Total Minx: 'The Plain Janes'

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COMIC BOOKS DIDN'T always appeal only to males. If you look back into the history of the medium, you'll see a thriving run of female-friendly romance comic books, the Archie line and a slew of licensed books with characters from companies like Disney. In the 1960s, however, the superhero explosion pushed these books to the back burner and the male comic reader became the bread and butter of the industry.

But times are changing.

Thanks to a concerted effort of creators, women were lured back to the visual storytelling with DC Comics' Vertigo line offering books such as "Sandman" and "Y: The Last Man," as well as an explosion of personality-driven independent comics that moved away from capes and tights and the manga explosion.

DC Comics has now taken it one step further with Minx, a new graphic novel imprint that's geared specifically toward female readers.

For the line's first release, DC turned to popular novelist Cecil Castellucci, author of three young adult novels. (Her latest, a punk rock YA novel called "Beige," came out last week.)

Her graphic novel, "The Plain Janes," drawn by Jim Rugg, is about a girl named Jane who is uprooted to the suburbs after she's been in a terrorist attack. At the attack site, she finds a sketchbook with "Art Safe" written on it, which leads her to decide that art can save people. She then starts an all-girl guerrilla-art group (with al the members named some variation of Jane) to beautify the world.

The story rings true for Castellucci, and not just because she too was witness to a terrorist attack when she was younger — an IRA bombing in Belfast when she was nine.

"I definitely believe that art has the ability to do [save]," she said. "And I love public art — street art. It's always great and surprising."

Castellucci recalled growing up in New York City and seeing the works of Keith Haring, who was doing chalk drawings in the subways, and she is a fan of Banksy, a British artist who uses stencils and other means to ply his trade on public institutions.

"Weird little things that people do in surprising places on the street — it does put a smile not just on my face, but other people's faces, too," she said.

Castellucci will be putting smiles on people's faces with "The Plain Janes," her first foray into comics.

The transition from novelist to graphic novelist ended up going smoothly, though Castellucci hit a few speed bumps initially.

"I felt a little bit trapped by the panels," she said. "When you're writing with a lot of words, you can move the story forward — obviously there's no pictures. I couldn't understand at first how to move the narrative forward. I felt boxed in by those panels — pun intended."

Castellucci worked with her editor and saw some other comics from original script through to final product to see how the entire process worked. Plus, she had help from Rugg, her artist collaborator

"Once I started writing, he started drawing pretty soon after," Castellucci said. "I was a little bit freaked out. As soon as I saw the first eight pages, I kind of got it. I got how my words were going to translate into a picture."

Rugg, who is an inker for Vertigo's "American Virgin" and creator of the indie comic sensation "Street Angel," had no problem at all working with a novice comic writer.

"I don't know if you're familiar with any of her books; they're very visual, very action oriented," Rugg said. "It didn't seem like it was a hard transition for her to write comics, and I didn't have any trouble with the scripts I was given."

Castellucci was pretty hands off with the art, simply giving some specific character descriptions and leaving the rest for Rugg to create. The rest of the design was taken from discussions of the characters personality traits.

"We talked about their emotional life," Castellucci said. "It was a lot of feelings about how they felt."

Rugg, who is also working on a yet unannounced graphic novel for Vertigo, sketched out a slew of different designs and faces for the characters, finally settling on the designs for the four Janes.

"Ultimately, I was able to get four characters that visually I liked to draw," Rugg said. "I think one nice thing with this book is that the characters — I think it would be easy for somebody to look at them and kind of identify with aspects of all of them."

Castellucci had a different kind of experience when she first saw the characters all together for the first time — a drawing that is now on the back cover of the book.

"When he sent it to me and I looked at it, I was like, ‘Holy macaroni! I know these girls and they're telling me all of their secrets.' I love them."

While "The Plain Janes" centers on female protagonists, and is part of an imprint geared toward women and girls, the book is something that could be enjoyed by all ages and all genders.

"I think good stories transcend gender demographics," Castellucci said. "If a story is a good story, if you're a human being, I think you'll like it."