My brain assigns genders to flatware. Spoons are girls, forks are boys and knives are their daddies. Setting the table has always been an exercise in familial geometry. Amy Smootster's brain assigns morality to shapes. Circles are good; squares are evil. The big difference here is that my gender thing is pretty much restricted to my imaginary psychosis, whereas squares frequently attempt to murder Amy Smootster. Oh, and whenever Amy's embarrassed her feet sweat a fluid that gives her power. My feet sweat in yoga class and the only thing it does is make me slip on my mat. And Amy talks to bugs and has a crush on her high school counselor who protects her from the Nasty Cool Girls who are definitely on the side of the evil squares. I don't really remember my high school counselor and I don't talk to bugs but I do feel guilty when I squoosh them.
Anyway, I didn't really need to know anything about squares or Nasty Cool Girls or foot sweat power or talking bugs named Carl to convince me to read Zero Girl. I was sold when I saw the first teaser illustration in that weird newspaper thing they always put in my bag at the comic shop. It was a beautiful Sam Kieth painting of Amy, angled from above. She had black chunky glasses, striped socks and a little potbelly. She looked exactly as lost and weird as I felt in high school: like a girl who assigns genders to flatware.
Kelly Sue DeConnick relocated from Brooklyn, New York to Kansas City, MO, where she lives with her husband and artbomb.net colleague, Matt Fraction. Kelly Sue writes the English adaptations of several manga titles published by Tokyopop and Viz. She can be found on the web at kellysue.com.
