You know Dustin Nguyen from Descender, Li'l Gotham, and other various Batman comics. When he was going to marry Nicole Hoang, he had a special surprise for her and their wedding guests. Dustin found an old story she had written when she was ten-years-old. The surprise was he illustrated the story and everyone at the wedding got a copy of the book.
Dustin and Nicole are now bringing the book to a wider audience, through BOOM! Studios with all new art to go with it. The book will be released in July and BOOM! will have advanced copies at San Diego Comic-Con.
Comic Vine: Nicole, you first wrote What Is It? when you were ten. Did you do a lot of writing back then?
Nicole Hoang: I did! Reading and writing was very much my entire life growing up.
Dustin found the story and illustrated it. Do you still have other things you wrote?
Nicole: They are all at my mom's house if she hasn’t thrown them out yet.
Dustin, what made you pick this story to illustrate as a surprise?
Dustin Nguyen: The first time I read it, I thought it was just the most hilarious and coolest thing. And honestly, it was the only story by her that I have an original, physical copy of, so it made it easy. It was like a script ready to go, y'know? Yeah, I'm just lazy.
What was your reaction to seeing your story come to life?
Nicole: It was a nice surprise, and I just a little weirded out as to why.
With the story being reprinted through BOOM! Studios, why did you decide to redraw it?
Dustin: The first time I drew it in 2002, I did it in less than a week. Most of that time was spent trying to design the characters based on Nicole's original drawings and her description from the story. It was pretty rushed out and there were a lot of things I wanted to do I didn’t have time for. Also, my work has changed a lot since then. This repainted version is closer to what I think Nicole's original story feels like.
How did this project come to BOOM! Studios?
Dustin: I've been friends with [Managing Editor] Bryce [Carlson] at BOOM! for the longest time. Every chance I had in my schedule away from my regular books, I'd jump in on a short project with them. I think it was between a Regular Show project and an Adventure Time short story Bryce and I worked on together, the subject came up. It was more like a “Hey, check this out,” just for fun, like you would showing off a program you probably wrote in high school if you were a programmer decades later. Bryce said we have to do it and I laughed; Nicole would never be okay with it. It took almost two years to get her to be okay with it haha.
Nicole: It was a surprise, again!
How does the new art compare to the original art?
Dustin: It's a lot more complete this time around.
Nicole: Ehh :)
When can we expect a sequel? What about other stories?
Dustin: We have something pretty unexpected planned.
Look for the book in July from BOOM! Studios. Check out how the original compares to Dustin's first version.
