Teen Succubus
by Lyn Jensen
What’s a virgin succubus to do when her first mark of evil accidentally lands on a guy she really, really likes? Seducing this nice guy away from his scatterbrained girlfriend isn’t all that evil, and demon elders are insisting on a fatal seduction. Two California girls dreamed up Mark of the Succubus when TokyoPop asked them for a romantic teen comedy with supernatural elements.
Irene Flores and Ashly Raiti’s debut manga is something cool ‘rents can enjoy along with their 13-year-old. Flores, whose brooding, angular art is well-suited to a Gothic theme, met Raiti while they were attending Cabrillo High School. Flores is from the Philippines and Raiti from Panama, but they’ve lived in Lompoc for some time. Flores says she wanted to create a web comic in the manga style, but couldn’t write. Raiti did, fortunately, but couldn’t draw. So they started www.castingsmanga.com which gained them some fans even before they were runners-up in TokyoPop’s Rising Stars of Manga 3 contest.
About the young women’s chosen entry, Life Remains, TokyoPop’s Bryce P. Coleman commented, “The murky images of a war-torn world set the tone. Then there’s the layout, panels within panels, overlapping each other at unsettling angles,â€
TokyoPop’s currently got the team sequestered working on Mark of the Succubus, vol. 2, but they took time to answer some of our e-mail queries.
LA Alternative: Any projects or plans beyond the next Mark of the Succubus, what can readers expect?
Raiti: The plans are for Mark of the Succubus to be a three-book series, but beyond that, I’m not sure. I think Irene and I agreed we’d like to pitch a new book to TokyoPop, but we haven’t really talked about that yet.
Flores: Pretty boys! I like drawing ‘em.
LAA: What’s your advice to readers who want to do manga?
Raiti: I really do recommend the Rising Stars of Manga Contest. Entry requires a short—no longer than 20 pages—and I think Irene and I learned a lot about what we still needed to fix and how we worked together as a team while we were tinkering with ours.
Flores: Take a life drawing class. Drawing naked people helps you draw better manga. Focus less on pin-ups and more on sequential art. And read lots of manga, Mark of the Succubus in particular.