The Indie Way: The Vigilante Time Witch named Cosmyx!
I had the honor of sitting down with self-published author Alysia Anderson of Time Crunch Comics on her debut indie comic, Cosmyx, the Time Witch. Her work is full of passion, representation and is the result of fully leaning into one’s passion.
I hope her journey can inspire you to pursue your dreams!
Confetti: Tell Us About Yourself and Cosmyx, The Time Witch!
I’m Alysia, the author of Cosmyx, The Time Witch. Just like Batman meets Sailor Moon with a witchy twist.
I have been a fan of comics manga since, like, the first grade. I was like a Toonami gave me the non-canon dubbed Canada stuff. It was so amazing and so I’ve always enjoyed that stuff.
I also liked Teen Titans and Batman, and when I saw the Robert Pattinson type of Batman they pitched this to be like your Snapchat cool, Batman.I began to think I’m kind of over this type of superhero. Like, this is not like hitting the way I think it should hit. I want a young superhero who’s actually a woman who’s actually a Black girl and has magical powers. And that was the first seed of it all.
She is very much like Batman and Sailor Moon, as in, she’s a proper crime fighter. Like she throws a punch, she’s a brawler and kicks sound like a door in this first issue, but she’s also a girl. She’s cute, she’s soft, she has her crush, and I wanted to balance that softness and cuteness. There’s tons of stories about people of color who go through stuff that are very, very sad. And this is a powerful story and she’s in charge of her own history. That’s also why I love the idea of time magic!
I had the idea for time because she’s a teenager.
When you’re a teenager, it often feels like time is kind of against you. Like, high school feels like it’s so long, you’re always sleepy because you can’t sleep in, but I want her to, travel through history and, like, really see who she is and who she can be because that’s like a positive story, you know?
Who are your favorite magical girls growing up, and did they influence your art and what you?
I love magical girls! I love a late girl with toast! I feel like it’s such a Sailor Moon thing where I love Pluto. Pluto I’ve always liked, and I have moments where I’m like, is it because she’s like the darkest one? I do love all of the Sailor Scouts. I love Card Captor Sakura. I love Yu Yu Hakusho. I guess, like if I want to argue Botan is a Magical girl. I like the classics like Kagome and Kikyo, from Inuyasha!
I also was always into the smaller magical girls as well, like Wedding Peach. Anyone? Her power was weddings! My favorite being Angel Daisy.
Sailor Pluto’s father is literally the god of time, so is she a direct influence, you think, to Cosmyx?
I feel like Pluto kind of inspired me because I feel like I was halfway through making Cosmyx and I was like, wait a minute, and that makes sense! I think that she kind of inspired me, but it is a very unique time story where she’s not quite Chronos affiliated, but the Trials of Time, the Sands of time are all there.
How did you get started creating your own manga/comic book? There are many folks out there who want to get into anime professionally, so for you and your journey, how did it go from ‘I had this idea in my brain’ to you’re literally holding your baby right now?
The process is long and hard, but it looks different for everyone. But for me, at first I went down every rabbit hole I could just to think about. I mean, like shout out to this guy that posted things on YouTube in like 2008. He was the only guy that answered my question about things like “here’s how you format a comic book”.
I’m like, bless this king. So it was just a lot, a lot of research and then a lot of trial and error. Like the first artist I worked with, bless their heart. I was sending emails back and forth like: ‘actually, her cloak should be heavy, like Raven’s cape from Teen Titans’, and I was like, that’s not how you give feedback cleanly.
But once you learn to work with an artist, then they have a better time too! So it was just a lot of trial and error, taking that plunge and also having a personal timeline, because in order to make your own art, it’s never going to be perfect. So it just has to be done. So if I can do it, anyone can.
It’s not an overnight thing. You have to get the pages, get the artist, then go and letter it and then get your print specs. I mean, it’s so many small things that add up that make this whole book that I’m holding, it is not just two days of my life, this is months and years of my life.
How important is it to have, you know, dark skinned and Black magical girls in this space?
I’m obsessed with this question! Her skin tone was so important to me. You don’t even know. Yeah, I wanted to make sure this was a girl who looked black. Not like, oh, maybe. Yeah. Or. Oh, maybe I could interpret her. No, this is a black girl, and her skin tone is a little bit darker over mine. That was so important to me because there are not enough of us. This took me years to make it. In those years, there’s no one who made this [story/character], and two, the black girl in mainstream can’t always be a light skinned girl. It’s got to be a girl who looks like all of us.
So that’s extremely important, and there are not enough people who are doing it in the big world. So I think that’s why there is an indie surge of these characters. It’s extremely important. I think that everyone is talented, but I feel like we tell these stories the best!
So every artist I work with was black. The girl who did the pages, the girl who, like, designed her look. And like, if I did a test page, and if her nose wasn’t flat enough, if her hair didn’t have flyaways. You’re not my artist, like, you’re very talented, but you’re not my artist.
I’ve been tabling now for almost a year and the biggest highlight is seeing the kids. Like this is a true teen story. Like she might say, you know, a few curse words but like when I see a young, young, young kid, we did not have a lot of representation like this, so now I’m like, here’s my sticker and here’s my comic!
How important is queer representation and that it shows up in your comic?
It’s extremely important because that’s real life. Like, I feel like it’s inevitable to give her queer characters because that is real life. She is not queer, but there are so many other characters, witches and whatnot, and like they are going to have their own types of journeys because that’s just life and it happens at all ages.
When I came up to your table,I noticed that your mother is here; how important is it to have community when you’re going for your dream?
It’s so important. Both my parents are the first to graduate high school in college and their families. So I promise you that, like when they finally graduated college and started a family, they weren’t thinking, how do I take these children to Pokemon 2000, you know, or Digimon in theaters! So it means so much because it’s like having a parent or family or anyone close to you honor your interest for that long. I never once got told, ‘this is for nerds,’ or ‘this is not that cool’. It was always like, ‘all right, if you have straight A’s, you can buy this book’, or ‘yeah, I’ll take you to go and buy a Yu-Gi-Oh card’.
So it feels really, really incredible to have someone who honors your passions. Like your passions can be anime or anything else, but if someone really acknowledges that this is big to you, it just feels amazing.
So is there anything else you want to tell us? Perhaps more about the story or things that we can expect in the future for your next issue? Because I heard it might be coming soon!
So issue two is coming out for sure this year. It’s for the end of October Halloween season. And there are other characters like Dorothy is an Earth witch, like a garden witch, but there is a heroine, water witch, a light witch, a shadow witch. And they are the full spectrum of characters because again, that’s human life.
So I’m excited about that!
And if there’s any advice I can give is that you have to truly, like, lean into your passions and know that there are a million ways that these things can look! But they can come together! The interests add up, and you can build a comic on your own.
Purchase the first issue of Cosmyx, The Time Witch from Time Crunch Comics. Also follow Alysia’s journey on Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube. And be on the lookout for the new issue coming this October!
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