ShortBox Comics Member Interview: Tan Juan Gee
Throughout the month of October, the Cartoonist Cooperative will be sharing interviews with members of the Co-op who have a new comic available at the ShortBox Comics Fair 2024!
NOTE: The Cartoonist Cooperative is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way formally connected with ShortBox.
Today’s spotlight is Tan Juan Gee ( @juangeedraws ) and their new comic for ShortBox, See You in Hell.
We’d love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your background in comics.
Tan Juan Gee: Hello! I’m Tan Juan Gee, a Singaporean artist. Right now I’m in my final year of university, studying sociology and fine art history. I’ve been drawing since I was little, but really only got into digital art after getting my first drawing tablet five years ago. Most of my work involves illustrating for indie tabletop games. I got into making comics around 2021 through online comic tournaments (or ‘OCTs’) and have had some great opportunities to draw comics professionally since–including last year’s ShortBox Comics Fair (SBCF 2023). Now I’m back with another comic for the fair this year!
Tell us more about your new comic.
TJG: Two girls with a messy past fight to the death in an abandoned city. It’s a short 16-page, fully coloured comic, with about ten pages at the end for an exclusive “making of” artbook and variant covers from friends!
Tell us about your creative process; how did you develop this comic and what are the steps you took to bring it to the final stage?
TJG: I won’t spoil too much because my comic PDF this year actually has a bonus “making of” artbook at the back that answers this question. Long story short, I had to scrap my initial draft. It was a story about two legendary criminals getting back together for one last job. I shelved this original idea for several reasons: it was too long, I kept introducing more characters, and I couldn’t settle on how I wanted the ending to go. With not much done at the end of my school semester I decided it would be far more productive to hone in on the key ideas of this first iteration and make a very tight and focused comic. I drafted out a comic that met SBCF’s minimum page count of 16, then finished it in two months while travelling.
This version leaves much of their past relationship and the current social, economic, and political climate of the setting they are in up to interpretation. But fundamentally the core of the comic remains unchanged–one angsty dynamic between two girls! I even got to reuse the design of the tall elf lady, which was great news. Don’t tell the short sword girl, but the tall elf lady is my favourite.
What were some challenges you faced with this comic and how did you overcome them?
TJG: You’ve probably noticed that my characters don’t have names. I tell myself it’s because the story means so much more to me when it’s two pathetic nobodies trying to kill each other. The truth is I really struggle with naming characters a lot! I also really struggle with dialogue. I blame this on the fact that my ideal character is a dark and brooding stoic lady who doesn’t speak. But can you really fault me? That kind of character is so cool!
Read the rest of the interview HERE! And dont forget to check out the Shortbox Comics Fair to support these lovely creators!!