[music playing] ♪ - Hello, and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is artist Maria Laura Sanapo.

Maria Laura, welcome back to Comic Culture.

- Hi, Terence.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me here.

It's an honor.

I am so happy.

Thank you.

- Since the last time we spoke, your career has taken off.

You are a rising star in the world of sequential art.

And you've been working on a number of high profile projects, including Wonder Woman.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about working on that series and what that means to you, because I know you're a big Wonder Woman fan.

- Well, Wonder Woman is absolutely my favorite character, and I feel blessed to be an artist working for Wonder Woman.

You know that I'm thankful.

And this year was released my story on Wonder Woman-- Agent of Peace, number 15.

Then I worked on Sensational Wonder Woman, Chapter 9 and 10 with Amy Chu.

It was a great experience, especially for the second time, because we had Wonder Woman in 1941, which is the year she was created.

And it was fantastic to draw the flashback of Wonder Woman wearing Halloween costume.

It has been really great also because the story was fantastic.

Well, the story of both books were fantastic.

The first one because there was Zatanna, another character I love, and the second one because Wonder Woman, as I said before, in 1941, she meets her friend.

And the story, written by Amy Chu, is full of friendship, values, and it is absolutely touching.

It's fantastic.

So it was a great experience for me, absolutely.

- When you're working on a character like Wonder Woman, it's got to be-- I guess because she's so popular now thanks to Gal Gadot and the film series.

But you're working on a high profile series like that.

So as an artist, how are you influenced, if you are influenced, by the films that we see?

- My work, it's a mixture of influences because absolutely you have to watch the movie.

You have to be informed.

This is very important.

But you have to put your own creativity.

And so it's a mixture between the film, the movie, and my own way of seeing Wonder Woman.

So it's something that it's a little bit more personal, because I think that an artist is chosen also for his creativity.

It's very important to put yourself in your work.

So when I first got a script, well, of course, I followed the rules.

I followed the guidelines.

But I put something that it's personal.

It's the way of doing the hair, the facial expressions.

Putting something of yourself in the work you do is absolutely the most important thing because you communicate to the reader how you are with your work.

So it's absolutely important for me.

- You mentioned the hair.

And one of the things that you do extremely well is you draw beautiful, strong women in a way that is-- well, if a male artist were to draw a character, he might draw it in a way that's a little bit more titillating.

You draw characters that are beautiful that have a strength behind them.

And you add those little details like the hair.

I don't think anyone gets the hair quite the way that you do or your hands.

You have this great way of telling a story with a character with the way that you position their fingers.

So when you start putting that on the page, how do you think about all those little details that are going to make the character seem alive and real?

- Well, I think that everything in the character tells-- it's very important because, for example, the hair, the hands act like the person.

Every element of the character is acting.

So everything is important.

Every detail is important, especially the hands, for example.

Being Italian, I move the hands a lot, as you are seeing.

But I think that they are important like a face.

For example, I move my hands in a certain way according to my face.

This is absolutely very important because your character have to act in a specific way.

And if you do all the details according to-- if they match with themself, it's very important.

So for me, it is absolutely vital to do every detail at this place.

And strong women, yes, I absolutely love drawing strong women.

It's a dream come true for me, especially in this period when we have a lot of superheroines who have their own movies.

And this is very important.

Of course, you don't have to own a sword to be a superheroine.

I think that a mother of five is absolutely a superheroine for me [laughs] and single mothers.

And in real life, of course, we identify with Wonder Woman.

But of course, in real life, we don't have a sword.

At least, I don't have a sword.

So it's absolutely a dream come true for me.

So drawing women where we can identify with is absolutely important, absolutely.

- And you've also worked on Batwoman, which is another high-profile series at DC.

So it's interesting because those are books that have completely different feels.

Wonder Woman is certainly more light.

Batwoman, being part of the Batman universe, is going to be darker.

