Interview:
Bending the Airbender: An Interview with Alison Wilgus, Comic Book Writer and Artist

By now you've no doubt heard that Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender is getting the Hollywood treatment under director M. Night Shyamalan as The Last Airbender gets ready for it's July 2nd release this summer. Comic and Manga fans will be happy to know that Del Ray Manga is releasing a movie adaptation of the film, as well as an exclusive prequel story The Last Airbender: Zuko's Story. Both have been written by comic book illustrator Alison Wilgus, and as the release date draws near for the manga prequels release Alison was kind enough to sit down with Allten8.com and answer a few questions. Check out what Alison had to say about the film, the show, the manga, and even some of her other super cool projects such as New-Gen:

Alltern8: So first things first, this summer's highly anticipated blockbuster The Last Airbender is based off the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series and you are one of the writers working on the manga for Del Ray, how did you get attached to this project to begin with?

Alison Wilgus: My good friend and colleague, Dave Roman, was one of the editors at Nickelodeon Magazine, and I'd written about fifty pages worth of short comics for the magazine over the past couple years. These were all based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, so we'd both spent a huge amount of time with the world and characters of the show. And as the editor on these comics, Dave had even worked with some of the writers and artists from ATLA's crew.

Dave and his wife, Raina Telgemeier, had recently co-written X-Men: Misfits for Del Rey Manga, which was an extremely successful book. So when Del Rey decided they wanted to do a "prequel" to tie into The Last Airbender, they immediately thought of Dave, because he'd done a great book for them before and was already really familiar with the material. Then Dave immediately turned around and asked me if I would co-write it with him. We'd worked so well together before, and I love ATLA, so how could I refuse?