“Between the Panels” is a monthly interview series focusing on comic book creators of all experience levels, seeking to examine not just what each individual creates, but how they go about creating it.
An artistic kid “laser focused” on turning passion into profession ultimately gets there through practice and hustle… with a little help from what insurance companies call an “act of God.” Since then, the doubly talented Paulina Ganucheau has made the most of her opportunities to bring a fresh new voice to the comics world.
First off, the basics…
Your specialties (artist/writer/letterer/inker/etc.): Artist/Writer
Your home base: Virginia
Website: paulinaganucheau.com
Social Media
Instagram: @paulinaganucheau
Twitter: @Plinaganucheau
Bluesky: paulinaganucheau.bksy.social
Tumblr: paulinaganucheau.tumblr.com
Fanbase Press Contributor Kevin Sharp: We start with the same question for all guests: Why comics? What is it about this medium specifically that fulfills you creatively?
Paulina Ganucheau: Gosh, you know…I often ask myself this same question. Comics is a hard industry and field to exist in sometimes, but when sequential art gets in your blood, it’s really in there. It just all goes back to being 8 years old, reading my first manga, and having the back of my head blown off from the majesty of it all. The obsession started there and I just never stopped chasing it. Something about words and pictures just does it for me.
KS: You’ve worked as both artist and writer on various projects. What was your initial childhood love between those two disciplines? Obviously, art is something easier for a kid to do early on, but which did you first feel most passionate about?
PG: Art for sure. It came easier to me. I was always the girl constantly drawing in class and hiding her sketchbook from onlookers. Classic. In regards to writing, honestly, I held myself back from trying for years and years, even though I definitely always had the desire to pursue it. I was always too scared to try in any real capacity. Thought I couldn’t ever do it. I’m glad I fought that fear because I really enjoy both illustrating and writing. Never let fear hold you back, kids.
KS: What were your earliest dabblings in writing? Did you try making sequentials at all?
PG: I think around the same time I discovered manga was when I started writing and drawing my own comics. I never considered that writing, just the musings of an eight-year-old, but, yeah, I guess that was the earliest writing I’ve done. I had a few comics back then. One about a sassy crimefighting chipmunk spy named “Chippy” and a Sailor Moon dupe character named “Star Girl.” Then, when I was older, my sister and I would draw comics together. One of us would draw a page in a sketchbook and then we’d switch off. Safe to say I was always making comics. They weren’t very good, but it was comic making all the same!

KS: Was there a particular art project that you look back on now as an especially “big deal” to have completed, whatever age that was and whether or not anyone else ever saw it?
PG: I definitely have a few personal benchmarks I can look back on. I remember the first time I did a study/copy of a manga illustration. It was a drawing of Belldandy from the manga, Oh My Goddess. I think I was 10. And I remember finishing it and looking at it and going, “Oh, this is… not terrible???” I think about that a lot. And soon after was another moment, when I got my collection of Pokemon cards going by trading drawings for cards on the bus. Hilarious and also ballsy. My first 40+ cards I got for free from doing that. I’ll never forget it.
KS: As far as considering the arts as a potential career path vs. just a hobby, did that idea come to you as a sudden idea, or was it something that had been simmering for a while?
PG: I never had any other aspirations beyond art. Like none. It’s strange to look back and realize how laser focused I was. I didn’t think about anything else. I never second guessed it. I owe a lot to my parents for never trying to push me away from it. I think they knew I could maybe do it? I was obsessed and not terrible so they probably thought, “Eh, let her go,” haha. Even to this day I have no idea what I would do if I had to stop doing anything art/creative related.
KS: A possibly cruel hypothetical… What alternate career can you picture where you could have been happy, or at least content, if art never had worked out?
PG: Honestly, I have a hazy, idyllic alternate life in my head where I could see being happy as a florist. I’ve almost taken classes a couple of times. I love flowerrrrs.
KS: Switching over to you as a fan, please tell readers about what your creative diet looked like growing up. You mentioned manga and Pokemon, but what were some other things that fed your artistic soul… movies, cartoons, TV, books?
PG: I was a slightly media-crazed child/teen, especially in regards to anything animated. My mom would tell me stories of toddler me begging her to watch the same Mighty Mouse VHS tape two, three times in a row and that trajectory continued well into my teens. Wow, I can’t believe I just pulled Mighty Mouse out of my brain. I literally haven’t thought about that show since… I can’t even tell you. Anyway, yeah anything animated I loved. Movie rental places were my haven. I rented: Disney, Gumby, classic Looney Tunes, Rankin Bass flicks, Strawberry Shortcake, Don Bluth, tons of anime, and plenty of C-list things I’m sure nobody has even heard of. And then when Cartoon Network came onto the scene in the ’90s, I was super into their entire broadcast schedule. Looove cartoons! I was also very into illustrated books in my younger pre-comics days. The Rainbow Fish, Corduroy, The Stinky Cheese Man, etc. Honestly though, any kind of book that had illustrations in it, I would consume. We had this very old hardback book that was my grandfather’s about American Folklore that had incredible art in it. I would pore through that. I will admit I wasn’t a big novel reader. I would read them occasionally, but I’ve always been about that visual life.
