Flash Facts is electric! In Amanda Deibert and Erich Owen's "Lights-Out," a short story included in Mayim Bialik's Flash Facts anthology, DC Super Hero Girls' own Green Lantern sets out to remedy a blackout that rudely interrupted her sleepover. This sends her on a journey that reveals how electricity is generated, the way it is distributed to houses and -- in true Jessica Cruz fashion -- how the fossil fuels that provide it impact our environment.
Speaking to CBR, Deibert and Owen explained that science has long been at the heart of their work on DC Super Hero Girls. They broke down how Jessica's Green Lantern powers fit their subject and shared some fun facts about electricity, including the fact that fossil fuels don't actually come from dinosaurs. They also shared their favorite moments from the short, discussed the way art can teach as well as entertain and more.
CBR: How did this project come together for you?
Amanda Deibert: Courtney Jordan reached out to me and asked me if I would be interested, and I enthusiastically said yes and was really excited, because for me, it combined a couple of things that I'm passionate about in a way that I never thought would. You know, I've written other comics for DC and written DC Super Hero Girls and things like that, but another thing that I do often that I've done for four years, is writing for former Vice President Al Gore's 24 Hours of Reality, which is a climate science broadcast. So the fact that I got to incorporate the science writing aspect of my life with comic book writing is not something that I ever thought would happen. So that's what happened for me.
Erich Owen: Well, I have done a bunch of DC Super Hero Girls stories already for DC, and so I'm guessing that had a lot to do with Courtney contacting me. I had previously worked with Amanda, so I think we're a good fit. We've worked together quite often so far, and so I'm guessing DC also thinks we're a pretty decent fit, so they contacted me. I've talked to the editors and told them that my favorite hero (or heroes) at DC are the Green Lanterns. So they offered me a Green Lantern story, and of course I'm not going to pass up any Green Lantern story! [laughs] So that's how I got involved.
What made Green Lantern the right superhero for this topic?
Deibert: That was me. [laughs] I just thought she would be a fun and good fit. She deals with energy in a way -- granted, not in the traditional scientific sense. But also, the way that Jessica Cruz's character has evolved in the DC Super Hero Girls universe, she's very much an activist. She's very much a lover of animals, a lover of Earth. For the type of story that I was hoping to do, it made her a really natural fit idealistically, and she's also a character that I just love and enjoy.
Owen: I don't think I have much to add to that, because Amanda put it together and picked that. Well, I think Amanda did a good job. I think Green Lantern can create, like Amanda said, the energy with the with the power ring. So yeah, it was just a fun way to tell that kind of story.
What was your familiarity with electricity as a subject before you started working on this story?
Deibert: Well, this is where the accidental background of having four years working with climate scientists really came in handy, because I've been doing that kind of research and that kind of writing for a long time. For this story, I still had to do quite a bit of research on electricity, the power grid, how it all works. Then, luckily, there were also scientists that DC had who could fact check things and make sure that everything was okay.
It was a pretty intense research project, and I think that I even included some links to a few things that I thought were helpful for Erich, if I'm not mistaken, in the script to help with some of the visuals as I was trying to describe them, to make sure that they were accurate, because it's definitely more factual research heavy than your typical run-of-the-mill comic book story.
Owen: Yeah, Amanda did, which is really helpful to get an idea of what Amanda is describing, but also, of course, I had to do a bunch of research because it's more scientific and factual. I wanted to make sure things looked real, or real as set in that world of DC Super Hero Girls. So I did a bunch of research on the inner workings of a windmill and what the generator and the turbines and stuff looked like on the interior of the machine, and generators.
I even had to do research for a corkscrew roller coaster, because Green Lantern makes a corkscrew in the story. I needed to see what that corkscrew looks like at a certain angle. So I do enjoy doing the research on different stuff like that, and having to try to figure out what big giant turbines and generators look like. I enjoy it!
What was something fun you learned as you conducted your own research?
Owen: Well, I like machines. I do a lot of my own car mechanic work. So just to see how things work is pretty cool for me. It's just, being an artist, seeing the visual aspects of generators and stuff. It's cool! Like the wind turbines, I had never seen what one actually looked like. I mean, I've seen them out, but I've never seen the inside of it and to see what fits in that top base part, where the turbines are connected, was pretty cool.
Deibert: I actually kind of left it in the story and used it to debunk some of my own misconceptions, which is a common misconception: that fossil fuels come from dinosaur bones. So I actually just left it in as part of the story to debunk the misconception that it's that versus plants that are even older, so it was one of those things like, "Oh, hey, I learned this thing, so now it's gonna be part of the story!"
Comics is such a wonderfully collaborative medium, so I'd love to hear about your experience working together on this.
