After co-creating titles like Skip to the End and Virtually YoursJeremy Holt has steadily been working their way up in the comic book industry. Made in Korea marks Holt's debut title with Image Comics, a publisher they have long aspired to write for in their career. Drawing inspiration from Holt's background as a Korean adoptee raised by American parents, the science fiction tale centers on a couple in the near-future adopting an android to raise as their own as a parallel narrative shows advances to artificial intelligence in South Korea.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Holt explains how leaning into more personal stories has helped them gain traction as a storyteller, why now feels like a more salient time for Made in Korea to be published and how their collaborative process with co-creator and illustrator George Schall informed the story.

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CBR: Jeremy, Image Comics is a publisher you always wanted to write for. What's it like working with Image on Made in Korea?

Jeremy Holt: Image was one of two publishers I was introduced to in 2009 when I started reading comics: It was Vertigo and Image. I never thought I'd get a foot in the door at DC Comics so Image seemed more like a realistic goal and I liked the creator-owned model and there were all these new stories with characters that you owned most, if not all of. Image was definitely my goal for twelve years and it is a hard nut to crack. I didn't really see a lot of success. I pitched I don't know how many books. I think it's pretty amazing that, of all the books that Image reviewed, this is one they went with because it's, by far, the most personal story. That's sort of what I learned back in 2017 when I decided to weave my own personal narratives into my stories, I actually found a lot more publishing success because of it.

I've always thought that your work has that personal element. As someone of Korean heritage that was adopted, not unlike Jessie in this story, how daunting was it to weave those more personal, raw elements into the sci-fi setting? Did having a sci-fi setting make it a bit more palatable to have that as a buffer?

Holt: Honestly, there were a couple of stories I was working on. Made in Korea, that was my pilot, on whether or not this was going to work. Most people intuitively don't want to write about their personal experiences, [those] too close to home, because the thought -- at least to me -- was who cares about my problems? Virtually Yours was the first story that I retooled -- This was a story that I developed in 2015 and it had all white characters. It was supposed to come out with [a different publisher] but there were some shifts with publishers. And it just so happened that in 2017, I came out as nonbinary and when I did that, I reevaluated all the stuff I was working on and I realized representation matters.

I had been writing white savior stories for so long because I was raised in a predominantly white family and I always kind of viewed myself as white, having been raised within American culture at home. When I retooled Virtually Yours, it opened all these doors that weren't previously there before. And I started to really write about my own experiences with relationships and dating and marriage and divorce. And seeing the response from that, it was clearer that I just needed to press harder on the pedal. Made in Korea is basically this idea that I've always had about A.I. narratives, that all A.I. stories at their core are really about adoption. I've just never seen anyone tackle it directly so I thought this is my opportunity, and, as a transracial adoptee, it was kind of perfect. It wasn't daunting but, for me, what was challenging was writing something that fans of A.I. stories may not have read before.

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What made you want to do this as a dual-narrative set in Korea and Texas? And how does Jessie fall into the middle of that?

Holt: Again, this was pulling from my personal experiences, more so from the American perspective. Even though I grew up mostly overseas -- I'd say half overseas, in Europe and Southeast Asia -- I did finish my last two years of high school in Texas, which was more of a culture shock than living in any foreign country. And that's always stuck with me. I wanted to try to tell, in a more direct way, what it's like with the duality and diaspora of being from two different places simultaneously. And for people that aren't adopted, or haven't had those experiences, it's kind of a subtle thing that you don't really recognize.

So I wanted to make it very apparent and I wanted to show these very different cultures, but I also wanted to set it a bit further in the future where the problems that these characters are facing are things that we're dealing with now. To try to avoid as many spoilers as possible, there were conflicts that I had designed, that I think are very relevant now, to the characters in the story that are going to be new. I thought that was a fun way to make the story feel futuristic without hoverboards and flying cars.

In regards to the artwork, what was it about George?

Holt: They have a website which has all their work and I looked through all of it and there was one short story, in particular, that was set in Japan, I think, but the aesthetic was there. This is an artist from Brazil who now lives in Spain but they, to me, understood the aesthetic and, honestly, I thought they were probably going to capture it better than me because I didn't know how to explain that to an artist because I've never lived there. So it was a lot of reference images. They had been doing so much work on that story and done their own research that it was pretty apparent that they were confident to tackle the story. Watching George progress over the last three and half years working together, their style has leveled up from just two years ago, so it's been amazing. And what people are going to read is an artist really honing in on their craft.

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I'm always curious about comics being so collaborative and a visual medium. As George's pages came in, how did that inform your storytelling and scripting?

Holt: We got the green light in 2018 and I think we were planning to release in late 2019 or early 2020. And then, the world went on fire and everything got pushed. I actually finished writing the six-issue series on Christmas Eve of 2019. That being said, working on these pages with George, they had so many good notes and they are an exceptional storyteller in their own right. They were giving notes like, "This line is lacking a human element." And it was great because these are pages I honestly haven't looked at in over a year. It was very informative to have a fresh pair of eyes look at this stuff and I want that collaboration and that input. This is 100% collaborative, what you're reading is the brainchild of two people and without their input, it wouldn't have as much impact as it does.

What made six issues the perfect length, or was there talk to go straight to trade as an original graphic novel?

Holt: Never talked about a graphic novel... I think I wanted to do six because I had never done six before. [Laughs] I've only really done four-issue stories and I've written plenty of five-issue ones that have never seen the light of day, but six just seemed like a nice, robust number so it was kind of just arbitrary.

This is something I've been asking a lot of people of East Asian descent lately, but it's important and hard not to bring up. We're at this crux where people of our origin are under a great deal of persecution. What is it about the timing of this book that may not have made it as timely coming out shortly after it was greenlit?

Holt: I think about this a lot. I've been thinking about it for the past year and a half. I don't really believe in fate but I do believe in manifesting destiny. I got the offer in mid-2018 while I was in my office at my day job doing tech support at a middle school. I screamed and wanted to tell somebody so I basically sat down... It was like a positive panic attack if that's a thing. I just wanted it to come out as soon as possible. Granted, when you're putting a book together, it takes time. What I write in a month or a couple of weeks could take an artist months to draw. As much as I wanted it to come out as soon as possible for that instant gratification, I just started working on other things.

And when it got pushed even further because of COVID, it was strange because Parasite had come out and I remember seeing that film and I was just blown away. And when Bong Joon-ho wins Best Picture and Best Director, I was just like "We've turned a corner!" And seeing everything that was nominated this year, it just felt like this was when it was supposed to come out. The pandemic has been horrible for all of us but, in some ways, it's pushed things to the edges where it just needed to sit and simmer. And I feel like this story would not have had the reception if it had come out a year ago or even a year and a half ago.

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What are you hoping readers take away with the first issue? And what's the big interesting hook to put this thing out into the world after literal years of development?

Holt: I hopefully will be able to represent a voice for people like myself or people that are PoC or wished to see some iteration of themselves in a comic and they don't have to go the extra mile to imagine it because all the characters are white but for Korean adoptees, specifically, and adoptees, generally. There is a major narrative component and conflict in the story that is very personal for me, and I hope, when people read it, they also feel some sense of catharsis that I got from writing it and being to live essentially vicariously through Jessie and getting to make decisions in these crucial, very stressful moments where lives are at stake and there's someone that can basically fight back. I wanted to make her a literal hero, and an unusual one at that, who is a nine-year-old proxy child. Hopefully, that's what resonates with readers.

Written by Jeremy Holt and illustrated by George Schall, Made in Korea #1 goes on sale May 26 from Image Comics.

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