Far Out There - "Who's Your Favorite Character?"

One of the go-to questions when talking to a creator is what their favorite of their creations is.  When people talk to me about Conventional Wisdom, I often get asked what my favorite (or, in many cases, LEAST favorite) convention was.  On the much rarer occasion that Far Out There comes up, one of the most popular questions is which character is my favorite.  I always have trouble with this question, and not just for the usual "Oh, they're all so dear to me, I can't pick just one!" excuse. 

As I said, I've seen a lot of creators get asked this question, and I noticed early on that different people seemed to have a different definition of "favorite".  For some people, their "favorite" character is the one they have the most working with, the one who lets them write the funniest lines or draw the best expressions or whatever.  For other,s "favorite" means the character they'd most want to hang out with in real life.  Still others come at it from the perspective of the audience, and say their "favorite" character is the one they'd most enjoy watching if they were ONLY watching.  And then there's the people who pick their "favorite characters" in terms of good personal memories attached to them, this character is based on a friend, or this characters is part of a storyline that turned out unexpectedly well, or something else like that.  And you know what?  I've got wildly different answers for all of those!

Let's start with "Favorite character to write/draw", which is probably Layla.  Characters like Stilez or the Zombie Kids are close competition since they allow for more physical comedy, but the sheer range of emotions Layla bounces between makes her the winner.  Angry Layla is HILARIOUS, both to draw and to write for, but they key is that she isn't angry all the time.  I mean, Frank and Megaweapon are pretty much always mean and hateful, and I hate writing for them.  But Layla?  As angry as she can get, she can switch to kind and caring and sweet at a moment's notice.  That Layla is fun to write/draw too, as is Sad Layla and Confused Layla and Insert-Emotion-Here Layla, and the sudden contrast between them all just makes them all the funnier.  That said, I'd never want to be in the same room as the kid, not unless there was, like, FIFTY adorable little boys to keep her on her best behavior.

So who would be my "favorite" in the Hang out With In Real Life sense?  That's a tough one for me to pick, seeing as how I barely ever hang out with REAL people in Real Life.  In the end, though, I think my pick would be Tabitha.  Sure, she's kinda noisy and has no concept of personal space, but you can't deny that it'd be a fun time.  I think the key deciding factor for ME, though, would be that she could appreciate being too caught up in working on something to do anything else.  I'm pretty sure she spends as much time locked away in the lab as I do hunched over the computer, so there'd be plenty of common ground there.  Part of me wanted to nominate Jenna for this pick, but she's such a responsible, hard working kid that she'd probably never have time to hang out PERIOD, which would defeat the whole point.

Which brings us to "Favorite character if I were just some reader", which would be Jenna hands-down.  Seriously, I love this kid, and would keep coming back every day in hopes that the evil psycho writing this thing would FINALLY LET HER CATCH A FREAKING BREAK ONCE IN A WHILE.  For that reason, Jenna was wildly disqualified from the "favorite to write" category, since I absolutely HATE being so mean to her.  And yet, it is my duty as a writer to do what would make the best comic, and obviously giving Jenna a hard keeps the readers coming back for more (Plus, the longer the struggle, the more satisfying the eventual happy ending).  Bridget & Alphonse would probably come in second, though to be honest, I think I kind of over did it with them for a while there.  That's why we didn't see a whole lot of those two over the past year or so.  I didn't want to ruin good characters via over-exposure.

And what about that last category, "Favorite thanks to some kind of subjective personal criteria?" Well, this is probably gonna surprise some people, but I'm gonna say Astrid.  On the one hand, I don't especially LIKE her all that much, she's not the sort of character I really enjoy writing for long stretches, but I am really proud of how the character turned out.  Or, more accurately, that a character turned out at all.  When Astrid first appeared, she wasn't supposed to be a recurring character at all, just a jerk that Layla could upstage for a page or two.  Afterwards, though, I realized the "joke" felt more like set up that was still waiting for a punchline.  Why go through all the trouble of setting up animosity between this one character and Layla if we never see her again?  So I brought her back just to be a thorn in Layla's side, which she did with great success.  But then I had a different problem: I felt kinda bad about having a character who only existed to be rude, flirt with a male character, and have large breasts.  What did this character DO?  Did she have a job?  What were her interests?  Heck, she only barely even had a name at this point.  Well, it had been established earlier that this whole storyline was going to revolve around a bust by the space police, so why not have Astrid turn out to be an undercover cop this whole time?  Suddenly, she not only had a real role in the plot, but she was kinda awesome!  This character had gone from some silly fanservice to future female James Bond!  I do wish I'd been smart enough to plan it all out in advance, but I'm still pretty proud of the result.

...but at the end of the day, "Oh I can't pick just one, they're ALL my favorite!" is still kinda true.  WHY MUST YOU MAKE ME CHOOSE?!?!?

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