Deibert: Well, I always love working with Erich. He's a great person to work with. One of my favorite things about his drawing style and the way that he works is that I always know that he's going to add little bits of humor that are even going to make things more fun than the way that I'm imagining. For me, that's always the fun, to give him the script and then to see what's going to happen on the other side and know that it's going to be even more playful and fun than whenever I envisioning. So for me, that's always the delight of working with Eric, in this and everything.
Owen: I like that Amanda's open to allowing me to take her story and then just run with it. She's always pretty cool about letting me do that. So it's a lot of fun for me to be able to take it and shape it, but still sticking to what she has envisioned, or the story that she is trying to tell. I take it and try to make it -- I don't know, what's the right word, embellish? -- or just go with it and have fun with it. She seems to enjoy that. So it's fun to work with somebody that is open to seeing maybe even a different interpretation of the story that she was trying to tell.
Erich, I'd love to hear more about your coloring process on this short and what that looked like for you.
Owen: Well, for the DC Super Hero Girls, it's a lot of work. I do a lot of Teen Titans Go! stuff, and I like to stick with the look of the shows; I try to kind of almost mimic. I don't know if that's the right word, but I try to make it look like it's just a shot from the show on page.
So the backgrounds, specifically for the coloring -- well, even the characters, because the characters have the color holds -- the lines around the characters are all colored; they're not left black. So that adds some tedium to it. But the backgrounds are quite intensive, and with a lot of detail, especially in the textures and stuff, so it's a lot more work than other projects that I work on, but I enjoy the detail work and stuff. I sketch out the backgrounds.
I work completely digitally, have been for many years. So I sketch it out on the computer and then I don't ink anything; I go straight to colors because the backgrounds don't really have any exterior outlines. For the different buildings and stuff in the background, I don't have any outlines. So I go straight from pencil to color, and it's basically digital painting.
I'll lay down flat colors for all the different objects in the background and then they go into Photoshop and I just start painting and paint all the textures in there and trying to make everything look like it's from the show and still kind of separate objects in different parts of the background. It's a lot of work, but it's really enjoyable.
How involved was Mayim Bialik during the process of creating your short?
Deibert: I mean, I'm so excited to be involved in a project with her. I think it's amazing that she's doing this and that she's involved with this, so it's awesome. We know that she really enjoyed the story. Our day-to-day communications were really more with Courtney in the minutia, like if you're just dealing with the page-by-page dealing, so it was more of that than dealing directly with Mayim, but it is really awesome to get to work with her.
Owen: While I didn't get the opportunity to work with Mayim directly, it was an honor to work on a project that she edited using her experience as a scientist. I think her name recognition as an actor is a bonus and hopefully will bring broader attention to projects like this that can teach as well as entertain.
In the past decade or so, there's really been a push to inspire girls to pursue STEM subjects. What has it meant to you to be part of an anthology with a story about a young lady showing interest in and exploring science?
Deibert: That was the other thing I was gonna say, with what Erich was saying about Mayim, because she's obviously a symbol for that. But yes, to me, particularly as a mother to a daughter, it matters so much that there is representation of women being interested in science. My first DC Super Hero Girls graphic novel that I wrote centered around the girls all participating in the science fair with that in mind, because it is something that's very important to me: girls in STEM, women in STEM.
Part of the reason that I was excited to have Jessica Cruz as the protagonist of this particular story -- because... I mean, I'm not a scientist, myself; I've been fortunate enough to work with some. My daughter seems to be showing a lot of interest in science. It's something I try to foster and encourage in her.
I think this book, particularly for little boys and little girls -- I mean, I think it's so cool to have a project where you've got superheroes explaining real scientific concepts, in ways that make it very relatable, accessible and also hopefully cool and interesting and fun and that kids might grab some of these stories and go, "Oh, I didn't know about this! Maybe now I want to learn more about it!" and, "If a DC Super Hero Girl thinks this is cool and is interesting, then me as a little girl, maybe I should, too!" That's the hope. That's the goal.
Owen: I have four daughters. Two are older. My youngest two are teenagers now and just started high school. So I absolutely want them to be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. So doing something like this, I think, just reaffirms that they can do that.
Can you tease your favorite moment or scene for readers who haven't had the pleasure of reading it yet?
Deibert: I have a couple! I think that the dinosaur moment is a cool moment, because I think a lot of people will have the "Oh, wow, I didn't know that!" [response]. I also think it's visually fun. I also think that the roller coaster metaphor makes something that's a little bit abstract feel more concrete. It's also, again, a fun visual. There's a grounded pun with Livewire that I enjoy because I love a mom pun!
Owen: I guess I'm gonna go the dinosaur moment, which was especially fun to illustrate. So I'm gonna pick that.
Flash Facts is now on sale . The book is currently available at DC's official website.