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Spoilers ahead forI Am Not Okay With This, the comic and the show.
Charles Forsman is an unlikely cartoonist to find success in the world of TV adaptations.
you could really see that inThe End of the Fucking Worldquite a bit.
Some of the panels are exactly replicated on the screen.
What is it about that style that appeals to you?E.C.
Segar, who createdThimble TheatreandPopeye, is one of my favorite cartoonists.
Watching a play on a stage.
When I start a project, theres so many little decisions you have to make.
Setting up the rules and guidelines, I usedPopeyestrips as my guide for how to tell the story.
It depends on what I want to show.
Im not very conscious of it.
Thats part of comics: Its a lot of doing the same thing over and over again.
But you still have to make it interesting, design-wise.
There are so many different things were using.
Its not just drawing and writing.
Design is a big part of it, placing things on a page that are pleasing to the eye.
Did you have a journal like Syd when you were a teenager?I tried.
I was super unmotivated, I probably wrote two sentences and gave it up.
That was way more interesting to me than writing down my life details.
But I do put a lot of personal stuff in these stories.
Even when Ive tried to make auto-bio comics, its the same feeling.
It feels gross to me, and I have no motivation to do it.
Im too concerned with the truth then.
This story is actually the most personal to me.
When I sat down to read the scripts for the show, I was in tears.
I had forgotten how personal some of that stuff was.
And seeing it filtered through other writers, it still came out to me very personally.
Its intense for me to watch, because it feels very close to me.
My eyes glaze over when I see it.
It goes back toThimble Theatre.
Its cartooning: distilling everything down to what you should probably create a feeling.
The only way Ive learned to do that is to do it scene by scene, chapter by chapter.
Its not like filming, where you could shoot a bunch of footage and edit it down.
I could just draw pages and pages, but I dont have the motivation for that.
I have a go at pick what I need.
I knew there was a close-up coming and I was dreading it the entire time.
I had zits on my thighs when I was a kid.
I remember feeling so disgusting and grossed out by them.
Panicking because I dont know what to do with these things.
Its what life is about.
I love that you were dreading that.
I had the exact opposite reaction when I saw the scene of her picking at the zits.
I threw my fists in the air and cheered because I was very happy they threw it in there.
Zits are the adolescent metaphor.
Your bodys freaking out, and a zit happens because theres this built-up gunk in your skin.
And Syd has this whole other thing where her power gets released when shes emotional.
The best X-Men movie isScanners.
I wanted to tell a teenage story about anxiety but have a weird power element to it.
The focus wasnt the power so much, but the shows leaning into that.
Its more of a background element, her anxiety and the shadow following her.
Thats one of the biggest changes.
Why did you end the story that way?
Did you know from the beginning that was where Syd would end up?Not really.
Usually when I write, it starts out pretty improvisational.
It was the last few chapters when I knew where it was going.
Its something I still wrestle with.
Thats the thing that feels satisfying and what I have to do.
Ive been called out for that ending.
In the new printing of the book, I added information in the back for a suicide hotline.
I wasnt ready to change the ending.
I dont want kids reading this and thinking thats an answer, because its definitely not.
