Meet Lisa Brown, author of The Phantom Twin!
What initially drew you to comics?
I have always been fascinated by the interplay between word and image, whether in picture books, graphic design, comics, or even fine art (the work of Jenny Holzer comes to mind).
What was your inspiration behind The Phantom Twin?
Ghosts (I’m constantly making things with ghosts in them, it seems), people living on the margins, loneliness, self-consciousness and finding one’s community and place in the world. I like to think about complicated situations, and the sideshow has about as complicated a history as you can get: a mess of exploitation and empowerment, attraction and repulsion, kindness and cruelty, acceptance and bigotry.
I loved the real live folks on whom I loosely based many of my characters: I’m in the process of drawing a series of portraits of them right now. I’m impressed by their resilience and in awe of their beauty.
What scene or panel sequence did you most enjoy drawing?
What comes to mind is also the one that I most hated drawing, because it was HARD; the fight scene at the end of the book. I had never drawn a fight, and I left it to the very end. I think it ultimately turned out to be pretty good, which makes me proud of myself.
