I feel great about having won the Dwayne McDuffie for diversity becaus — Steenz

"I try to put as much of their personality into the kind of clothes that they wear and how they wear their hair or their make-up and so on and so forth"

"white people just dont think about being white."

"It was very stressful at the very beginning (becoming a syndicated comic strip artist). Thats a lot on someones shoulders, to be one of three Black femme people making syndicated comics, ever, in the history of comic strips. I was sweating at my computer, like, “Oh my god, Im supposed to be representative of an entire ethnic group.” But I did have the opportunity to talk to Bianca Xunise and Barbara Brandon-Croft [who became the first nationally syndicated Black female cartoonist in 1991] about how scary it is. Also, were all in it together. I remember for my launch, I got emails from the [African American] creators of “Jump Start” and “Curtis,” that were like, “Welcome to the family.” That alone made all of my insecurities and stress completely vanish. I grew up reading their comics. To have them embrace me so quickly was really, really lovely."

"I do like the idea that not only white people have to have adventures. So when you’re designing characters, who they are, what their ethnicity is like part of them, but it’s not everything."

"when someone’s like, “Design a black character,” well, what does that mean? That could mean literally anything."

"I dont like reading about stories where trauma happens, you know? Theres a reason Covid is not happening in my comic, because I dont want to deal with it. I dont want to write about Charlotte getting “hate crimed,” I would rather write about Heart realizing “Oh, yeah, Im the odd one out here.” There are ways to talk about tough and complex issues, without making it exploitative, in a way thats light-hearted but real."