This weekend, head over to Comic Con Bengaluru. You will see some incredible women artists unleash their creativity and create magic.

Bengaluru is all set for Comic Con happening on November 17 and 18 at KTPO, Whitefield. While you can forward to interactions with your favourite artists, we at HerStory are very interested in what the women are doing at Comic Con.

So we bring you a sneak preview of the women at Comic Con and what they have in store for us.

Alicia Souza

Bengaluru-based Alicia Souza is a ‘happiness illustrator’. She’s been drawing professionally for many years and has over a 100 products manufactured from her drawings. She also freelances for various corporates and companies, done various talks at universities and Ted-x’s. She runs her own studio and company that manufactures artist merchandise for her personal brand and other brands

Ground Zero – Meta Desi

After a gap of over a year, Meta Desi's anthology series Ground Zero returns with its fourth volume – and is coming back with a bang.

Previously home to a crazy mix of genres and styles that grabbed readers’ attention and birthed two spin-off series (the best-selling/fan favourite Holy Hell and original Indian manga Super Soldier Squad), the ground-breaking anthology is back on the comic scene with a whole new style and flavour. And this time, the anthology features amazingly talented women creators.

The anthology includes The Obsolete Baby – a whimsical and darkly funny tale dealing with technology and human behavior written by Shweta Taneja and drawn by Kavita Nambissan; Blond Bonanzas – a surreal and potato-filled journey into the unknown, written by Simona Terron and Aishwarya Tandon; Batperson and Kitten, a mini-comic full of fun, written and drawn by “Suki” and Manjula Padmanabhan, and a neurofuristic to-be-revealed-title by Ridhi Batra and Tanushree Dutta.

Vanesa R Del Rey

Cuban artist Vanesa R Del Rey began her career doing concept art for animation. Her work in Comics has been described as dark, gritty and mysterious with great dominance of figurative work. She has illustrated Scarlet Witch, Spider-Women Alpha, and Daredevil Annual (2016) for Marvel Comics. REDLANDS, co-created with Jordie Bellaire is her first creator-owned series with Image Comics.

In a chat with YourStory, Vanesa talks about the comic world, and current work.

YourStory: At what point did you decide that you wanted to work in comics? What were your favourite comics growing up?

 Vanesa Del Ray: I got into comics through some friends in high school. They were reading Lobo comics and Heavy Metal magazine issues. I was blown away by those. Especially the work of Simon Bisley and Luis Royo, Moebius, Boris Vallejo... I didn’t have access to many comics growing up in Cuba. Only what my friends could get at the black market. Or from people who lived outside of the country.

YS: You started out doing concept art for animation. What did you work on? How did you make the transition to comics?

VDR: After going to school in Florida I applied for a job at an animation studio called Moonbot Studios. During that time I worked on concept art, storyboards, Character designs, prop design, covers and sequential art too. All the work was for the company. While working there I got approached by a Boom!Studios editor who offered a job as an illustrator for a limited comics series they were going to put out. So I tested for this job and got hired. It was for the Hit mini-series written by Bryce Carlson which came out in 2013.

YS: What are you working on now?

 VDR: I'm working on with Jordie Bellaire from Image Comics and covers for The Empty Man II from Boom!Studios.

YS: You've also done work on Scarlet Witch, Constantine and other long-running characters across comic universes. How do you approach art for characters who have been around for a long time - usually with multiple looks?

VDR: I try to bring in characters that come from my world and dress them up as these other characters that have already been created. The ones I make up are from the worlds inside my head, which is formed by all external influences, like people I have seen or know, characters from other comics (not necessarily superhero genre) or characters from films and animation.

So if comics is your world, head over to Comic Con this weekend. Talk to the artists and learn what’s brewing in their heads and revel in the creativity the event has to offer.

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