So when you sort of look at the two universes, how do you create that visual language that will be distinct for the nighttime action of Batwoman and the perhaps bright sunshine of a beautiful island in the Mediterranean for Wonder Woman?

Well, the greatest thing is that, in my job, you can switch from a character to another until you have fun.

Batwoman and Wonder Woman are both two great girls, very strong, but in a different way.

So when I got the script of Batwoman, I was asked to do her a little bit darker.

We would like a darker vibe just according to the character.

And I was, oh yes, I want to do this.

I'm absolutely ready to do it.

And I did 30 pages story of Batwoman written by Grace Ellis.

It's a great story.

And it's very different from Wonder Woman because Wonder Woman, you know, it's a goddess.

She has a particular attitude.

She has a different approach to the humanity.

Of course, Kate Kane is a little bit more hey.

[snaps] It's a little bit more different from Wonder Woman.

So as she is a superheroine, but she has a totally different approach to life.

Everything is darker.

Her behavior is different.

She's a little bit more similar to a human being.

So they are both fantastic in two different ways.

So absolutely the Batwoman story was darker.

And for this reason, I used more dark tones according to the character because you have to be a little bit flexible.

So I try to go into this direction, and it was fun.

I loved it, absolutely.

I loved it.

- And you also worked on a book, not for DC.

But it was a Kickstarter for Miss Fury, who was one of the earliest Golden Age comic book heroines.

So how did you get involved in that?

And how did you sort of approach that story?

- The funny thing is that Miss Fury was created in 1941, the same year as Wonder Woman.

So it's a great character.

She's very similar to Catwoman, but she was created first.

And my editor asked me, do you want to do another project?

It's Miss Fury.

I was like, oh!

I didn't know this character.

Normally, I gather a lot of references because I have to know what I'm dealing with.

So I look at this character, and I loved it.

I loved it.

And it's a particular character, and it was almost forgotten because it was created by a woman in 1941.

So it was something that was very ahead of the times.

And absolutely I was happy to do it.

It was a challenge, something new.

It was a great thing also because it's connected with fashion, so it's a very particular character.

She's a socialite.

So Marla Drake, the main character, is a socialite.

She lives between fashion parties and punching the baddies.

So she has a very double life.

So I love it.

And absolutely I love working on this book.

- Now, you mentioned she's a socialite, and you mentioned fashion.

And one of the things that you do better than just about anyone I've seen in comics, you draw regular street clothing in a way that appears real.

And in her case, in Miss Fury's case, it's very glamorous.

So what sort of research do you do to, one, get the fashion right for the 1940s but also to just draw fabric?

Because that's really tough for those of us who try and draw and don't succeed.

- Well, I was helped by Michael Soloff because he's a fan of Miss Fury.

And this guy's father had a passion in fashion, but he couldn't pursue this career because there was the war.

And Billy Tucci and my editor in Dynamite asked me to use the sketches and the drawing of this guy who was very talented.

But this guy's son when his father died found a box in the house he lived.

And he found so many sketches of a lot of dresses.

And they dated back to 1941.

So they asked me to use that sketches, so that dresses.

And I saw so many beautiful dresses from that Golden Age, and I was like, oh my god.

It was really fantastic.

And I wanted to carry on this dream.

I wanted to carry on this man's dream.

And for this reason, you will find a lot of dresses taken from the collection of Soloff, and really absolutely it was a great thing for me.

- So if you were teaching a class-- and I know that you do-- how would you explain the proper way to capture fabric?

I know Terry Moore talks about drawing the figure without clothing on first, and then adding the clothing to it later.

But how do you sort of approach that, and how would you explain it to someone like me?

- Well, absolutely you have to know the anatomy first because the fabric runs on the anatomy, on the shape of the body.

So you have to know the anatomy first.

Then you have to distinguish the-- how do you call them the sleeves?

Not the sleeves, the folds.

And we have two kind of folds, the traction folds and the compression folds.

So you have to take into consideration that they are very different.

You have to see how the body's moving.

