With green hair, pointy ears and an aversion to rain, Oddly Normal tends to stand apart.







When the half-witch's parents mysteriously disappear on her 10th birthday, Oddly is taken to her mother's homeworld by her Auntie, and learns that she still doesn't quite fit.







For those who have already journeyed to Fignation, the third book was released on April 27. New readers can meet Oddly at their local comic shops on May 7 as one of Image's offerings for Free Comic Book Day.







The Swerve had the opportunity to discuss Oddly, her new home and supporting cast with creator Otis Frampton.







“The character came first, but in a different form. She emerged in a sketchbook from 1999. I drew a sad little girl holding a teddy bear, and I wrote the words 'oddly normal' next to her. I didn't know, but that's what I wrote. She looks nothing like what the character developed into, but over the next few years, the idea of a girl named Oddly Normal stuck between two worlds, or of two worlds, started to percolate.







“My love of stories like 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth' and 'The Wizard of Oz' also influenced thinking of a girl who is of two worlds, and she grew up in ours, and had to go to the other as sort of a coming of age story.”







“The story is not biographical, but there are elements of the character that come from me. She switches schools at age 10. Well, that happened to me, and it had a big impact on my life. There are other scenes in the book that I didn't realize I was writing from my own life. I might not have been terrorized by a vampire and two werewolves, but there were definitely some bullies. It's a combination of my love of fantasy land stories and some of my own childhood experiences, and then I just extrapolated and went into flights of fancy to fill in the rest.”







The first three books see Oddly reluctantly adjusting to her new home, making friends and dealing with bullies while trying to uncover why the sinister teacher Mr. Gooseberry has taken an interest in her. However, this is only a portion of what Fignation has to offer.







“Fignation is basically the repository of all of humanity's imagination. Ultimately, it's an all-ages version of that because it's not like every piece of fiction is going to be in there. The storytelling is going to focus on the things that Oddly sees or likes, or are part of her world. The first big story arc focuses on lots of classic monsters because she's a daughter of a witch and I wanted to show other sides to classic, Halloween-style monsters. The second arc is going to feature superheroes and giant monsters.







“When I write the arcs, I focus on the story, what's happening to Oddly emotionally and thematically and then I think, through my imagination as an artist, of what would be fun visuals to throw on top of that. The story has to come first; it's not like I just say, 'I want to make a story about superheroes and giant monsters.'”







Building the minutiae of Fignation allows for more freedom, but Frampton strives to give the boundless world some grounding.







“I actually try to keep some of the background characters consistent. If you look at some of the earlier chapters in school hallway scenes, you'll see some of those same characters in the stands (in Book 3's Rocketball game), even though they're just background characters.







“When I started drawing the issues that dealt with the school, I designed some background characters that I could plug in when I needed to, just to give a sense of character geography, so the reader knows where they are and who's around. It's like thinking like a writer when you're drawing. It can't just be about drawing the cool stuff, you have to think about the whole world.”







Filling Oddly's new world are a group of friends who quickly acclimate to the transfer student.







“There's the smart kid, the quiet-but-tough kid, and there's the girl. Those are the archetypes I started with and wanted to play with. Ragnar is the son of a scientist, and his father—you get hints already and you'll see more in the second story arc—is kind of a jerk who didn't pay attention to him. Yet he turned out to be curious and upbeat and inclusive despite the fact that he didn't have any examples of that.







“Reggie is obviously based on the Frankenstein monster stereotype visual, but I also wanted him to be quiet and clever and resourceful and upbeat. All three of her friends are somewhat upbeat in contrast to Oddly, where she starts out as this sullen, morose and kind of unpleasant in some ways.







“With Misty, the ghost character, I wanted to play with the idea of ghosts, even stereotypical cartoon ghosts that are just sheets over nothing with two holes in them for eyes. I wanted to show that they have a culture that is different.







“I wanted her to find three friends in this world that immediately took to her and sort of forced her into a friendship situation because sometimes kids who are shy and quiet and maybe a little sad have to be pushed or even forced into having friends. I know that when I was growing up, sometimes I'd meet kids who were almost a force of nature where they'd almost say, 'I'm going to be your friend now,' and that's how I wanted it to be for Oddly at this new school.”







Oddly's other friend is her newly-acquired pet, Oopie, who not only provides the protagonist with companionship but the creator with some artistic flexibility.







“The initial concept for Oopie was that witches have cats, and I show that in Oddly's rival in the story, Tamzin. She has a cat, sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't, but it's always around. I wanted there to be that kind of component to her, but because she's a half-witch, I didn't want it to be a cat.







“Then the idea of Ragnar and his father creating artificial life, and going through different experiments and maybe taking different paths to that, and the idea that she would acquire one of those experiments as a gift, and it would be this weird little monkey-cat creature came about. I wanted it to look alien, but cute. Hayao Miyazaki's movie 'Nausicaä' was an inspiration also, and she has that little yellow creature on her shoulder all the time, and it's kind of a nice visual.







“Frankly, it's nice to know that no matter how many times I have to draw Oddly herself and repeat that character, I can always put Oopie on her shoulder in a different way. It's a fun way of keeping it fresh visually for me as the artist.”







For a comic like this, where the protagonist isn't only the star but provides the point of view, mixing visuals up is essential.







