Creating a Cool Super Heroine: Artist Suze Shore on My So-Called Secret Identity
Suze Sho
re is one of the artists behind the comic My So-Called Secret Identity alongside Dr Sarah Zaidan and Will Brooker.
Suze kindly donated the following fabulous image from MSCSI to commemorate the Feminist Library’s first salon on Feminism and Libraries
Suze is a freelance illustrator working out of Ottawa, Ontario. She currently divides her time between a variety of illustration and comic projects, and painting backgrounds for televised cartoon shows. Here Suze reflects on how she got into illustration and how the collaboration with the team of My So-Called Secret Identity came about.
“I can’t remember a point in my life where I wasn’t drawing in one capacity or another, starting with memories of after-school art club in grade school. But it took a while to figure out what artistic field I wanted to seriously pursue, and to some degree I’m still figuring it out! After high school I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which taught me 1) a boatload of useful artistic skills and 2) that being a self-employed fine artist was never going to be my thing. I love drawing and painting, but lack the commitment and focus needed to produce a long-term body of work. I eventually made my way to an illustration course at Algonquin College (Ottawa) where I learned that the things I’d primarily enjoyed all along – character design, drawing comics, commissioned illustration – could be job options as well as hobbies. The course resulted in my recruitment to an animation studio, where I digitally painted backgrounds for several years and now help with quality control and revisions.
Throughout the years I’d also been drawing auto-biographical comics, and this is how I ended up meeting Dr. Will Brooker. I had drawn a couple of comics while playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum, one of which touched on the ridiculousness of Poison Ivy’s in-game costume. The comic was one of a very small handful I posted to the internet forum Reddit – which Will just happened to be frequenting at the time – and he sent me a message asking if I might be interested in some comic character development. The rest is history!
Will and I were very in sync in terms of what we wanted to see more of from comics and female characters, and I eventually transitioned from the character design to drawing the first four issues of MSCSI. Over the course of the project I made the acquaintance of a team of ambitious, talented people (women for the most part) whom I am very honoured to have collaborated with. I will be forever grateful to Will for having brought me onto the project, which has helped me push my artistic limits and resulted in some of the artwork I am most proud of. Watching the evolution of Cat Daniels and MSCSI has been – and will continue to be – a pleasure.”
Exciting news: we have 40 limited editions of the commemorative poster illustrated by Suze available to buy at the salon. You will have the opportunity to get the poster and copies of My So-Called Secrety Identity signed by Will Brooker at the end of the event!