The following is an interview with the creative team (Jeff Lilly, Katie Hodges, Pam Bliss, and Ervin Johnson) of the webcomic, The Extras, regarding their recent Zelda Award nomination. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with the creative team about their shared creative process of bringing the story and characters to life on the page, where readers can find more of their work, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on your recent Zelda Award nomination for The Extras! For those who may be new to the series, how would you describe its premise?
Creative Team: Four young women and a bat that might be a ghost, living together in a boarding school in a very strange city, known simply as The City. It’s a slice-of-life school comedy about the everyday adventures of growing up. It’s basically a Victorian-era boarding school story set in a modern urban fantasy environment. The story is told in comics form as well as in text, as the girls write journals and notes, in character, about their own experiences.
One of the ideas of The Extras is finding what we have in common, no matter where we come from. Nita is from a world like ours – she boards a train from Chicago bound for Winnipeg and ends up someplace much further away. Chantilly and Shelby are from The City, but are from completely different backgrounds – worlds apart, as it were. Patience is the strange one, and where she’s from and why she’s there is a mystery to be solved. Friendship ties them all together.
BD: What can you tell us about your shared creative process in bringing this story and its characters to life on the page?
Creative Team: We all live in different states. Jeff is from Michigan, Pam from Indiana, Katie from Georgia. We have a couple of shared messaging threads where we exchange and talk over ideas and artwork. Pam and Jeff write most of it, though Katie contributes to the scripts, as well; Katie and Pam do the art. We’ve been doing this for seven years, and as of this writing, Pam and Katie have never met in person!
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 this story may connect with and impact readers, and what, if any, conversations do you hope that it may inspire?
Creative Team: We hope that people will have fun and recognize the wonder in the small adventures of everyday life. We hope it can be a source of comfort and gentle fun, tickle the mind with a few mysteries, and remind people that we all have common ground, no matter what kind of place we come from, figuratively or literally.
BD: If given the opportunity, do you have future plans to bring this story and its characters into new story arcs?
Creative Team: Ideally, we’d love to continue this long enough to get into further school years. We also have a new spinoff series, written by Jeff and illustrated by various artists, called Tales From the City – same setting, new characters and stories, with a few familiar faces.
BD: Are there any other projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
Creative Team: Pam Bliss has been making comics for decades. You can read some of them here.
Katie Hodges posts her art on Instagram.
Jeff Lilly has some other comics projects on ComicFury.
BD: Lastly, what would you like to tell fans who want to learn more about The Extras?
Creative Team: We’d love it if you’d check out The Extras! You can read the whole run here.