“There's never going to be a scene where you cut away from Oddly to a scene of other characters talking, it's never going to happen. Everything in this story is going to be seen through her eyes. She's going to be in every scene, and in the majority of the panels.







“You have to keep it visually interesting or you just go nuts. Sometimes I don't know how Charles Schultz did it, or Jeff Smith with 'Bone,' where it's just one shape over and over. Most of the time, Oddly's going to look very similar from shot to shot. I love situations where I can have wind going on, so her hair can get blown around and that gives me something fun to draw. Something visually interesting to not only add to the character as I'm drawing her, but to show environment, and show that it's impacting the characters, and the world isn't static.







“There's a story arc coming up, I think it will be the fourth story arc where she's going to be put into this different environment, it's going to be like 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' meets 'The Lord of the Rings,' so having her in this weird armor is going to fun, and seeing her in this weird environment is going to be fun, so I'm looking forward to that arc from a drawing point of view.”







As Oddly tries to learn what happened to her parents, her Auntie guides her to a greater understanding of her parents but cautions Oddly against taking certain routes in her journey.







“One of the things I want to do with 'Oddly Normal' is almost a reaction to things that bother me in other fantasy stories. Magic is just too easy a solution in some stories, and that drives me nuts. I want to make sure that Oddly Normal is just a normal kid. She's not odd, she's oddly normal. She may have gotten into this situation because of a strange occurrence that we don't know why it happened yet, but she's going to have to find solutions to things using her smarts and her cleverness, and not rely on magic.







“One of the things that I'm trying to do is to work with restrictions, and that can lead to some fun mysteries. When I originally wrote the story, Oddly had just come out of the closet where her mother's stuff was, and as the writer, I visualized the environment and saw that there was another door. Writing Oddly, I thought, 'Let's open that door,' so I walked towards the door in my mind, and the character Auntie kind of took over, and said, 'Don't open that door! Don't ever open that door!' and I didn't know why. I had no idea why. I didn't figure it out until much later why she couldn't open that door, and it ended up being part of the solution of what happened to her parents, which I didn't know when I wrote that either. It's fun writing stuff like that when the characters take over and do things that you don't understand, and you have to figure out as the writer.”







It is as the writer that Frampton feels most comfortable, although he wears all hats in bringing the comic to life.







“I've been a writer as long as I can remember, even as a little child I would create stories. I've drawn as long too, but not as much with the focus. During my high school years, I didn't draw at all, but I wrote a ton. I wrote plays, short stories, unfinished novels, I was writing constantly. The writing part is always the easiest part for me, whereas drawing to me is still a mysterious skill that sometimes I feel that I don't have. Drawing is almost always a struggle for me. I'm constantly trying to improve and learn.







“I used to say that the coloring was one of the most fun parts, but as I've gotten older as an artist, I feel like I know less than I did before. I'm constantly having to relearn things that I thought I knew. I'm hoping that going forward, the drawing becomes as much fun as the writing.”







While Frampton carries the lion's share of the work, he explains that without co-colorist Tracy Bailey, who handles a number of pages for each chapter, the books would not have come out on time. He also points out that it is at times difficult to keep his own creative momentum throughout production.







“One of the reasons why there aren't many people who do everything themselves in the world of comics is because after you write something, you draw it, you letter it, you color it, you lose steam. One of the things I'm really trying to do moving into Book 4 with my entire process is develop a system where I'm not losing steam for each process. One of the things that's frustrating for me as a creator is getting to the coloring stage, and spending a couple weeks coloring a chapter and not drawing at all during that time, and immediately going back to a new drawing stage, and feeling like I've got nothing. I'm trying to restructure the way I make comics so that I can maintain every single skill as I work on it. Not many people do everything themselves in comics, and when they do, it's usually on black and white comics where they don't have to worry about the coloring.”







Both the first arc and the upcoming second had a prior life as mini-series from Viper Comics, but now Frampton is able to give the stories expanded tellings.







“The second story arc that I'm about to embark upon, I've already written. When 'Oddly' was at Viper, we did a second book, and I was so burnt out that I brought on a different artist to draw it. Well, I'm now going to be embarking on re-doing that one, expanding on it like I did the original, only I'm going to be drawing it this time. It's going to be a lot of fun for me because I didn't draw it the first time. But also, while I'm writing it, even though there is a full script for the basic story, I'm taking this weird approach where I'm writing it the way I've developed, where I list out 1 through 20, and I figure what I need for each chapter, and I fill it in, and the artist tackles both that list of 20, which is 20 pages, and usually ends up between 20 and 24 because sometimes the artist decides, 'Nope, I need a double page spread here.'







Frampton has most of Oddly's adventure planned out, currently planned for five arcs before concluding, though he feels there should probably be another arc in the journey.







“I don't know what it is yet, but I'm not worried about that. When I originally wrote it, and even after the original series that was published by Viper, I had no idea what happened to her parents. It was only after thinking about that scene where Auntie said, 'Don't go in that door' for a long time, did I realize, 'Oh, that's what happened to them. Of course, that's what happened to them.' and then when I figured out what is now going to be the fourth or fifth story arc why it had to be that ending and why Mr. Gooseberry knew so much about Oddly Normal. I didn't know that either. I just knew that he did and that I would figure it out eventually.







“That's fun as a writer because sometimes you need to set up those mysteries for yourself in order to figure other things out along the way, and write yourself into corners that aren't corners, that pay off in story terms.”





