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Queenie Chan Interview
Written by Park Cooper

PC: What we really liked about your comic Block 6 when we read it was it had that "What the hell! That's just kinda wrong! That's not the rules of reality!" thing that goes on... my stories are all more linear...

QC: Is that what people think when they read Block 6?

PC: "Wrong" as in... the brain rebels against the unearthly nature of the strangeness. Not that you're breaking the rules of good fiction... far from it.

QC: Well, Block 6 was intentional in the way it didn't follow a linear storyline, but rather a circular one.

PC: So have you read any other western comics besides Sin City and Sandman? Sin City for you surprises me... you seem like such a gentle soul…

QC: This gentle soul likes action adventure stories, LOVES Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns and Clint Eastwood, and enjoys DragonBall Z (the manga). So naturally, I'd like Sin City. Hmm, I like Derek Kirk Kim's work a lot. Loves his colors, yay!

PC: How did you decide to join Wirepop? How did that happen? Why Wirepop? Why a pay site? Why the web at all? How did you decide to be a manga artist, for that matter?

QC: Well, that's an interesting story. I never drew much growing up, and actually I have a degree in information systems. However, I graduated at the valley of the dot com bust in 2002, and so couldn't find a job. In 1997 I started drawing manga in my first year of university because I was so bored, and by early 2003, because I was still out of a job, I began contemplating manga as a serious occupation. Back then, TP was barely looking for original pitches, so I sent "A Chinese Ghost Story" in (that's on my site), and they responded favorably.

Round at about the same time, I was contacted by Wirepop, who had seen some of the manga I posed on my site. They're mostly manga I drew in university, and since it was a hobby back then, I posted it online. When the folks at Wirepop saw it, they asked me to join them at a pay-site, so I came up with Block 6 as an ongoing story and joined them at the beginning of 2004. After that, I landed my current gig, The Dreaming, with TokyoPop, so I've been out of touch with the web for a while.

However, I don't intend to lose touch, because I believe the Internet is the way of the future. My ultimate goal is to draw stories for people to read anyway, so I prefer the medium where I can reach out to as many people as possible regardless of geographical boundaries. And the Internet embodies that.

I must say I ended up a manga artist because that's what I grew up reading and was influenced by. It wasn't until 2004 that I started reading Western comics!

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