/nsew-agcm-pg1.html) is the prologue of. The actual story is titled N.S.E.W., and naturally is a Western (I’d say about 9-12 volumes). After that would probably be Keepers of the Soul (http://www.queeniechan.com/kots/kots-pg1.html), which is not quite a swords-and-sorcery, but has such a large ensemble cast that to tell everyone’s story will require about 20 volumes. And last of all has to be Yuen, which is so darn long because it has over 100 recurring characters and spans about 4000 years of Chinese history.

Ironically enough, only The Dreaming is happening for certain, but hopefully I’ll be able to publish these stories for real.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

Buy The Dreaming! But most of all, support the manga movement. It’s an exciting time to be a non-Japanese drawing manga; not least because there are so many stories out there to tell, and so many people who has stories I’d like to listen to (read, that is). I think that’s what I like best about manga, and comics in general – it’s something that can express a thousand words, but which you need very little start-up costs to make. All you need is a blank sheet of paper, a pen and your imagination. What in the world would be better than that?

-- David Rasmussen 23rd Oct 05