DR: Have
you always been interested in comics?
LP: Yes, I've always been interested in comics, even before I
really knew it was a 'thing'. As a kid I used to draw comics of the
teddy bears my siblings and I had, so I've been drawing comics from
my earliest years! As with most kids, I was into reading children's
comics, such as Bunty - I used to love The Four Marys.
I was in my
early teens when I started to seriously get into comics. My mum is
from Hong Kong, and my cousin got my sister and I interested in
manga. I collected all the Sailor Moon and Fushigi Yuugi comics,
mostly in Chinese. Even though we couldn't read Japanese, my sister
and I still bought them - the great thing about comics, of course, is
that you can pretty much follow the story through the pictures. We'd
make the long trip to the Asahiya bookstore (which used to be in what
is now the Oriental City, I believe) in Colindale just to spend our
pocket money on manga. Sadly, that bookstore closed and it became
harder to feed our obsession.
About the same time the X-Men Animated Series was really big, and I
got into the X-Men comics. This is an obsession that has lasted
until today. I collected so many comics over those few years that I
still don't really know where to store them all. My sister and I
played around with making our own X-Men comics - myself as the writer
and her as the artist - but of course it was all just for fun and
nothing ever really came of it.
I don't really collect comics anymore - not enough time, money or
space nowadays - but sometimes I do buy the odd one, when my
favourite characters are doing interesting things, which is less and
less likely these days *sideways glance at Marvel*. LOL.
DR: What was the most
recent storyline that made you buy an X-Men comic?
LP: It wasn't a storyline
per se, but a title, All New X-Factor. That was because one of my
fave X-Men, Gambit, joined the team. I bought 3 of the trade
paperbacks, but didn't get sucked in enough to read it religiously.
Which reminds me, I need to check whether there's another TPB out...
or whether the title got canned. I don't really keep up with the
Marvel universe much anymore. I prefer the fan output these days.
DR: Yes, you write fan
fiction, don't you? Tell me about that.
LP: Well, fanfiction is
something I've been writing since before I knew what fanfiction was!
As a kid I used to write Malory Towers and St. Clare's fanfiction.
Then I graduated to Sailor Moon and then Tekken and Resident Evil and
finally X-Men stuff. I've always enjoyed writing as much as drawing
- it's always just been a hobby, but it's a way to relax, unwind,
vent, express myself. Writing and art has always been a big part of
my life - of who I am. It always will be.
DR: Beautiful. Where can
people see your
work online?
LP: Well, I have a number of
homesteads dotted around the internet, but probably the most
up-to-date stuff is https://www.fanfiction.net/~ludi and
http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludi_Ling/works for fanfiction, and
http://ludi-ling.tumblr.com/ for my fanart. I have a lot of old
stuff up on my deviantART page, which I haven't logged into for a
couple of years now. I'm in the very slow process of posting all my
fanfiction on FF.net up on AO3, so not everything is up yet there.
DR: Which work by other people are you a fan of, and has served as an inspiration?
LP: As far as art goes, I've always been a fan of Barry
Windsor-Smith, and through reading X-Men I fell in love with the work
of Salvador Larroca, Clay Mann, Steve Skroce, and Carmine
Giandomenico. Chris Claremont has always been my fave writer, not
for any story arc in particular (though there is that), but because
he always 'gets' the characters he writes, and to me that's the most
important thing. If you don't understand the characters you write, if
you can't write them convincingly, it takes you out of the story
immediately, and you can't believe in the story anymore.
Books have always been another inspiration - I was heavily influenced
by the modern fairytales of Angela Carter - her vocabulary is so
rich, dark and lush, and very visual. Two of my favourite books are
what might be considered 'meta-fiction' - If on a Winter's Night a
Traveller, by Italo Calvino, and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I've
always thought the sequential structure of the narratives would've
lent themselves to a couple of really kickass comics... One day
someone may take up the challenge! Maybe…
DR: How did you find the
process of drawing your comics for Zero Sum Bubblegum and Dump?
LP: Well, to be honest I
found it interesting and a challenge because I've never really
thought of myself as a comics artist, or someone who was particularly
good at sequential art. Because comics are as much a narrative form
as an artistic one, it takes a lot of thought and planning and an
ability to draw more dynamically. I don't think of myself as a
strong storyteller through drawing - so doing so for Zero Sum
Bubblegum and Dump has been a learning curve, and since I like to
learn new things, it's been fun.
Ludi Price is a
librarian, #citylis PhD student, some-time artist and writer, and
rabid X-Men fan.
Zero Sum Bubblegum
is available here.
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