Smash Pages has interviewed my buddy and frequent collaborator, artist Takeshi Miyazawa! It’s a great interview that touches on his introduction to comics and his current work on MECH CADET YU. Here’s a cool excerpt:

You’ve been drawing comics for years and you’ve drawn robots over the years. Do you want to talk about how you designed the Robo Mechs for the series and how to give their own design and personality?

Like any kid from the ’80s, Transformers and Gobotswere properties I was obsessed with. Throw in some Gundam and old-school robot anime, stir it up, and that’s about where my brain is at with robots and robot design.

For this book, I paid particular attention to the generational aspect of the mechs in the world of Mech Cadet Yu. Skip Tanaka is the first to bond with a robot, therefore, his robot is square and blocky like an old Volvo. A real workhorse. The later robots that come to Earth become sleeker and more specialized in their strengths. Olivetti’s mech is a huge bruiser type while Sanchez’s mech has razorlike fins and sharper features. The man-made mech that Park controls is all angles and edges, something completely foreign to what we are used to seeing. So, playing with the various contrasts has been a great way to differentiate each mech from each other.

Read the whole interview here, and be sure to ask your local retailer to order you MECH CADET YU #5 and the first collected trade paperback, both in stores on January 3!

I’ve been interviewed by a few more folks about MECH CADET YU! The MECH CADET YU Volume One collected trade and MECH CADET YU #5 both hit comic shops on January 3 — please do call your local comic shop today and ask ’em to pre-order a copy for you!

Here’s an excerpt from the Comicon interview:

HMS: I think that as fun as giant robots are and can be in comics, animation, and film, they will fall a little flat if there’s not a bigger emotional component in some lead characters. In creating Stanford Yu, what main elements did you feel were core to his character? How did you develop those for the reader without getting too deeply into back story?

GP: Oh, the emotional story is always everything. We’ve all been to movies that are just spectacular in terms of action and visuals, but leave us totally cold and unmoved. Nothing’s more important than digging deep into your characters’ emotional lives and goals and conflicts. That’s the only reason we really care. In terms of Mech Cadet Yu, the most important details for us to establish were that Stanford’s an underdog–a janitor’s kid at an elite military academy. It’s also a subtle but important part of his story that his mother’s an immigrant and speaks to him in Cantonese, and his father died years ago, sickened by his work conditions, helping clean up in the wake of the first Sharg War.

This is a working-class immigrant family trying hard to make it in a world steeped in crisis and dominated by elites. We revealed those details mostly through showing rather than telling, bit by bit over the first few issues, doing our best to make it as organic and seamless as possible. The hope is that those elements help amp up the stakes for Stanford as he enters the Sky Corps Academy and provide depth to the conflicts he has with his fellow cadets–the General’s daughter, Park, in particular.

And here’s an excerpt from the Outright Geekery interview:

OG: How often do you and series artist Takeshi Miyazawa have the same vision of the mechs, the cast, and their first true threat, the Sharg?

The Geek Out Book Club podcast has released a rave review of the MECH CADET YU Volume One trade collection, which hits comic book shops on January 3.

Check out the review here — or play it below!

And call your local comic shop to pre-order the MECH CADET YU Volume One trade and MECH CADET YU #5 today — both come out on January 3, and today is the deadline for preorders for comic shops!

IGN has announced its nominees for Best New Comic Book of 2017 — and MECH CADET YU made this list! Please do feel free to check it out and VOTE for your fave today!