Interview with S.H. Cotucno, Author of The Glass Scientists

Thanks for stopping by YA Outside the Lines, S.H.! Please give us a quick description of The Glass Scientists.

 

Thank you so much for inviting me! 

 

The Glass Scientists is a reimagining of classic gothic science fiction set in a world of bubbling potions and misunderstood monsters. It follows the story of Dr. Henry Jekyll as he works to create a safe haven for mad scientists in the heart of London, where they can defy the laws of nature in peace. But everything changes when a mysterious stranger arrives, shattering all of Jekyll’s carefully laid plans and threatening to expose his darkest secret.

Where did the inspiration for The Glass Scientists come from?

 

I’ve been obsessed with the story of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde since my friend sent me the 2-disc 1996 concept album to Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical in highschool (not the David Hasselhoff version–though I do recommend looking that one up). I live at the intersection of several marginalized communities, so I’ve always been drawn to characters torn between two identities. I wanted to put my own spin on Dr. Jekyll in a way that leaned into that theme while throwing in plenty of vibrant colors, comedy, and queerness to make the story fun for a modern audience who might be reluctant to pick up a 125-year-old novella about a handful of middle-aged British dudes. 

The Glass Scientists is a graphic novel, but it originated as a webcomic, is that right? What are the differences between publishing as a webcomic and publishing as in book form?

 

If publishing a graphic novel is a sprint, making a webcomic is a marathon. By the time The Glass Scientists is finished, I’ll have worked on it for over a decade. It can be awkward at times committing to a story based on the way I saw the world at twenty-five–I’ve had to make some surgical adjustments to update the plot without undoing everything that has already aired online. The upside is that you get to connect with your readership as you’re writing. I’m lucky enough to have readers who have been with the story from day one, and even luckier to have new readers eager to binge the whole backlog in a single evening. There have been plenty of times when I wanted to quit over the years, but knowing that I had an audience who came back for my weekly updates always kept me going.

You’ve also done work in animation. How did that influence The Glass Scientists? (TGS has so much movement in it, I also feel like I’m watching animation instead of reading–and I mean that as a high compliment.)

 

Thank you! I always try to infuse my drawings with a strong sense of emotion and movement. Animation is all about tricking your brain into believing a still image is a living, thinking character, which makes it a perfect training ground for my work on The Glass Scientists. 

 

One of my most formative experiences as an artist was my mentorship under Cory Loftis during my time as a trainee at Disney. A lot of mentors struggle to teach the skills needed for animation and can end up discourages their mentees with vague feedback like, “This isn’t appealing enough,” or, “Just think about it harder.” But Cory is a very practical and down-to-earth guy. He would literally draw over my drawings to show how I could adjust the lines and shape language to evoke stronger emotions and physicality. Those feedback sessions completely changed the way I approach drawing.

I was so impressed with the worldbuilding throughout. The Glass Scientists involves both fantasy elements and elements of the past. How did you go about settling on the look and feel of the setting?

 

The setting grew out of my love of the Victorian Era, specifically how weird it is. I’m a huge fan of medical and scientific history–my favorite books on the subject are The Age of Wonder, The Ghost Map, and The Butchering Art (warning: as the title suggests, The Butchering Art in particular gets pretty gruesome at times). It sounds super dry, but I swear it’s not! The Victorian Era was at the cusp of modern scientific technology but way before the time of modern safety regulations. People were really out there flying hot air balloons before they invented steering, throwing their assistants into rooms full of mosquitoes to determine the cause of malaria, crafting the world’s largest telescope lens to look at Uranus (hahah), then almost getting crushed to death by said telescope lens. People fed opium to babies. Of course, I add a lot of overtly fantasy elements into The Glass Scientists, but I’m really just trying to capture the absolutely buckwild energy of reality. 

What was the plotting like for The Glass Scientists? How do you plot? Storyboard? 

 

The overall outline of the story was set in stone way back when I started the story eight years ago (with some room for flexibility, especially where the romantic subplots are concerned). From there, I move in stages. While I’m drawing one chapter, I’m writing the script for the following chapter. Once I’ve finished the script, I thumbnail out the entire chapter in one go. After that, the pages go into my weekly production schedule–I rough and ink one page a week (more if I’m not juggling a day job). A few weeks later, I’ll hand that page off to my assistants to ink backgrounds and lay down flat colors and shadows. A few weeks after that, I finish the color process. 

 

Generally speaking, I move from broad and creative steps towards detail-oriented and technical steps, so that I don’t have to keep track of Hyde’s emotional arc over Act III and fix his bangs at the same time.

Do you write out the story longhand, or are you visual all the way, rather than verbal?