KS: What kind of access did you have to comics as a kid? Was there a nearby LCS, did you see webcomics, collected editions in bookstores…?
PG: Sunday comics were probably my earliest introduction to them. I would always ask my dad or grandpa for the funnies. My older brother was also very into comics. He’d keep a tub of them under his bed. I was about five or six years old and I’d sneak into his room to read them. He had a bunch of those ’90s single issue Nintendo comics: Captain N, Mario, Zelda, and then also a lot of Spawn. I especially loved looking at the Spawn cause it was so “grown up” and gross. I think not long after that I got a couple collections of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes from the Scholastic book fair. Around that same time I got into manga. I didn’t get into webcomics until I was a young teen and then if you age me up even further, I didn’t have access to a LCS till college! It was always just bookstores. That also might have been why the manga boom was so big for me. It was easy to traverse. I could just live in the manga section in Borders or Books-a-Million.
KS: Once you’d found your way into that world, were there particular titles and/or characters that captivated you the most?
PG: From my Sunday comic strip era, I loved reading Garfield and For Better or For Worse, but my manga stage is when I really started personally collecting. I saved up my lunch money to occasionally buy a volume of Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Fushigi Yugi, Oh My Goddess, or Ranma ½. Those were some of my favorites. I especially loved the Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon volumes. In that era those particular series volumes were very small, almost like a pocket digest size, and I would sneak a couple of them into school every day. I’d read them under the desk when I was done with my assignments. It was such a treat to disappear into the beautiful art of CLAMP and Naoko Takeuchi during those weird adolescent years. I wish they knew how much they helped me.
KS: At Fanbase Press, our #StoriesMatter initiative endeavors to highlight the impact that stories can have on audiences of various mediums and about the way a reader can find an important story at just the right time. What was a comic book story you read when younger that had a real impact on you?
PG: Okay, time to mention Oh My Goddess for the third time in this interview — can you tell it means a lot to me? [That] was the very first manga I’d ever read and in the particular volume I was gifted there’s a short chapter about the youngest of the three goddesses, Skuld, first showing signs of getting her powers. Her older sister Belldandy notices and tries to give her space to work through those new growing pains. While another member of the main cast Keiichi, who is Belldandy’s romantic partner and just a regular human, mistakes Skuld’s moodiness and irritability to her getting her period for the first time. He has a sister, so he just assumes. But something about the way it’s handled is so sweet and earnest. He’s very supportive, buying her sanitary products and snacks for her “upset tummy.” For such a topic that is still so ridiculously taboo or just glazed over in the media, it’s amazing to look back and see how well Kosuke Fujishima handled it. And in such a fun, creative way to compare it to a goddess getting her powers for the first time. I know it’s such a simple thing and not a revelation of an answer to your question, but it’s just really lovely that I read that so long ago and it left such a lasting impression on me.
I know a pre-adolescent American girl was probably not the audience Kosuke Fujishima was trying to pull in originally, but it was perfect for me at the time. Because why wouldn’t it be?
KS: When it came time for college, how did you decide on attending SCAD? Was there a vision — either vague or specific — for what you wanted your post-college life to look like?
PG: SCAD was kind of a fluke of circumstance. My family and I lived in a small coastal town in Mississippi in 2005. I was about to start my senior year of high school. Had no idea what I wanted to do, beyond just keep drawing. I was very lost at the time. August 28th came around and we were visited by the famous Hurricane Katrina. She just gobbled up our house, nothing left, and displaced us to South Carolina. My aunt mentioned a famous art college being less than an hour away from where we were and that was it. I applied to SCAD, got in, and it changed my whole life. Brought me my best friends, my fiance, my path. I think I would have figured something out with art no matter what even if I hadn’t gone, but it’s pretty amazing what that scary awful storm did for me and my life. It made me stronger and blasted me out of the truly dark teenage funk I was living in. So yeah, safe to say there was no real vision. Just kinda happened.
KS: When did the idea of making comics professionally crystalize for you at this time? Had you been working in other artforms after graduation?
PG: Post-graduation was a low point, but I think that’s usually the case for any “youngin’”. I didn’t land an official published comics job until 3 years after I graduated. So, I did a lot of different things in that purgatory time. I designed websites for a second, I worked at a plant nursery, did random commissions and logo designs for family/friends, etc. You know, the usual twenty-something job scrounging. I eventually got a job at a graphic design firm and worked there for a year. I learned a lot of skills and enjoyed my time, but it pushed me into really trying to get back into comics. I got a nibble of a few comics jobs at the tail end of my time there. So, I decided to chase it. I quit my job to see if I could make the full-time comics life work. Well, here I am 12 years later still full-time comics. I’ve worked very hard and continue to wear many different creative hats to make it work, but I’m very glad I dove into that scary unknown in 2013.
