Ever wondered what the World’s Greatest Detective was like as a young tyke? What about the Amazonian Princess, Wonder Woman? JL8 brings us into the world of some of our favorite DC characters as we see them in a whole new light. Instead of saving the world, these mini-heroes are just try to get by another day of elementary school.

I caught up with creator Yale Stewart and spoke to him about JL8, his comic book influences and which convention you can see him next!

Cyrille Antonio: When did you first start drawing comics?

Yale Stewart: I first started drawing comic characters in preschool but it wasn’t until probably high school was when I first actually started putting multiple images together with text. I’m sure that I’ve done one or two things leading up to that but it wasn’t until high school that I started doing it on a regular basis.

CA: Who are your biggest influences in the comic book industry?

YA: In terms of comic books: Jeff Smith, [Mike] Mignola, [Olivier] Coipel, James Harren, Tradd Moore, The Romitas (both Jr. and Sr.) and Bruce Timm. There’s a lot of really good stuff out there right now, that list could pretty much go on forever. And then you have manga stuff: [Akira] Toriyama, [Eichiiro] Oda. And then you have comic strips which would be [Jeff] Shultz and [Bill] Watterson.

CA: Is there anything you’re currently reading?

YA: I try and stay on top of Thor: God of Thunder. That’s been pretty consistently good, at least when [Esad] Ribić has been working on it; Hawkeye, I picked up the first two issues of Ms. Marvel the other day. I pick up Batman/Superman when Jae Lee’s doing it, just cause I like his stuff so much. I also picked up the first 20th Century Boys; I haven’t read it yet but everybody always talks about how good it was so I picked that up the other day and hopefully I get around to reading that soon.

CA: How did you come up with JL8?

YA: Basically, I was just at work one day and it literally just popped up. I was just daydreaming and all of a sudden I just started having all of these ideas of short, punch-liney images of funny things of young members of the Justice League, mainly Clark, at first. But then it sort of blossomed out for funny things for Bruce, funny things for Diana. It all came together pretty quickly.

CA: Neil Gaiman makes a little cameo just right before Diana’s birthday. Has he reached out to you or reacted about making an appearance in the comic?

YA: He didn’t really reach out to me but I felt sort of obligated to reach out to him. I figured people would get a kick out of it, I didn’t expect people to take it to him; as much as they did. I started to get a little nervous cause I didn’t want him to think I did it as an attention-grab play cause it was never meant to be that. So I sent him a message, I think it it was something along the lines of, “Hey I really hope you enjoyed your little cameo.”. He was really pleasant about it, he seemed to enjoy it. And because I figured that I’ve got him on the line, might as well ask him what he would actually recommend, for a book for Diana, and that’s where Anya’s Ghost came from because I actually asked Neil and that’s what he said he would suggest.

CA: Have you heard any reactions from people at DC over JL8?

YA: It kind of depends on what you mean people at DC. I’ve heard a lot from creators at DC. The reactions have been pretty positive, which is very flattering. Has Dan DiDio hit me up? No, I haven’t heard anything from the corporate side of DC, I’ve only heard from writers and artists, who are just fans of it.

CA: You’ve introduced a number of heroes and villains to JL8, are there more you plan on bringing in to the series?

YA: Definitely not anytime soon. There are a lot of characters that I’ve thought about what I would do, if I put them into JL8. But then I remind myself that I have seven main characters and essentially two pages per week, so the ratio of characters to content is upside down. It’s gonna be awhile before any new characters show up because I’ve got so many stories to tell with the seven characters I already have that it would be silly to start trying to shoehorn in other characters. It’s like going back to the buffet when you haven’t finished your first plate. Lord knows and I know that people want to see certain characters but my first priority is telling good comics and JL8 is primarily about the seven kids who are already in there and if I start to get into other characters they’re gonna get pushed to the side and I really don’t want that to happen.

CA: You also have an original comic book series, Gifted, can you tell me a bit about that?

YA: On paper it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill, standard, kind of high school, pseudo-autobiographical comedy type deal. It’s not much different from JL8, in theory, in that it’s just about a group of people, a group of kids really, just trying to figure stuff out. The only difference is it’s a little bit more graphic and adult since instead of being eight, they’re about 16-17. So you’re gonna get characters who are getting involved in a little risqué behaviour but other than that, in it’s core, it’s just about friendships and relationships, people being in one of those weird coming-of-age crossroads trying to figure out what to do next in your life. It’s, in every other way, similar to JL8 which I think a lot of people wouldn’t really expect but that’s just the type of stories that attract me to tell.

CA: How has the fan reaction been with Gifted?

YA: I’d say kind of lukewarm and that’s sort of nobody’s fault but my own. The Gifted content that I’ve got available right now is essentially a sentence of a paragraph. There’s not a whole lot to really latch on to with it, which is kind of why I’m starting to back away a little bit from pushing that particular PDF that I have available on Gumroad until I can get back in and round out the content a little bit. It’s a small part of a story that’s really meant to be read as a long 100-page graphic novel, type thing. It’s meant to be read in all one shot and to break it up, since it wasn’t originally meant to be broken up, I think that’s kind of had a detrimental effect so it’s back to the drawing board on that one.

CA: What’s the next convention you plan to make an appearance at?

YA: The next one is Wizard World St. Louis (April 4th-6th) and that’s here in my hometown. The next major convention would be C2E2 at the end of April and after that I’m doing Free Comic Book Day in Greensboro, North Carolina and Heroes Con, Baltimore, Boston, Dragon Con…it’s gonna be another busy convention year for me!

CA: Any plans on coming to Canada for a convention? Fan Expo maybe?

YA: I would love to if they would invite me! International travel is a little bit outside of my budget right now but if they came to me and invited me, I would love to do it.

Hear that Fan Expo? Bring Yale Stewart to Canada! He’s really one of the best comic book artists out there!

Thanks again to Yale for speaking to me and all the best on wherever his career takes him! You can check out JL8 on Facebook and Tumblr; as well as some of Yale’s other work on his personal site or follow him on Twitter!

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