Heavy Ink talks with Johnny Hiro creator Fred Chao about his background, his influences and, of course, his offbeat, and immensely entertaining, action series:
Heavy Ink: What led you to Johnny Hiro as your first published work?
Fred Chao: I had tried to make some other comics. Unfortunately, the scope of the stories I wanted to tell were much too large for me to complete. I’ve always had to work, so there was never enough time for me to write and draw a 200-pager. I had submitted spec pages to some publishers, and almost all the indie publishers were interested, telling me to send it to them when I was finished. I was young and naive and hoping for some kind of advance to buy me the free time to complete it.
After realizing that advances within indie publishing are rare, I decided to do something shorter. A beginning-middle-end story that could be told in less than 32 pages. It started off as the fun project I wasn’t suppose to care about, but amazingly, while writing the first issue, I cared about it more than the other projects I had been working on. It was just a lot of fun, had a good amount of humor, but still held a sentimentality that I always appreciated in comics. I’m hoping it evokes for people the same kind of feeling I got while reading Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes.
Long story short, I finished the 32-pager, sent if off to some publishers. Adhouse was the first to respond. I liked them a lot from the Project anthologies and Skyscrapers of the Midwest. I ended up in good company.
Johnny Hiro #3 was released in January. Chao says he’s about 10 pages into Issue 4.
