Pia Guerra

Venus Zine, July 11th, 2007

While the music industry is becoming less and less friendly for female artists, there is at least one typically male-oriented industry that’s becoming a promising environment for women. Traditionally, comic books were drawn for boys, marketed to boys, and chock-full of male characters. But as the industry expands under the weight of billion-dollar blockbusters and the new genre of “graphic novels,” more and more women are writing, penciling, and inking their way to stardom — well, stardom within the bubble of the comic book world.

Y: The Last Man is a comic book from a new generation of writers and artists who are shucking the traditional limitations of art and story in the genre and changing the idea of what comic books mean and what they can do. The story is about a plague that wipes out all male mammals on earth, except for a guy named Yorick and his pet monkey, Ampersand. The various (mis)adventures of Yorick and his travel companions, a government agent known only as 355 (pronounced “three fifty-five,”) and the world’s foremost geneticist Dr. Allison Mann, are filled with philosophical debates about the nature of a world without men, cliffhangers, and surprising plot twists. Though the central character is male, all of the other characters are female. The artist at the helm of this project is Pia Guerra, a previously semi-unknown female comic book artist, who submitted her portfolio to writer/creator Brian K. Vaughn and editor Heidi MacDonald and was selected to pencil the comic.

For those who aren’t hip to the comic-book lingo, the person who pencils the book does the original drawings from the writer’s textual script. These drawings are done in pencil, and left at that. The art is then sent over to the inker, who outlines everything in ink, adds shading and definition, and, finally, color. Though the inker’s importance can’t be questioned, it is really the job of the penciler to draw the comic book, especially in the case of Guerra, who was also given credit as a creator of the series due to her artistic contributions.

“I drew up a few sketches of our leads at the beginning and sent them to [Vaughn] and then editor Heidi MacDonald. The only reworking done was for 355 who was originally Caucasian … All the other characters were created directly onto the page as they were drawn. I think it keeps the energy high when there isn’t a lot of overworking in the design,” Guerra says. She describes her process with Vaughn as a collaborative one: “I’m a trivia fanatic as much as he is, and I often sent him quotes and/or ideas that might add to the story but always with the proviso that he’s welcome to chuck anything he doesn’t want to use … It’s collaborative but still essentially, his.”

Guerra’s mark on the project cannot be so modestly downplayed. She has a style truly distinct from many of her peers, that has yet to be defined but can easily be described as comic-book-realism.

In a genre dominated by characters who are superheroes — either in the traditional sense as in the plethora of Batman comics or in a more modern context as in The Invisibles — many artists tend to draw their characters larger-than-life. When it comes to women, ‘larger’ often refers to those parts of their anatomy that are considered most appealing to the presumed audience of pubescent teenage boys.

Guerra’s art for The Last Man is wonderfully free of that kind of characterization. “I just draw as realistically as possible,” Guerra says. “When I visualize how this story should look I see a film like Last Night or Until the End of the World or Children of Men and I know if I were sitting in a theater and Lara Croft burst in I’d be yelling at the screen, ‘What is this shit?!’ My job is to keep the suspension of disbelief going and realism is what works for me. If I were doing a superhero story, then I’d switch to more idealized forms, though I like some realism there too so it would be a balance.”

One prime example of Guerra’s realistic style is in the drawing of 355. Vaughn writes her as a tough, closed-off, badass and well-trained government agent, without succumbing to stereotypes or sacrificing depth. Guerra also refuses to succumb to stereotypes, giving her a realistically proportioned body and keeping her fully clothed. This doesn’t seem like much of a feat, but often times in comics, even the most well written female characters flit around fighting crime in a cropped t-shirt and mini-skirt. “355 is definitely my favorite,” Guerra says. “She totally wails but in a way that makes sense. She’s not over the top, just very focused and I like that in a character. She’s fun to draw.”

Perhaps Guerra’s style of more realistically drawn female characters will begin to permeate the genre, as other artists see that success can be had without sexism. Guerra’s art could begin to influence others, and more women could enter the field. “There are reasons there are so few women penciling in mainstream comics, a lot to do with the history of the medium and demographics of readership and I could lay it all out point by point, but in spite of those factors we’re seeing a lot of change right now,” Guerra says. “More women are just entering the industry and we’ll be seeing more work their way up over the next few years as comics reach wider audiences.”

Despite her enthusiasm for her work, Guerra does not like to be labeled as a “female” comic book artist, as opposed to a comic book artist in general, and doesn’t think her gender should be getting as much attention as it does: “I think the attention is more over the perceived novelty, but I’ve always tried to ignore that and stay focused on the work. For me the gender thing is totally irrelevant, as my priority is telling good stories.”

Suddenly developed an interest in comic books? You can download the first issue of Y: The Last Man as a free PDF from DCcomics.com. Trade editions (big books which collect a number of issues of a comic in a single volume) of issues #1-#53, broken up into nine volumes, can be found at your local comic book store, or online at dccomics.com or amazon.com