The following is an interview with Mel Hilario, Katie Longua, and Lauren Davis (a.k.a. Triple Dream Comics) regarding the recent release of the middle grade graphic novel, Agent Cupcake, with Oni Press. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with the team about their shared creative process in bringing the story and characters to life on the page, the themes that they hope will resonate with readers, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on the release of Agent Cupcake! What can you tell us about the premise of this magically imaginative story?
Mel Hilario: Our elevator pitch is that the book is sort of Men in Black but with mystical beasts instead of aliens. Twelve-year-old Miguel Mangayayam gets recruited to be the first human agent for the Mystical Beasts Bureau (MBB), where his mentor is a unicorn named Agent Cupcake. Even though he’s extremely knowledgeable about unicorns and other mystical creatures, Miguel worries about being good enough to work alongside them. Cupcake helps him learn spycraft and navigate being a newbie on his first mission. We also get to see the rest of the MBB team working together, as well as espionage basics, corporate corruption, and lots more mystical beasts.
BD: How would you describe your shared creative process in bringing these incredibly fun characters to life on the page? Do you find that you have developed a creative shorthand in working together as Triple Dream Comics?
Lauren Davis: By the time we started writing the script, the three of us had spent a lot of time talking about our characters – in person, on Zoom calls, over Slack. So, we already knew them pretty well before we’d ever written a line of dialogue! What’s nice about working with Mel is that she is such a bottomless well of jokes, puns, and sparkling conversation that I can write things like “Insert joke here” or “Something like this, but better” in a draft of our scripts, and I’ll come back later and find she’s written the perfect line. And we’re both spoiled to work with Katie; often, we’ll tell her how a character is feeling instead of what they’re doing. She is a great actress with her stylus!
BD: Katie, your artistic style naturally exudes wonder and playfulness. When tackling a project like Agent Cupcake, is there anything that guides or propels your approach to the artwork?
Katie Longua: Thank you! Mel, Lauren, and I work really closely together through the whole creative process, so they have a huge impact on the art. They understand what I like to draw and are down to incorporate my ideas, as well. It’s a lot of fun to have that kind of relationship, they surprise me with the most delightful things, like a giant crystal wall at the edge of a unicorn village. Half the time I don’t even know it’s something I’ll enjoy drawing so much, they just know me that well.
BD: At Fanbase Press, our #StoriesMatter initiative endeavors to highlight the impact that stories can have on audiences of various mediums. How do you feel that Miguel and Agent Cupcake’s story may connect with and impact young readers?
MH: Agent Cupcake and Miguel both know the feeling of being the “odd one out” and end up helping each other find a sense of belonging. Wanting to feel special and part of a group is something every human and beast have in common and can understand. Lauren, Katie, and I often talk about writing stories we would have loved when we were kids. We hope that every reader comes away embracing their own unique selves and knows that there’s a village, bureau, or community—in fact, more than one!—that will do the same.
BD: What makes Oni Press the perfect home for this story?
LD: The response to the book so far has been amazing, but when we were in the pitching and development phase, a lot of people just didn’t get it. It’s educational but it’s also a fantasy story? It’s about unicorns, but the main human character is a boy? None of that was a problem for Oni. They understood this book (and us) from the very beginning. Whenever Grace Bornhoft and the rest of the editorial team suggested a change, we knew it was because they wanted to make this book as exciting and readable as it could be.
KL: Oni was the first publisher that showed interest in me. When I was starting out, they invited me to the office and showed me what the publication process was like. Charlie Chu really lit a fire under me with the message, “You’re not quite ready yet, but show us your next project.” Even though Charlie is no longer there, those words stuck with me and it makes me glad to have found my way back to Oni Press.
BD: Are there any other projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
Anyone who likes Agent Cupcake should check out our first graphic novel, Debian Perl, Digital Detective! It’s full of fighting robots, illegal cats, and real computer science concepts. We also have a new serialized story in the kids comics magazine, Hullabaloo. It’s called “Puppy Lawyer,” and it’s about a girl who decides to become her school’s student lawyer. Plus, all the characters are dogs; it is extremely cute.
