Dominion, a vertical scroll comic about a city guard and an arsonist who join forces to foil an apocalyptic plot, is seeing print for the first time thanks to a grant from Creative NZ! New Zealand-based cartoonist Memoh. sat down (metaphorically) with KCBeat to talk about preparing her vertical scroll comic Dominion for print and bookstore distribution.
MASHA ZHDANOVA: First off, congrats on getting your book published, that’s a huge accomplishment! What aspect of the print edition are you most proud of?
MEMOH.: Thank you! It’s been a massive amount of work, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity Creative NZ has given me to get my work out there.
After getting the Early Careers Grant, I had a long, hard think about what I wanted this book to mean to me on a personal level. I came to the conclusion that I wanted it to be a product that showcased everything I’m capable of as an artist – and for it to sit proudly next to professionally published titles.
And I’ve done it.
That being said, I have had fantastic help. From Willow and Dayn giving me rigorous editing passes, to Riotbones (lead colourist) who coloured a whopping 73 pages, to my friend Claine and a small army of flatters that helped prep pages for me so I could meet my final deadline! Shout out to my husband as well, for his fantastic moral support and feeding/watering me while I worked all hours to get this pulled together.
I noticed the first episode on Webtoon looks pretty different from the first chapter of the print edition, can you tell me more about how you decided to rework it?
MEMOH.: So the prologue scene is the very first scene I drew after I completed the season one script, back in early 2022. The idea of that scene in my mind’s eye was the whole impetus to make this a comic vs a novel because I could see it so vividly.
I was incredibly proud of it at the time, but the reality of working in comics is you just keep improving as you go – radically so. And not only from an art perspective; you learn about what you need to be clearer on so readers pick up what’s happening.
For example, from the very first cut of the scene, Pasha narrates “I think that was the day… I died,” and many people took it as meaning the series was an isekai! Which is honestly hilarious to think about and I had a good laugh, but it is a core level problem, especially for an opening.
The death I’m meaning to speak of in this moment is the death of the self – how when something extremely traumatic happens to you, you can feel like the person you used to be has ceased to exist. So when I was looking at bringing this to print, I knew the first part of the story would need reworking so that it could give the best impression when someone picked it up in a bookstore.
From an art perspective, I’ve added new panels, upgraded the lineart, and Riotbones has done a fantastic job with the colour. Plot wise I’ve adjusted the dialogue plus I’ve made a lot of the foreshadowing and actions in the scene clearer (for instance, adding in the black arrow in her hands so there’s a clear connection between this scene we see and when we meet her later in the story from Desmond’s perspective).
I’m incredibly proud of the new version, so I’m excited to see what readers think of it this time around!
What was the process of converting the vertical scroll format to print format like?
MEMOH.: Luckily I only had to do so much of that! The only scenes that started as scroll format were the opening scene, and then chapter 3 and 4. The jump is because shortly after I did the prologue scene, WEBTOON announced their Call to Action contest. In order to enter, I jumped up to chapter 3 since it had the required action scene.
After the contest ended and I did my first round of story edits from what I learned, I shifted to drawing page format first. I actually find I flow better starting from page format and then re-laying it in Illustrator for vertical scroll. Also, for a while I’ve been publishing chapters as individual issues for local zinefests, so back at that point (2023) those previously scroll sections were converted to pages, leaving less work for me when I was assembling the book.
That said, for the paperback edition I did a lot of new pages that have mostly replaced those scroll-to-page versions from the zines. Chapter 3 looks completely different – probably 70% of the original version has been left on the editing room floor!
What inspired this story generally, and what inspired the decision to put it online first?
MEMOH.: Ever since I was little I’ve loved comics, so I always had a dream to make one of my own someday. However I struggled to find an idea I was on fire about, so none of my ideas moved beyond the concept stage. Then COVID happened. 2020 was a rough year, even if NZ had it easier than a lot of places. During that time, and in response to certain events in my life, I started developing Pasha. From there the idea grew, and I finally got the whole story plotted in the long Auckland lockdown in 2021.
As for putting it online, at first I had no further aspirations for the series than to make it a webcomic. However some friends of mine pointed out that it’s nice to have print editions – if just for yourself. Taking their advice, from there I started making single issue zines to sell at markets. And then I got the crazy idea to apply for a grant to print the first book. And well – here we are!
What surprised you the most about the publishing process?
MEMOH.: THE SHEER AMOUNT OF PAPERWORK. I expected a bit to be sure, but between Nielsen BookData and NTI Sheets and press releases and emails and invoices… but that’s just the tip of the iceberg! That doesn’t even include legal filings, my grant reporting, or business licenses. So be sure to do your research if you’re diving into publishing! For Kiwis, the New Zealand Society of Authors has a lot of great resources to get you started.
Do you have a favorite character or do you love all of your children equally?
MEMOH.: Pasha (first born preference haha), but it’s a close race between them all!
Who’s the easiest to draw? Who’s the hardest to draw?
MEMOH.: Pasha is the easiest since I’ve been drawing her the longest, and Captain Leddeck is the hardest because of her cool armor.
Though, oddly enough, I get the most frustrated drawing John. He’s not hard technically speaking, but for some reason I feel my consistency when drawing him is nonexistent! It’s probably just me being hypercritical, but there’s times where you draw a character and you’re like “yes, that’s them!” versus times you draw them and it’s like “it’s close, but not quite” on some undefinable interior level. John falls into the later category pretty much all the time for me. But done is better than perfect when it comes to comics, so I console myself that one of these days I’ll get him right.
Do you have any hints on what’ll happen in the next volume?
MEMOH.: It certainly starts out with a bang! Desmond is going to have to start confronting hard truths about the society he lives in, particularly when the team discovers just what exactly is going on outside the city walls. There also will be a budding crush/romance moment I’m particularly looking forward to drawing… But that’s all I can say!
And if there’s anything else you’d like to share about your creative process or the vertical scroll to print process feel free to add that too!
MEMOH.: There’s an awesome piece of writing advice that I got from an old school shojo manga drawing guide. Essentially, they said even if you don’t have a concrete end in mind for your series, it’s vital to figure out your central theme. Take that, post it on a wall. Then, take all your scene ideas and hold them to the theme you’ve picked. Is the scene serving the theme? Or is it going against it?
Whilst I do have the end of the series already written, I’m the kind of writer where scenes will come to me while doing mundane things and kind of play in my mind like TV. That’s when I find this advice really helpful. After I write down my mind-movie, I hold it up to the themes I’ve established for the series, and also compare it to existing scenes in the story (for example, if you tack on too many scenes to your rising action, the overall pace begins to drag). Is my new scene serving the theme better? Or is it better to leave the script be? This is how I keep a bit of spontaneity to my process, even though I’ve written all my chapters four years ago.
The biggest growing pain from scroll to print format for me was lettering. It’s so nice with scroll format where you can just take a bunch of dialogue and put it neatly above your panel artwork – then be done! But for page format every square millimeter counts. I’ve changed dialogue from my original script to truncated versions so many times – I mean just look at the word ‘truncated’. For my comic, I’d probably just swap it out for “shorter” and save myself the space those 2 extra letters take up. It makes it difficult to preserve character voice if you do that too often though, so my advice is to thumbnail first, letter second, THEN start on your page artwork. Learn from my mistakes! Nothing is worse than guesstimating the space your lettering will take up based on handwriting, only to find your font doesn’t fit and you have to redo the entire panel!
ZHDANOVA: And there you have it!
Print copies of Dominion can be acquired through Memoh.’s website, and the webcomic can be read on Webtoon, Tapas, GlobalComix, Comicfury and Dillyhub.
