Posted in: Comics | Tagged: greg pak, senyc, Special Edition: NYC, The Princess Who Saved Herself

SE: NYC '15 – The Princess Who Saved Herself

Published Sun, 07 Jun 2015 13:00:04 -0500

I'm thrilled to be reporting from Special Edition: NYC, and even more thrilled to be in the same room with writer Greg Pak and singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton at The Princess Who Saved Herself – From Song to Children's Book panel. Because I'm a huge fan of both Kickstarter and stories that have awesome female leads, I had to attend. Pak and Coulton started the panel off by handing out a really awesome sticker sheet that features their colorful characters, so I already felt won over by that kind gesture. From there, they discussed the project they worked on before, Code Monkey Save, and how one of the incentives/huge stretch goals for that was to create The Princess Who Saved Herself.

Because the project was originally inspired by Jonathan Coulton's song he talked about his process writing it by saying:

"I wrote it for a charity…I was asked to contribute a song, and I had never really written a song that was aimed for kids. I wanted to write about a princess that was totally badass and didn't need anyones help. My daughter inspired me. She was very into princesses at the time, but also liked to punch kids on the playground."

Greg Pak added:

"For me as a writer, I came out of comics and I had my eye on kids books for a long time. I was really excited about the chance to do a kids book based on this storyline. In Jonathan's song, the character was fully formed, so it was really motivating."

Pak spent a considerable amount of time talking about talented artist, Takeshi Miyazawa. They went into great detail about the creation of The Princess Who Saved Herself, by sharing initial character designs of multiple characters, layout planning, and inspiration stories. I think the room could feel the passion that the creative team put into the project. We got to see the first few pages of the book, which was cool for me because this was my first interaction with the story. I'll tell you that after seeing them, I felt incredibly motivated to buy my own copy. Beyond the adorable fun content that centers at the core of this story, I think it's incredibly important to support projects that set a good example. A few of the comments that were mentioned to the panel during the Q&A focused on how happy they were to support a bi-racial main character. All in all, it was a fun, informative panel.

Just as a side note: Pak showed this image below as a teaser for an upcoming project, but wouldn't comment further.

Be sure to look for my upcoming review of The Princess Who Saved Herself here on Bleeding Cool!

Christine Marie is a Staff Writer at Bleeding Cool, and bibliomaniac with a love for all things creative. She hopes to one day be a Superhero/Disney Princess/Novelist. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @AWritersWay or on her blog writerchristinemarie.wordpress.com.

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