According to the movement of the body you will have to draw different kind of fabrics moving in different way.

So of course, it's difficult for me to tell only in theory because normally when I teach-- I teach in international School of Comics in Florence and at The Kubert School.

And I teach online, I do small courses.

I don't teach all the year long.

I just do five or six lessons sometimes.

I normally share my screen because I have to show my students how to do that, because they have to see in practice how to do this.

Because if you explain to somebody how to do fabrics, they understand very well.

But put into practice from the hair to the hands to the piece of paper, it's more difficult.

It's a matter of interpretation, thinking about what you have to do.

So it's important absolutely to know the anatomy first.

And then following the movement of the body you will have to let the fabric move in a certain way.

It's not easy because every fabric has a different material, so it becomes more complicated.

But they are good students, so I'm proud of them, absolutely.

- You mentioned The Kubert School, which is one of the premier schools for sequential art in the United States-- I guess in the world.

And you are in Italy right now.

First off, how do you connect with The Kubert School just to let them know that you're interested in teaching there or for them to ask you?

And then how do you conduct your classes?

I mean, we're doing things over the internet now.

But I'm wondering specifically how you kind of set that up.

- Well, I know Anthony Marcus or Marques.

Anthony, forgive me if I spell your name wrong.

But he's the director of The Kubert School, and he had this fantastic idea during the pandemic.

He had the idea of doing the online courses for everybody.

So if you're not based in the United States, you can attend a course at The Kubert School.

So I have students from Hong Kong, for example, of every age.

And so it is a great possibility.

So I thank Anthony for that.

He asked me to do courses for The Kubert School.

I did basic drawing, and I'm doing how to draw the female figure in May.

I'm absolutely thankful because it's a great experience, not only because students learn from you but you learn from students.

We know better, in turn, that you learn a lot from students.

They help you to see your job from a different light.

It's fantastic.

It's a way of communicating.

It's great.

For this reason, The Kubert School gave the possibility to everybody to attend the courses.

So if you don't live in the United States, no worries.

You can absolutely study to become a comic artist.

So this is absolutely fantastic.

I'm proud.

I'm proud of it.

I'm also among a lot of artists, like Lee Weeks, writers like Erica Shultz, Amy Chu.

So I'm absolutely proud to teach with these people, fantastic professionals.

- And it does speak to your ability.

Your career is not as long as, let's say, a Lee Weeks, who is an absolute genius in comic art, and yet you are his contemporary at this school.

And I think well-deserved at that.

But I will ask-- because I've seen some of your lectures that you've done for The Kubert School.

It's very difficult to explain something that you do.

I know when I teach television to my students, I have to think about how they would understand it from their student's point of view.

I might think too deeply from a television professional's point of view.

So how do you figure out how to explain what comes naturally to you as far as an artist?

- That's a good question.

I imagine to be the students.

What would you like Maria to hear from a professor?

I'm in their shoes.

So I try to simplify it my best, and I try to speak to them, to talk to them, like I was a student.

I know it's very important to communicate at the best way possible what you can do.

It's not easy at all because sometimes you take for granted something that maybe a student cannot do just because he or she has to build his skills.

So to be comprehensive, first of all, to repeat the things if they need to, and absolutely to pretend to be one of them, to be a student.

To be, OK, Maria, if you were a student, what would you like to know?

What approach would you like?

So this is absolutely my approach.

- It seems to work because I did watch you on one of the Saturdays that The Kubert School hosted, and I got a chance to see you in your studio working, which is also interesting.

Because seeing how other people approach their studio space-- how they organize their tools, where they keep everything-- is very interesting because it gives you ideas on how you might do something or even the way that you might use a ruler in a certain way that a student might not see or perhaps understanding perspective differently.

And last time we spoke, you said you were working digitally.

And I'm wondering if you were still working almost exclusively on a digital platform or if you are also going back to the pencil and board.

- Well, it depends.

For example, for pages, I work digitally.

