Bearrito Publishing

Welcome to my first commentary on issue #3 of Fenton Hud – Member of F.A.C.T.

Now hey, don’t worry! You can still read the issue at ISSUU (for free!) so please do check that first before reading this blog!

Okay, so I want to start this off with explaining where I got the idea for the issue and having three separate stories and it oddly enough came from the release of Pacific Rim 2 from way back when.

You see, I enjoyed the first film but read there was a lot of problems with the second one, partly with killing off the character Mako Mori (um, spoilers!). She was a cool character in the first film but as important (maybe more?) she was written in such a great way although it failed the Bechdel Test. What’s the Bechdel test (because I didn’t know)? Well, it’s a measure of the representation of women in film (and other fiction). To pass, the story needs to have two women speak to each other about some other than a man. I mean, that should be easy, right?!?*

Now, this was cool and it was something I really wanted to try out in my books. The thing was, there was only two female characters in Lloyd and the Bear who had any amount of story time and neither were in the same issue (so far)! So I kept the idea in my head and knew I’d use it at some point and when I started working on Fenton Hud I realised this was the time to try out the test! I admit, I’m not sure if a comic book counts for this test but I wanted to give it a go none the less!

So yeah, this is how I came to doing three individual storylines and Tabitha was going to start a conversation with another lady which would then add some extra layers to her past.

Now I know I say I don’t plan Fenton Hud (and I really don’t!) but as things were coming along and I was working through the pages my initial idea with the reveal during Tabitha’s arc was that Maya would actually be Heston in disguise! I realised though that this would then void the test so I went and did a few changes.

My follow up plan was to have Maya as a stalker but then I figured that was a disservice and also blurred the lines a bit so I went and made more changes!

And I’m happy with how things turned out! Tabs has a new friend (as you’ll see later in the book, Maya is in the background of the funeral scene – more of that in a later post) and I think I did well following the rules of the Bechdel Test!

So um, thanks crappy Pacific Rim 2 for teaching me something I didn’t know about!

PS. Heston ended up being the barista with his back to us on the second panel in page 3. Since Maya got Tabitha out of danger he pegged it which is why on the first panel of Page 7 you have the other Cup-Cup staff looking confused as their new colleague has walked out on them! It’s not a big thing but I just liked that I had a background story in place!

More soon! Bear hugs!

*I’ve come back to this as I’m seeing an article that says the Bechdel test isn’t actually I thing. Now is it or isn’t it? I don’t know but I’m just happy that it inspired me to push myself creatively – so that’s cool!