KS: How did your first pro/paid job in the industry come about? I’m especially interested in the balance of hustle/putting yourself out there and those certain “happy accidents” that sometimes line up just right…
PG: Putting yourself and your work out there is the #1 thing you can do as a creative if you want to be seen or considered, but, unfortunately, most of the time the landing the job part of it really is all about being in the right place at the right time. My first job came about in that very same circumstance. I had been illustrating podcast banners for a friend of mine. I’d draw the three hosts in different settings or on-model styles. I did Adventure Time, Simpsons, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, X-Men, etc. They were super fun and a chance to flex different creative muscles. A BOOM! Studios comics editor saw them on Tumblr and asked me if I wanted to do a Regular Show cover. That was my first gig. And the rest is history I guess!

KS: Lemon Bird, your first graphic novel, was released in 2022. Next up is Flora. How do you know/sense/feel when the time is right to put all of yourself into a big solo project?
PG: Wow, good question. For me, knowing I’m ready for a big, original graphic novel is when any specific nagging idea will not leave my head. It was that way for Flora. It’s a story that’s been kicking around in my head for nearly a decade and during the height of the 2020 pandemic, it decided to finally bust free of its little creative prison. I developed the pitch for about a year. It was a terrifying process to be honest, also any pitch process is nerve-wracking in general. Just from the sheer “second guessing myself” aspect of it all. I’ve never written anything as long or complicated, so it’s been a huge endeavor. Also, unfortunately, the book is delayed, as I wrote the book 100 pages longer than estimated, OOPS. So, we won’t see it out this year! But I really, really hope people enjoy it as it’s really something that means a lot to me.
KS: Is there any part of you that fears having to turn down other work to give a graphic novel your total focus?
PG: Y E S. I struggle with saying no so much. There’s a lot of projects I have accidentally doubled up on because I either couldn’t say no from fear of fading away into obscurity or it was just too good a project to turn away. I think this happens to every creative at least one time or another in their career. As long as you’re communicative with everyone involved on both sides I don’t think it’s a deal breaker. Sometimes, filling out your project plate is also just something you have to do as a freelancer for monetary reasons. Graphic novel payouts are given to authors in chunks. It’s not as steady as you’d think and sometimes those advances run out. So, you have to take supplementary jobs to pay the bills in the meantime while you finish your book. Unfortunately, then those new projects end up eating into your graphic novel time. It’s a whole thing. I think a better payment support system for authors when illustrating books should be something we all talk about more. Drawing comics is already a hard job and a 100-300+ page graphic novel is a gargantuan undertaking.

KS: Can you give us an idea of the process for a graphic novel to go from your “pen” to a publisher?
PG: Pitch processes start with just a text document. You write your logline, story synopsis, and character descriptions first. From there I would send it to my literary agent to see what needs additional “juice” or edits. I’m super fortunate to have an agent and if anyone is very serious about pitching/selling books, it’s a helpful addition to the entire process. (Note: Agents do take a commission, though, but to me their connections and knowledge of the industry outweighs that, but to each their own!) Next, you add in art! Character designs are a must, maybe some little flavor illustrations between sections and then round it out with some sample pages of the book. Finally, I hand it off to my agent, he puts it on a fishing line, and we see what nibbles we get.
KS: How do you know when you’ve found the right place for your work, in this case First Second?
PG: So often, the “right” place is just the place that’s the most interested in it. I know sometimes bidding wars happen over books, but for me more often than not one publisher will just swoop in early and snatch it up. I’ve also had many, many nos. It’s a normal part of the process and sometimes pitches just don’t work out. Those can hurt, but you just stand up and try again. I’m beyond grateful for First Second for picking up Flora. They were my number one publisher choice and it’s amazing it worked out to be them in the end.
KS: Imagine a Comic Book Hall of Fame and you get to induct one title — for fun, let’s say something not already mentioned. This can be from any era of comics, any title you feel represents the medium at its very best…
PG: This might be a cheap answer, but I would pick Bloom, written by Kevin Panetta and illustrated by Savanna Ganucheau. My younger sister and dear friend did that book. It’s beautiful and so well done. It’s something I often think about and is such a benchmark that I still look to in my sequential art/storytelling trajectory.

KS: Finally, please let readers know where/when to find Flora, as well as any other work you’d like to call attention to.
PG: Flora will be published from First Second Books in 2026 (unless there are additional delays… What?! I can’t see the future!). Available in bookstores and comics retailers everywhere. In the meantime, please pick up my all-ages graphic novel, Lemon Bird: Can Help! from Random House Graphic. It’s the story of a cute, little citrus bird spreading cheer and trying to get her puppy gourd friend Pupkin home safe. I’m also writing a Thundercats x Powerpuff Girls crossover comic miniseries for Dynamite right now that is seriously a blast. The artist is Coleman Engle and he’s so good. Highly recommend it!