After painting Zack, Scott Christian Sava painted Jenny. Despite being from a monstly-French habitat, I decided depict the character with darker skin and almond-shaped eyes because I figure two thousand years from now, we’ll probably have a little more homogeneity among humans, especially among those who have move out of their insular communities on Earth and live amongst the stars.
Jenny’s uniform is pink because at this point, she doesn’t really take the Junior Ranger thing seriously. It’s one of those things her parents are making her to do “build character” and to give her some life experience outside of the Messier Habitat. Someone like that wouldn’t make the concession of wearing such a drab and utilitarian uniform, so she insisted her parents have her made one in the style of some of the more popular fashions. After all, why should she look as dull and boring as the rest of the Junior Rangers? Especially since they have to let various cultures express themselves.
She gets better.
It’s pretty hard writing for a twelve-year-old boy. But at least I have some experience at that. I’ve never been a fourteen-year-old girl, though, so I found it challenging to write for Jenny without falling into a trap of cliché and stereotypes. I tried to portray her as someone from a nationalistic, insular community growing up in a privileged family. Frankly, she would have some pretty unreasonable expectations about the way things work, and the events in the story end up being a rude awakening for Jenny.
Zack ends up being the kind of kid who is too inexperienced to realize what he thinks is “cool”, “awesome”, and “fun” is actually really dangerous and sometimes stupid. Jenny ends up being the more realistic of the two humans because she has grown up living in a space habitat and knows that people can die in horrible ways in the void between the stars.
This series will have a short hiatus for the holidays. My artist has some prior commitments he needs to take care; once those are done, he’ll be able to paint some more of this cover.
Merry Christmas, everyone!