Editors are the unsung masterminds of the comic industry, bringing together multiple talented artists and creators to produce a single finished product. Nicole Glade is one such editor, who has been working behind the scenes at Zenescope for a few years on various titles. She thus has an interesting insight into the inner workings of a comic company and she joined us to share her thoughts on fairy tales, swimsuits and the changing demographic of comic readers.
Graphic Policy: It is not very often that we get to talk to an editor as opposed to writers and artists, so can you start by telling us a little about what you do for any random issue?
Nicole Glade: Very true, and I appreciate the recognition! As lead editor, I oversee projects from concept to completion. I act as a bridge between all the creative personalities and make sure everyone is both accurate and on pace to get the project done in time for print. I even get a hand in the creative aspect, because I may have an idea that I suggest to the writer or one of the artists.
GP: Are there any particular issues or stories that you worked on which surprised you for how they turned out?
NG: I suppose the biggest surprise for me would be Grimm Fairy Tales. GFT has been a mature title for a long time, but 101 changed all that and became Young Adult. It made a lot of sense, given that it now has several young adult characters. While I’ve read plenty of YA that I enjoy, it’s not my go-to genre. That said, I have really, really enjoyed each issue. I love the students and it’s been so much fun to watch their characters come to life.
GP: You have said that you are interested in making comics more inclusive towards everyone, especially female readers. On the one hand there seems to be somewhat of a shift underway, but on the other there still seems to be some distance to go. What do you think is the most important change needed in the medium to make this possible?
NG: Widening the audience is a huge personal goal, yes. I think a lot of creators are on board and taking steps to make this happen. It really seems to me that it’s the higher-ups who need to catch up. I see publishers at least acknowledge that they’d like to create comics that speak to a larger readership. However, they’re still not able to directly point out titles that meet that goal, or the titles they can name are few and far between. It’s definitely time to stop making promises and actually get to work.
GP: Fairy tales in comics have a strange history in the medium. They started off as common staples in the early years of and then all but disappeared until recently. What do you make of their relatively recent comeback?
NG: I think fairy tales are never going to truly go away. There’s clearly something timeless about them that we love to explore time and again through various mediums. Perhaps it’s the morals they tell, or how the darker aspects shine a light on the most basic parts of being human.
GP: As an editor you get to work on a lot of different titles at Zenescope, and have had a hand in practically every Zenescope property at one time, from Wonderland to Neverland and from Oz to the Jungle Book. Does doing so give you a new outlook on any particular characters or settings?
NG: I oversee over half of Zenescope’s titles. It can be a bit of a handful to manage, but I really enjoy seeing how it all connects. Readers generally won’t miss out on anything if they prefer to stick to one, but there are always little easter eggs lurking in the background that allude to other titles.
GP: Did you find yourself liking any specific characters more after being exposed to all of them?
NG: I can’t think of a character I don’t like the more I get to know them through editing a title they’re starring in. Cindy in particular stands out. When I first read her, she was a side character and I found her really annoying. But then I edited the Cinderella Age of Darkness miniseries. Pat Shand managed to write her in a really funny way and suddenly I saw her in a whole new light. It also helped that the art team did a fantastic job as well.
GP: Is there any specific series or characters that stand out to you as being the best that the company has to offer? On that same note, is there any specific character that you would think needs to be put in a little bit of a different direction so as to better use their potential?
NG: Robyn is easily a fan favorite. Pat has given her such a distinct voice that it’s hard not to fall in love with her. Personally, I love Baba Yaga. I’ve always had a soft spot for antiheroes and she’s constantly in this morally grey space.
As for characters that I’d like to see more of, definitely Adraste. She certainly stands out in Oz, but the spotlight is still on Dorothy. When she got her one-shot in Tales from Oz, she had to share it with Glinda. I’d love to see her with her own a miniseries in the future.
GP: You have edited the swimsuit editions for Grimm Fairy Tales, and as they come our every second year, there won’t be one this summer, but how do you go about choosing themes for the selection? How do you choose the (sometimes fictional) locales?
NG: Dave definitely did most of the work when it came to concepts. He didn’t want to reuse a lot of covers, so he focused on coming up with about 30 unique and new concepts. He basically just made a list of the various realms and characters, then combined them. He also threw in a few real locations because who doesn’t like seeing beloved fictional characters in the real world? Once the list was complete, he turned it over to me. I spoke with each artist and asked what character they wanted to draw, then I tried to match them.
GP: It seems that a lot of the variant covers for Grimm Fairy Tales often have the main characters in swimsuits. Is this kind of planned out to get a better field to choose from for the special?
NG: Like I said, Dave came up with totally new concepts to avoid reusing covers. Having so many bikini covers in order to compile them into the Swimsuit Special may have been the original line of thinking, but we’d like to create more content now. Fans deserve fresh material if they’re paying for the issue.
GP: Zenescope is putting on a big show this summer for its ten year anniversary, but where do you think that they will be in ten years?
NG: This year is definitely a major milestone for Zenescope and we’re all very proud to have made it to this point. What I’d really like to see for the company is less of a reliance on covers. That’s all well and good for the collectors and it certainly helped Zenescope during its early years, but it’s definitely time to let our interiors speak for themselves. This does not mean doing away with the flashier variants, but I think the interiors deserve an equal amount of attention.
Although this series is a fan favorite, it is also one which has often seemed to take the easy way out in terms of its story telling. It often relies on a sequence of one liners and fairly generic supernatural bad guys. Beneath it all are two main characters who have the potential to be a lot deeper but for whom that attention is rarely given. It has happened a little bit as Robyn has opened up to her therapist, or as Marian has opened up to her girlfriend, but mostly this series has been one full of unrealized potential as it focuses more on the gore of the supernatural than it does on the characters themselves. Although there have been glimpses before, the series has generally followed them with other poorer examples to follow, and the level of consistency in this series is thus hard to grasp, as it verges on something better, but never attains it.
