January Sun is a graphic novelist, visual development designer, and illustrator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work can be read on WEBTOON, and her first graphic novel, The Reaper and the Waiting (WEBTOON Unscrolled), is coming in May. Sun was selected to draw LJ’s April cover, celebrating the textual and visual pleasures of reading graphic novels. In this interview, she discusses the cover design and message, her style, favorite graphic novels, and working with vertical versus horizontal sequential art.

You were given a wide brief for the April cover: create an illustration that is a celebration of the graphic novel format and its genres. How did you conceive what that meant and the elements you wanted to include?

One of the most beautiful things about the graphic novel medium is that there is such a variety of visual styles and storytelling that can exist in this single format. They hold entire universes that readers can connect into and have experiences they would not otherwise in the real world. I wanted to capture the richness of this medium in my illustration. The image of an assortment of characters bursting out of the page under the pen of an artist, materializing on a black background to represent both ink and the concept of nothingness from which entire, colorful worlds are birthed, illustrates both how I feel as a reader and a creator of comics.

What came first in your design—specific elements, tone, color, something else?

I needed to first decide on the message of the illustration, around which I could build my design. I knew I wanted to draw a large crowd of different, stock characters coming out of a physical comic book. With these non-negotiable elements decided, I started playing around with composition and the overall look of the illustration.

What do you hope readers see and understand about graphic novels through your cover?

Graphic novels are a powerful medium that enriches the human imagination. They are as important as any other artistic form for human expression and reflect the dreams, values, and beliefs of our time.

How would you describe your style? What elements of design are most important to you?

I think my style is very whimsical and idealistic. I grew up on Ghibli and Disney movies, lots of manga, and classic Western comics like Garfield, Tintin, and Calvin and Hobbes. While these influences are quite varied, they are all formative to my overall style and aesthetic senses. In terms of design for illustrative work, knowledge of good composition and understanding how values work is indispensable. Those elements dictate the first impression of a piece of art.

You publish your work on WEBTOON. What does that platform offer you as an artist?

WEBTOON is very simple and incredibly intuitive to use as a comic artist. They take away the hassle of having to build your own website to host your comics, and they have an existing and ever-growing audience who are there specifically to read comics. They have been crucial to the accessibility and growth of Western independent comics online, which has been wonderful to witness as a fan of comics in general.

What does the WEBTOON platform mean to you for sequential art? The vertical scroll breaks the panel format. What does that allow in terms of design, dialog, and storytelling?

The vertical-scroll format can allow for a very cinematic, immersive experience to reading comics. You can get extremely creative in the design of panels and text elements so that scrolling down can almost feel like watching a video. The absence of page-limit concerns also allows a sort of “timing” to the panel pacing, which can be used to intensify punchlines, story beats, filler moments, etcetera, and heighten the experience of the story. The trade-off, however, is that such a comic cannot readily be printed into a physical book. Sometimes you just want to read something on a tangible page, not a screen.

Can you talk about your debut graphic novel, The Reaper and the Waiting? It is on WEBTOON but will also be a print work. How did you adapt the story to both formats? What were some of the considerations in that process?

The Reaper and the Waiting was first drawn in a traditional page layout, actually. It was my very first comic, and my plan was to see if I could write something short that I could try self-publishing one day, so it needed to be in a graphic-novel format. I also wasn’t very familiar with the vertical-scroll layout at the time. In order for it to be read on WEBTOON, however, I had to reformat the entire comic vertically, which is quite a pain. This meant I couldn’t utilize the full extent of the cinematic benefits of a scrolling comic. Also, some nuances of the storytelling optimized for one format might be lost in the transition to another format.

Can you share some graphic novels, comics, or webtoons you have enjoyed?

There are so many, but the ones I have reread several times over include Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun by Izumi Tsubaki, The Wolf That Picked Something Up by Ma Wei, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang, and Nimona by ND Stevenson.