Miyagi-ing me right now, and I’m waxing on and off. I wasn’t sure when you zoom in on a character and when you zoom out, and I was super new to the storytelling aspect of sequential art as a whole. I came from an illustration background, so I can tell a story with one picture, but it’s kind of hard when you have to be a director. Then I got an email from an editor asking me, “We know you’ve never done sequential work before” – because I hadn’t, before Batgirl – “but would you do some test pages for us?” And I said, “Of course! Let me show you what I can do.” And I did a few test pages and showed them to Cameron, and he fixed a little bit of the action scenes because I’m not really used to drawing that type of stuff, and I sent it back – and the next day they offered me the title! What are the challenges in creating sequential art as opposed to your previous work? So as soon as DC said yes to Cameron, they started looking down the list of artists they’d collected and whittled it down to me and one other person. If you think that it’s something DC would say yes to, though, then go for it!” And I said, “Of course I am, but my style isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen you publish before. Cameron Stewart emailed me when he was still pitching the book and asked me if I’d be interested in doing it, so technically DC kind of found me. The way it works at DC is that the writers pitch a story, and then they pitch artists to draw the story.

How did you go from that to working on Batgirl? A lot of what I’ve seen of your work has been revisionist fanart, like the Sailor Scouts as a biker gang.

What?! That’s amazing! I feel super honored to be a household name and to be part of the Batman legacy, and to be a part of this history that everyone really seems to care about. Let’s start with a big question: how does it feel to be the first woman to be a regular artist on a Bat-book? We talked about Batgirl’s new look, bringing positive change into comics, and more. Readers may also be familiar with her fanart and illustrations of hardcore, gorgeous women, such as the Sailor Scouts biker gang, this Catwoman with a sweet sleeve tattoo, and someone I would never mess with under any circumstances. As part of our eternal quest to highlight awesome women doing awesome work in comics, I recently interviewed Babs Tarr, the new interior artist on Batgirl and the first woman to serve as an ongoing artist for a Batman-related title.

Batgirl #36 by Cameron Stewart