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Lost Daughter of Sparta: Felicia Day on Feminist Hero's Journey

Felicia Day (Embrace Your Weird) spoke to us about the inspiration behind her latest graphic novel, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, and more

Felicia Day is one of the most versatile talents in Hollywood as an actor, host, writer, and producer. She has done it across films and television, live-action, and voiceovers, across all genres from comedy, drama, fantasy, and science fiction. Some of her best-known works include The Guild, which she created, Supernatural, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Eureka, The Magicians, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Mighty Nein, Monster High, Adventure Time, Skylanders Academy, and The Rookie. She also launched her production company, Geek & Sundry (now owned by Legendary), which helped provide an outlet to mainstream tabletop gaming on screen for the masses, and if that's not impressive enough, she's a New York Times bestselling author, including You're Never Weird on the Internet and Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity. While promoting her latest book, her first graphic novel, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, Day spoke to Bleeding Cool about the inspirations behind the story and its six-year journey to get it completed, crafting a feminist hero's journey, and if there will be more adventures of Philonoe in the future.

The Lost Daughter of Sparta follows Philonoe, the sister of Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, and Timandra, who managed to avoid the family curse of betrayal from the goddess Aphrodite and was granted immortality by the goddess Artemis. Born a Spartan princess and with a wine-stain birthmark on her face, Philonoe is destined for a different fate than her sisters.

The Lost Daughter of Sparta: Felicia Day on Creating an Inspiring Feminist Hero's Journey

BC: How long did it take you to tell the story of The Lost Daughter of Sparta, and was it something that you originally planned as your first graphic novel?

FD: I started writing this novel in 2020, so it's taken quite a long time. We had some delays with COVID, but the whole process of getting an artist on board, pencils, inks, proofs, all of that. It took a long time, and it was definitely a learning curve for me. I'd done comics for The Guild with Dark Horse a while back, but this was a more involved, larger project. I'm really grateful I did it, and I loved how it turned out. I didn't intend to write a graphic novel at all, but I stumbled across a mention of this character in one line in some ancient Greek writing, and I was so intrigued by it that I couldn't stop thinking about it. When COVID hit, I decided to write a story that wasn't something I normally would spend the time doing. I felt a freedom to do something out of the box, something that was close to my heart and wouldn't be useful to Hollywood, and I'm so happy I did, because that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

What made Rowan [MacColl] the perfect creative partner to illustrate this?

I found Rowan browsing through thousands of artists in Kelly Sue DeConnick's #VisibleWomen Excel spreadsheet. I reached out to Kelly, asked her for some references, and she mentioned she had all of these in a spreadsheet, so I started combing through all these incredible artists and talented people. Rowan's work really jumped out to me, because I wanted this to be in a really unique style that wasn't too YA. It was something that could support an austere format, and do justice to the journey of the character, but also make the historical aspects of it interesting, bring the emotion to life, and do the fantastical elements in a really interesting way, and Rowan fulfilled all those.

A lot of Philonoe's journey is crafted by identity, shame, pride, and not letting others define her. I was just wondering, were there elements from your life or figures that inspired you to mold her in the story?

Absolutely. This is a story that, A, I kind of lived. I was a homeschool kid, very sheltered, and grew up the way I wanted to grow up in a way. When I got into the wider world, especially Hollywood, I encountered a lot of situations where people saw my outsides and had uses for me that I didn't know were really true to myself. Sometimes I followed those people. Sometimes I didn't, but I always knew, having lived a great life, I realized that the highlights in my life are when I was really true to myself. I wanted to give this story to everybody, regardless of your background, but also to my daughter, who's nine. I hope that when she's a little older, she can read this book and draw strength from it, because honestly, the most rewarding thing in life is being true to yourself and getting your voice out there in an authentic way. That's a theme with all of my work, and it's definitely infused in this book.

Have you considered expanding your story in a future work, or is this a one-off?

You know, I wouldn't rule it out. I certainly considered it to be one story, but Heracles, Theseus, and some of these other characters did other adventures, so I wouldn't 100 percent rule it out. I do have other projects that I'm working on right now. It's mainly because I'm doing a Kickstarter for The Guild reunion movie. That's going to be announced shortly, and I have two novels that I am working on after that. I would love to jump into the graphic novel format again. I just have a couple of things I need to get to before that, but I love this character, and I hope that this hero's journey is something that people would like to see more of.

Yeah, I enjoyed particularly the Caeneus/Caenis scenes in the book, just the way that Philonoe interacted with the creature. What was the most difficult part about crafting this journey for you?

Story-wise, I really wanted to mimic a hero's journey of a traditional Greek hero, so there was a little bit of aspect of remaining true to that, but also subverting the tropes that we think of when we think of Greek mythology, subverting some of the feminist tropes we have when we empower women in stories that they might not have been in reality. Also, making the story universal, like it is a lot about gender, because that's my perspective on coming from a sheltered background into the society and having people's ideas of me trying to box me in, but everybody encounters that whatever background you have, whatever your gender, or whatever people have preconceived notions of you based on what you look like.

That's how I really aim to make the story. It is a feminist story, but it is a story for everybody, because Philonoe goes into the world with a port wine stain on her face, and instantly people judge her for that, but that's everybody, you know? If you walk into a room of people who are different than you, you're going to be categorized and judged, and your behavior's going to be predicted in their minds, but you don't have to conform to their idea of you. That's the universal theme that I wanted to infuse in it, and yeah, it took a lot of drafts and a lot of time. I'm really proud of what ended up on the pages.

Simon & Schuster and Gallery Books' The Lost Daughter of Sparta is available in bookstores and in audiobook format on March 17th.

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