By The Editorial Committee • Compiled by Jeff Larkin
We’re now in 2025 and at the start of the Lunar New Year! We’ll continue to share our experiences as a collaborative team of creators working on KCU Studio’s premier middle-grade anthology. Coming up with an anthology theme is a significant thing that can be difficult to accomplish with so many collaborators. The Editorial Committee (AKA EdComm) managed to pull it off. Find out how they did it below. Happy reading!
~ KC Studio Anthology Newsletter Co-Editors, Edna Cabcabin Moran & Maritza Ruiz-Kim
Early in our anthology project, the Editorial Committee (EdComm) was tasked with coming up with a unifying theme to inspire great stories and support the diverse voices of our creators. We were building a train, and needed an engine to get things going. So, we sketched out some plans, and met weekly for two months to research, brainstorm, and synthesize ideas.
Research Phase
We began by surveying lots of anthologies, from both traditional and independent publishers. While there’s not an abundance of kids-focused anthologies on the market, collections like the Kazu Kibuishi -produced Explorer series and the Comics Squad series by Jennifer and Matthew Holm helped us consider various themes.
Anthology Creators Poll
We then asked our participants what kind of themes they would be interested in writing and we collected their ideas via a poll. With lots of suggestions to consider, our next task was to narrow things down.
Collation Phase
We then took all of the submitted themes and categorized them on a whiteboard to analyze their commonalities.
Synthesis
We were pleased to find a number of themes that were both popular, and that would work well together. The themes that appeared most in our poll were “Journey,” “Community,” and “Creatures” …so we combined them, and asked people to work on:
Stories in which a kid protagonist (human, animal or creature)
experiences a physical journey and
directly or indirectly encounters a creature that is real, imaginary, or fantastical.
Et voila! The train was on the track, and we were ready to depart on a great adventure!
The KCU Studio Anthology Editorial Team is comprised of dedicated anthology contributors who are tasked with overseeing the editing of each and every comic in the anthology. This has required building an editorial process and vision from the ground up, maintaining communication with fellow creators, a ton of zoom time and many blurry hours staring at comics at every level of development–from rough sketches to gleaming final spreads.