If I have to do commission of course I go back to my drawing table, which is fantastic because it's something that it's very different from the digital part.

Drawing on paper has a different taste, absolutely.

You smell the paper.

You get dirty with the ink.

It happens every time, but I'm happy to do that.

You feel the paper.

Original art, it's absolutely something precious.

And sometimes I do it for not only commissions but also the Kuberts because I know that I'm going to sell them.

And so for this reason, I know that probably somebody will buy it.

I hope so.

Sometimes I work in digital for pages, but I work also on paper.

- And it's interesting because-- again, when I spoke to Lee Weeks-- he mentioned that when he does something on paper, his mind works one way.

But then when he sits down and tries to do something in Photoshop, it stretches a new set of muscles and gets you to think a whole different way.

One thing I would say about your paper art is that you do a lot of color work using various inks and markers.

Your sense of color is really amazing.

And I'm wondering-- personally, I can't work in color.

I can only work in black and white and shades of gray.

So your eye for color, how do you train that?

- Oh well, I don't think I'm good in coloring really.

I think I'm terrible.

[laughs] Thank you so much, Terence.

Well, I use gray tones mostly with copy markers.

I use them especially when I do commissions.

For example, if I'm drawing pages.

I always do black and white.

I normally use half tones.

When I do commissions, I use myself sometimes as a model.

I use the lights in my studio.

I take picture of myself.

And I study the lights-- how the light is behaving on my body, on the surfaces-- because it's very important to give a good interpretation of light and volumes of course.

So we go back to the same thing.

Knowing anatomy is very important.

Sincerely, honestly, I would like to do more of this, to build my skills on colors because I don't color so much.

I would like to be better in that way, absolutely.

- There's always that desire to keep improving, which is what makes the work so much fun, because there's I guess 22 pages a month that you can get a little bit better with each panel.

So I see we have about three minutes or so left in our conversation.

You are part of a dynamic team in comics.

Your husband is Marco Santucci who is also a big rising star at DC Comics.

I think now he's working on Flash.

He's worked on Green Lantern.

So having two professional artists in one household, how do you have a schedule that allows you to work, allows you to socialize, and allows you to do all those normal things without feeling like you're two artists who have tight deadlines?

- Well, me and Marco are very lucky because we are very similar and different sometimes at the same time.

We work in two different studios.

Despite we do the same thing, the same job, we work in two different studios because we need to be concentrating on what we do.

So we try to have a good schedule.

We wake up in the morning.

We eat, and I go upstairs in my studio, and Marco goes downstairs in his studio.

So we are so concentrated that sometimes we speak through Skype.

So I call Marco, what would you like to eat?

So I know it's ridiculous, but we are very focused on what we do.

We try to keep our professional life separated from the life of husband and wife because we try to stay as professional as possible.

Of course, for example, he gives me a lot of advices on my work and vice versa.

Because we work on two different things but we help each other a lot.

For example, this shot, I would do this differently.

Maybe-- I don't know-- it doesn't work so well.

Maybe you should change it to something like this.

And so we help a lot, but we try to be as professional as possible.

So I am working.

He's working.

So our schedule is that schedule.

We try to keep it the same schedule.

For example, we work at the same time from 8:00 AM, 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM or after dinner.

So we understand each other a lot.

For example, if I have to work on Sunday, it's not a problem for him or vice versa.

It's not a problem for anybody because we understand each other a lot.

And we are partners in crime.

We go to conventions together.

We are very close.

I'm super lucky to have Marco in my life.

Absolutely is one of the best thing that happened in my life.

And we are synchronized.

It's very important to live a life together doing a freelancer work.

We are very well-organized.

So it's absolutely a great thing.

So I feel a lucky girl.

[laughs] I have to say that.

- Well, I feel very lucky to have this opportunity to have spoken with you, but, Maria, we've run out of time.

I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk to me today.

- Thank you so much.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

♪ - ANNOUNCER: Comic Culture is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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