 

I definitely need a script to work off! No matter which way you slice it, writing is a much faster process than drawing, which means it’s much easier to receive feedback and make changes at script than it is once pencil hits paper (or in my case, stylus hits Cintiq screen). Once we’re into “production” mode, all I can say is, “Well, I’d love to make that change, but there’s no time in the schedule.” 

 

On one of the shows I worked on, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, I did lead with drawing rather than writing. I would rough out my boards and jot down snippets of dialogue as they came to me along the way, then hammer down the final script before pitching. I had a hard time adjusting to the more visually-driven, indie sensibilities of that show when I first got hired, so the boarding-first method was a way of breaking myself out of my natural writing style. I learned a lot from working that way, and it definitely taught me to be more flexible overall, but since The Glass Scientists is very much within my natural writing style, I go with scripts!

The creation of every book teaches us something. What did The Glass Scientists teach you?

 

Oh gosh, SO much. 

 

It helped me explore my gender identity. It challenged me to write the kind of spicy queer romance that I had daydreamed about for years but could never commit to pinning down. It taught me to write and rewrite a scene to get at the really important bits while stripping away the parts that were fun but ultimately distracted from those important bits. It pushed me to join my first writer’s group and to work with an editor for the first time. It taught me so much about drawing naturalistic characters in challenging poses. It challenged my ability to sell an image quickly through color and value.

 

It also pushed me to write a main character who embodied a kind of masculinity that felt taboo in the often straight-cis-guy-dominated world of animation. I still remember boothing at a convention years ago and being seated next to John K. of all people (the creator of Ren and Stimpy, not a good dude), and watching his fans give me the stink eye as they waited for his signature. Why are you drawing all that gay shit? (It was fine. John threw a fit that he was seated in the baby tent and stormed out halfway through the con.) 

What’s your favorite scene from TGS?

 

It’s actually the one I’m drawing right now, but I can’t talk about that because spoilers! Of the scenes that have aired so far, my favorite is probably the scene where Jekyll “grounds” Hyde at the end of Chapter Five. In a lot of Jekyll and Hyde adaptations, Hyde is always the aggressor, with Jekyll living in a constant state of fear of his dark side. But that’s not quite the relationship we have with our own brains, is it? Don’t get me wrong–anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness are often overwhelming and horrifying. But other times, they’re just frustrating, annoying, bad in a painfully ordinary way. So I wanted to write a scene where half of Jekyll’s mind is literally transforming into a demonic inferno of self-destructive fury, and the other half is like, “Ugh, this again?”

 

I think the story of Jekyll and Hyde is more interesting if there’s a true power struggle between each side. You really don’t know who’s going to “win” any one interaction.

I have to admit, you’ve caught me just as I’m starting to get back into art–so much of my life involves getting snatches of time to work of my iPad. What advice can you give those interested in improving drawing skills?

 

Figure drawing warm-ups! I do them before I start roughs for every page. Traditional, in-person figure drawing classes are excellent for beginners, but I also recommend looking up figure drawing pose reference photos (there’s a ton on Pinterest), which are often more story-based and can achieve tricky angles and poses that are tough for a live model to hold. Foreshortening and low/high angle shots are particularly powerful tools in emotional storytelling, but it’s not like you’re gonna go to a figure drawing workshop and hang from the ceiling to get that high-angle shot. 

 

I trained for my first gay kiss scene like it was the Olympics. I did nothing but kissing studies for months. To be honest, I feel like I still have a ton to learn in that space–drawing bodies interacting has always been a challenge for me–but keeping up with that practice has really upped my skills over the years.

What’s next?

 

Sleep, yo! The other day, I told a colleague, “I know I’m supposed to be queer, but right now my gender identity is Book. My sexuality is Book.” My office is a kingdom of cardboard boxes full of pre-order rewards. I am in desperate need of new experiences, new art, new stories to fill up the tank. 

 

After that, I have a few inklings of ideas that I’d really like to dive into. I want to center the experience of mixed identity, and especially the experience of being mixed-race, more directly. I’ve tried to tackle that subject in my animation development projects before but don’t feel I’ve hit the mark yet, especially when presenting to a room of white execs. 

 

It’s also going to be about monsters. And the main character is probably going to be a trans guy (if I rewrote The Glass Scientists today, I’d definitely make Jekyll trans). And it’s going to star Japanese-Americans specifically!! (Note: I’m Japanese-American.) My favorite development project (RIP) starred JAs, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

Where can we find you?

 

You can buy The Glass Scientists: Volume I here or wherever books are sold: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/702473/the-glass-scientists-volume-one-by-s-h-cotugno/ (Shop indie if you can!)

 

You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Tumblr @ arythusa . 

 

You can also find me at my website at: http://www.seegoatrun.com 

 

Thank you so much!