This is where I got the idea for She Dwarf.

The first book I read on my own and enjoyed was “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien. It swept me away into my first of many fan obsessions as a stupid teen cutie. At some point, there was talk of constructing a built-in cabinet in the middle of a mural of a hobbit house in my bedroom. Looking back, I’m super grateful that stupid teen cutie Kyle was also lazy.

A couple years later, in 2002, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” was released with the following scene in it:

In the scene, Gimli the dwarf was talking about the confusion around dwarf women, and Aragorn said it’s because they had beards. Everyone laughed about it, gleefully embraced strict gender norms, and moved on. But friends, I never moved on. I thought the idea of 3ft bearded, lady barbarians was one of the coolest ideas I’d ever heard.

Much later, on August 25th, 2014, I drew the following doodle:

For the last 18 month, I’ve been trying to scoot projects around and think of a way to tell the story of this tiny hammer-wielding bad ass.  So here we are.

Perfectly good ideas are laying around everywhere, even in garbage reductionist jokes that weren’t even said by those characters in the SOURCE MATERIAL PETER JACKSON IMLOOKINGATYOU!  Creativity isn’t about creating a brand new idea, it’s about combining old ideas in a new way.