Meeting Robin Ha

By Staff Writers Rivka Wolin and Carmen Dyer-Glaser

Robin Ha is the author of this year’s Common Read “Almost American Girl” a graphic novel came to campus on October 19th. “Almost American Girl” is about Ha’s Story of moving to America from South Korea and her experience finding herself in a strange new environment. As a Common Read being geared towards upcoming first years, it is a fitting story of finding oneself in a new place.

Love of Comics

Robin Ha started her journey to becoming an author by being a reader. Her mother took her to Manhwa-bangs which are comic book rental much like a Blockbuster was for movies. IIn Man-hwa-bang you can eat, drink, and enjoy the books while in the store or rent them for a couple of days. Robin Ha highlighted her love in “Almost American Girl” partially Fantasy, Romantic Comedy and Science Fiction comics. She detailed her favorite authors being Ilsook Shin, Mira Lee and Kyungok Kang. After moving and settling in Alabama, her mom found a comic book class for her. That was where she created her first series titled Fantasia. This was heavily based on the comics she was reading at the time. She actually met her first friend in this class, and they bounded over a shared love of art and comics.

Art as a Career

Ha went on to pursue art as a profession attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). After College, she went to New York not quite sure what she wanted to do with her degree yet. She took on odd jobs in retail and fast food. At one point, she found an opportunity to be more creative in the textile industry. She began as a Free Lance print designer for women’s fashion and worked in that position for a year. She got tired of drawing so many flowers and she did not feel like she had much freedom it always had to satisfy the customer. She went on to work for Polo Raul Lauren drawing magazine designs and copies of designs to be sent to factories to be made. She worked on so many polos with all different types of strips. She quit Polo and started working on Comics full time, her real passion.

Comics as a Career

As Ha started going to more Comic book Conventions, she was she was able to connect with people in the industry. She began to work with other comic artists at a place in Brooklyn and one of them allowed her to have the opportunity to work on one-shots with Fantastic Four and unpublished Dr. Strange issues. She enjoyed drawing them, but she didn’t feel connected to them. She later worked with a friend on short comics in a magazine called The Strumpet.

 

 

Later on, Robin Ha started turning to biographical comics after seeing the comic “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang.

 

Robin said “I felt like there was need to show case Asian stories to fill the need for representation for characters that look like them.”

 

That is when she started on her memoir originally called “Why Oh Why Alabama.” She got rejection letters from many publishers as they didn’t want to publish someone that was not published. Ha turned to cooking during this time mostly Korean food. She often brought food to the comic studio for her friends to try and they all asked how to make some foods. This inspired her to create an online comic series which she would update once a week called “Banchan in Two pages.” This got a lot of people interested in her work. Ha eventually made “Banchan in Two pages.”  into a magazine that would sell out at the comic conventions she attended.

 

 

After the success of “Banchan in Two pages” a publisher contacted her after discovering her Tumblr. One year later she published the cooking book “Cook Korean”; It made the New York times best seller at #4.  Two and a half years later she got the ability to Published Almost American girl. Now, Ha is finally working on the comic of her dreams based on nine tail fox character in Korean folk lore scheduled to be published in 2024 by Balzer and Bray.

 

Crash Course in Comic Writing

1. Robin Ha said when creating a comic, always start writing a story. Know where you are starting and where you want to go. This is your road map, and this will impact how you set up your comic or comic series.
2. Figure out your layout how do you want this comic to look, try to an idea of what a comic should look. Test out layouts of panels with smaller scale drawings to get a feel for what each image will look like together. Ha said, “Great comics come from reading great comics!”
3. Draw! Ha says to start with pencil sketch then move onto ink or digital ink. See what works and what you like to see on the page.

Robin Ha also wanted to remind young artist to not start with a big project. Start with something small and if you are having a block don’t do anything creative. “Go out do something fun if you are feeling blocked” Just remember to have fun and show off your work!