Paige Braddock (Jane's World)

by GoComics

February 28, 2014

At GoComics, we pride ourselves in having a wide array of content. Humor knows few boundaries, from slapstick to social commentary. The newest submission for our Meet Your Creator series comes from Paige Braddock, cartoonist of "Jane's World". As Paige would describe her work, "there is a lot of girl-on-girl action." The protagonist is a lesbian woman who deals with a roommate, relationship drama, alien appearances, fist fights and a lot of comedy. Paige is believe to be the first cartoonist to have a syndicated gay-themed comic and continues to encourage and entertain others with her candor, humor and talent. We'll let Paige take it from here.

Jane's World has been running online since the late '90s, and over the years, I feel like the characters have almost become like real people to me. They are now fully fleshed out with histories, exes, former jobs, new jobs, new loves "... you name it.

A lot of people ask if Jane is me, because there might be a slight resemblance. The short answer is no, but the storylines do sometimes pull from my personal experiences. For example, in a recent storyline, Jane's mom comes to visit, and Jane pretends that Ethan is her boyfriend so she doesn't have to face "coming out" to her mother. The catch is that Jane is the only one who is fooled by this ruse, because her mom already knows.

I wouldn't say that I had this exact experience with my family, but having grown up in the Deep South, there was more than one occasion where I did pretend to have a boyfriend so I didn't have to deal with any friction from family. Luckily, there were some guys who were friends of mine who had the same issue, so we did this favor for each other. My hope is that as a society we've evolved, and twentysomethings don't have to pretend to be straight any longer. I have a feeling that isn't always the case and that some people still deal with the issue of "hiding" in their daily life. It's unfortunate because it uses up a lot of brainpower that could be better used to solve world hunger or cure cancer or just have a life.

When I first started the comic, it was more of a traditional comic strip format. Over the years, I've moved to more of a graphic novel format. And while the format may have changed, the personality of the work has stayed pretty much the same. Jane's World is pretty much a comic ensemble, not unlike a sitcom. After exploring the full-page graphic novel format, I finally settled on a nine-panel grid construction for Jane's World. This grid can be broken into various layouts and can also be separated into three daily installments, depending on the complexity of the storyline.

Jane's World covers a lot of territory, not all of it related to the gay experience. In this particular sequence, Jane has just returned from a tour of duty in outer space, only to find that in a cost-cutting measure, corporate has hired zombies to work in the newsroom.

Lately, I enjoy sketching the characters in various scenes and settings and uploading the images to Instagram and Facebook. I think this is a nice way to support the stories that appear each day here on GoComics.

As for new projects, I'm currently working on a graphic novel for kids, "Stinky Cecil." This book is being published by Andrews McMeel Publishing and is due out in 2015. Check my website for updates. I'll be posting "process" stuff on my blog: http://www.PB9.com