swan-archive asked:

Now that we have a last name for Malaya, is it safe to assume that she is Filipina? If so, thank you so much; Malaya is one of the first characters of my ethnicity I've seen in any American media. If not, thanks anyway for creating a non-straight, chubby, female, dark-skinned Asian character who is a gloriously unrepentant asshole. I love your webcomics and think you're doing a lot of great things with them!

Malaya’s last name was first revealed waaaaaaay back in the Multiplex crossover, actually!  I bring this up because Multiplex’s creator, Gordon McAlpin, who is half Filipino, chose it for her.  (And he also designed her mom and childhood household.)  Once he saw I’d created a Filipino character he was all like CROSSOVER CROSSOVER and I was all like AW YEAH.  But that’s buried in some other website and was mentioned exactly that once before, so it’s no surprise her full name’s not common knowledge.  I wanted to reinforce it, though, so I made sure she said it again.

(Multiplex’s main character, Jason Atwood, shares Gordon’s ethnicity so add, like, half of him to your representation list if he ain’t on there already.    And I guess it’s a good comic to read and stuff, I dunno, I must have said nice things about it in the foreword to the second book, probably.)

Malaya is one of my favorite characters to write and draw.